This study analyzes whether Guatemalan success with the kingpin decapitation strategy of bringing major drug traffickers to justice has accomplished its greater objectives of reducing cocaine trafficking and drug-related violence. The analysis finds little evidence of success for the first objective in Guatemala but notable success for the second. One of the few studies to examine the application of this strategy outside Mexico and Colombia, its findings are interpreted in light of their contrasting experiences. The article provides an overview of drug trafficking in Guatemala and concise studies of two of its most important organizations targeted by the kingpin strategy.

Guatemala faces a growing, potentially existential threat. Territories and routes which once experienced moderate trafficking of goods, humans, and drugs have become superhighways for the transfer of high value products, chemical products, weapons, and cash required by the illicit drug industry. Due to Guatemala’s border with Mexico and a permissive environment for contraband and crime, the country has become a funnel for 90 percent of the cocaine sent from South America to the United States—the largest drug market in the world.1 Contraband routes in Guatemala traditionally controlled by local groups are coming ever more under the control of the Mexican cartels. Around half of the nation’s territory is believed to be under the control of criminal organizations.2 Local criminal organizations have long penetrated the Guatemalan police, army, courts and government, and Guatemala’s gangs are extremely violent. However, the Mexican cartels with their financial resources, military grade weapons, and reputation for indiscriminate killing and brutality have elevated these threats. Today Guatemala and its neighbors Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador, have homicide rates among the highest in the world. Guatemala’s murder rate is as high as those during the worst years of the civil wars in the 1980’s. Impunity for traffickers and murderers is the rule, not the exception.

This paper is an analysis of trends in the security challenges facing Guatemala, including narcotics and human smuggling groups and violent street gangs, in conjunction with an examination of the efforts by the Guatemalan police, military and other entities to combat those challenges with U.S. support.

This study considers the effects of the kingpin strategy, an approach to fighting organized crime in which law-enforcement efforts focus on capturing the leaders of criminal organizations, on community violence in the context of Mexico's drug war. Newly constructed historical data on drug-trafficking organizations' areas of operation at the municipality level and monthly homicide data allow us to control for a rich set of fixed effects and to leverage variation in the timing of kingpin captures to estimate their effects. This analysis indicates that kingpin captures cause large and sustained increases to the homicide rate in the municipality of capture and smaller but significant effects on other municipalities where the kingpin's organization has a presence, supporting the notion that removing kingpins can have destabilizing effects throughout an organization that are accompanied by escalations in violence.

This essay reviews the following works: Criminal Enterprises and Governance in Latin America and the Caribbean. By Enrique Desmond Arias. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 301. $75.00 hardcover. ISBN: 9781107153936. Sharing This Walk: An Ethnography of Prison Life and the PCC in Brazil. By Karina Biondi. Edited and translated by John F. Collins. Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 2016. Pp. vii + 194. $24.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781469623405. Los Zetas Inc.: Criminal Corporations, Energy, and Civil War in Mexico. By Guadalupe Correa-Cabrera. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. ix + 379. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9781477312759. The Killing Consensus: Police, Organized Crime, and the Regulation of Life and Death in Urban Brazil. By Graham Denyer Willis. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015. Pp. ix +192. $29.95 paperback. ISBN: 9780520285712. The Politics of Drug Violence: Criminals, Cops, and Politicians in Colombia and Mexico. By Angélica Durán-Martínez. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2018. Pp. 328. $29.95, paperback. ISBN: 9780190695965. Making Peace in Drug Wars: Crackdowns and Cartels in Latin America. By Benjamin Lessing. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2018. Pp. vii + 326. $34.99 paperback. ISBN: 9781316648964. En la niebla de la guerra: Los ciudadanos ante la violencia criminal organizada. By Andreas Schedler. Mexico City: Centro de Investigación y Docencia Económicas, 2015. Pp. 282. $17.99 paperback. ISBN: 9786079367480. Mano Dura: The Politics of Gang Control in El Salvador. By Sonja Wolf. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2017. Pp. vii + 304. $29.95 paper. ISBN: 9781477311660.

Despite efforts by governments in Latin America, illicit drugs continue to provide one of the largest incomes for criminal organizations, enabling them to penetrate and corrupt political and social institutions. Criminal organizations exploit the vulnerabilities of the state and take advantage of governments’ inability to provide security to their citizens. With few exceptions, the weak capacity of Latin American governments is reflected in high rates of homicides, notorious levels of impunity, and the feeling of mistrust that citizens harbour regarding justice institutions and the police. Drug law enforcement in Latin America operates in a context of institutional fragility in which the “war on drugs” has mostly failed to reduce supply and demand, while generating new problems and vast collateral damage. The perverse incentives created by the prohibitionist approach in the face of a persistently strong market demand for drugs has been an important cause of violence and crime in many places. At the same time, state responses to repress this illegal market have serious negative side effects, but only a limited capacity to impact upon the drug chain. Given this reality, different voices are demanding changes in the way the state responds not only to the drug problem but also to the threat of multiple criminal economies that affect the everyday lives of the citizens. The assumption is that moving away from the “war on drugs” can contribute to de-escalating violence and crime and can deprive organized crime groups of resources.