The Narco-State and Mickey Mouse: An Unresolved Conceptual Problem

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*Por Jorge Rolón Luna

While dis­agree­ments re­gard­ing spe­cific and op­er­a­tional de­f­i­n­i­tions af­fect many con­cepts, rang­ing from “democ­racy” to “cor­rup­tion” the term “narco-state” is ag­gra­vated by what crim­i­nol­o­gist Stan­ley Co­hen called the “Mickey Mouse” con­cept. That is a su­per­fi­cial, im­pre­cise, and even ab­surd no­tion fre­quently and friv­o­lously used. I ar­gue that it’s not an ap­pro­pri­ate con­cept to de­scribe the Paraguayan case be­cause it hin­ders un­der­stand­ing the prob­lem and find­ing a so­lu­tion to the is­sues caused by drug traf­fick­ing.

First, I’ll men­tion some aca­d­e­mics and ex­perts who sup­port the use of the “narco-state” con­cept. His­to­rian Al­fred Mc­Coy de­fines a narco-state as one where “drugs have achieved a mul­ti­fac­eted mix of eco­nomic and in­sti­tu­tional in­flu­ence.” Ju­lia Bux­ton, from the Cen­tral Eu­ro­pean Uni­ver­sity, be­lieves narco-states ex­ist when “crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions con­nected to drug traf­fick­ing have an in­sti­tu­tion­al­ized pres­ence in the state.” Matt Weiner, from the Aus­tralian Na­tional Uni­ver­sity, ar­gues that in narco-states, “drug traf­fick­ing net­works have the abil­ity to con­trol and reg­u­late the state’s co­er­cive in­stru­ments, the fi­nan­cial ap­pa­ra­tus, and the ex­ec­u­tive power (…) to fa­cil­i­tate the pro­duc­tion, re­fine­ment, and traf­fick­ing of nar­cotics.” James Rex­ton Can, a pro­fes­sor at the U.S. Army War Col­lege, says a narco-state ex­ists where gov­ern­ment in­sti­tu­tions di­rect drug traf­fick­ing ac­tiv­i­ties or col­lude with traf­fick­ers, cre­at­ing con­di­tions where this ac­tiv­ity over­shad­ows much of the le­gal econ­omy.

Out­side the strictly aca­d­e­mic realm, for­mer Amer­i­can diplo­mat David Jor­dan iden­ti­fies five stages to clas­sify a narco-state. The first or ini­tial stage is when bribes go to low-level of­fi­cials. The sec­ond or de­vel­op­ment stage is when gov­ern­ment sup­port for drug con­sump­tion grows, and the gov­ern­ment is in­fil­trated or led by of­fi­cials in fa­vor of it. The third or more se­vere stage is when cor­rup­tion of pub­lic, po­lice, and ju­di­cial of­fi­cials ex­pands, and there’s an in­crease in in­tim­i­da­tion and as­sas­si­na­tion of re­sist­ing state agents. In the fourth or crit­i­cal stage, cor­rup­tion in­fil­trates the up­per ranks of the po­lice and the ju­di­ciary. High-rank­ing po­lice of­fi­cers en­gage in traf­fick­ing, shield il­licit ac­tiv­i­ties, sanc­tion po­lit­i­cal as­sas­si­na­tions, and openly fi­nance jour­nal­ists. In the sub­se­quent ad­vanced stage, var­i­ous min­istries be­come com­pro­mised. The pres­i­dent is sur­rounded by im­pli­cated of­fi­cials, be­com­ing com­plicit in the process, and so­ci­ety no longer re­acts with shock to these oc­cur­rences.

These de­f­i­n­i­tions have sev­eral prob­lems. Firstly, they are vague and don’t es­tab­lish the “lev­els” of in­flu­ence or in­sti­tu­tion­al­iza­tion of drug traf­fick­ing re­quired, nor the thresh­olds that must be crossed. Mostly, they re­fer to cor­rup­tion – its high lev­els – and its con­nec­tion with drug traf­fick­ing. They also de­scribe a state con­trolled by drug traf­fick­ers rather than one ac­tively en­gaged in the busi­ness or pro­mot­ing drug pro­duc­tion and the ex­is­tence of crim­i­nal net­works. This ap­proach is prob­lem­atic. For in­stance, if a coun­try has high lev­els of smug­gling or prod­uct coun­ter­feit­ing, and these il­le­gal busi­nesses in­volve or cor­rupt its agents, could they be called “smug­gle-states” or “fake-states”? Strik­ingly, no one uses these terms. Taken to the ex­treme, coun­tries, where var­i­ous il­le­gal busi­nesses thrive, would have very long names: smug­gle-fake-narco-states.

I’ll men­tion some crit­i­cal views on this con­cept to sup­port my per­spec­tive, which is as fol­lows: Paraguay is a coun­try where the il­le­gal drug trade has in­volved state agents from its in­cep­tion to the pre­sent, in ways that still need to be de­ter­mined and ex­plained, but for which the narco-state cat­e­gory is in­suf­fi­cient.

In Paraguay, drug trafficking emerged and consolidated under the watchful eyes of successive governments – with enthusiastic participation from politicians, bureaucrats, military, and now police – not “against the state.”

Ac­cord­ing to Pierre-Ar­naud Chauvy, a spe­cial­ist in drug geopol­i­tics, the narco-state is a myth, a topos used in dif­fer­ent con­texts but never sat­is­fac­to­rily de­fined or ex­plained. There­fore, state en­ti­ties that might be la­beled as such don’t truly ex­ist. The use of this term tends to over­sim­plify, if not mask, com­plex so­ciopo­lit­i­cal and eco­nomic re­al­i­ties.

One of the pre­vi­ously men­tioned au­thors (Weiner) ad­mits he has­n’t found a sin­gle coun­try that matches his own char­ac­ter­i­za­tion, sug­gest­ing such a coun­try would only ex­ist in a “We­ber­ian ideal type.” These “ideal types” al­low for com­par­ing em­pir­i­cal re­al­i­ties. In this case, one would study a narco-state ideal type based on his­tor­i­cal data analy­sis, con­struct this hy­po­thet­i­cal (“per­fect”, “ideal type”) model, and com­pare it with an ex­ist­ing one. The prob­lem is that there’s no agree­ment on what that would be.

Ash­ley Neese By­bee, from the In­sti­tute for De­fense Analy­sis, ar­gues that the ter­m’s vague­ness and dif­fuse na­ture make it eas­ier to char­ac­ter­ize in a way that’s func­tional for states want­ing to dele­git­imize oth­ers, to in­ter­vene or in­ter­fere in them, and for in­ter­na­tional or­ga­ni­za­tions. Thus, the con­cept of­ten hides po­lit­i­cal aims, mak­ing its use by aca­d­e­mics puz­zling. In other words, it’s a weapon thrown against en­emy states.

In the Latin Amer­i­can con­text, sig­nif­i­cant ex­perts also don’t be­lieve in the ex­is­tence of the narco-state and la­bel it a mere “nar­ra­tive,” as ar­gued by so­ci­ol­o­gist Os­waldo Zavala from the City Uni­ver­sity of New York. An­other of Mex­i­co’s most re­puted drug traf­fick­ing re­searchers, Luis As­torga, de­scribes the po­ten­tial ex­is­tence of a po­lit­i­cal vo­ca­tion that dis­putes state power by crim­i­nal groups as one of the many myths sur­round­ing drug traf­fick­ing. Con­trar­ily, it’s a purely cap­i­tal­ist ac­tiv­ity, al­beit il­le­gal, that seeks only to max­i­mize prof­its and has al­ways ex­isted sub­or­di­nate to po­lit­i­cal power. Hence, it makes no sense to “cre­ate that jour­nal­is­tic in­ven­tion called ‘narco-state’ (when) not even Pablo Es­co­bar pro­posed it.” More­over, “given the re­con­fig­u­ra­tion of po­lit­i­cal power in Mex­ico and the lesser con­cen­tra­tion of power in par­ties and of­fi­cials, it would seem more use­ful, less costly, and more prof­itable as a strat­egy for traf­fick­ers to in­vest in op­er­a­tional in­sti­tu­tions, like the po­lice and mil­i­tary, and not in the po­lit­i­cal arena.”

The truth is that in Paraguay, drug traf­fick­ing arose and con­sol­i­dated un­der the watch­ful eyes of suc­ces­sive gov­ern­ments – with en­thu­si­as­tic par­tic­i­pa­tion from politi­cians, bu­reau­crats, mil­i­tary, and now po­lice – not “against the state.” A re­la­tion­ship that, ob­vi­ously, can be ex­tremely tense at times, but where the con­ti­nu­ity of the busi­ness is good for those in­volved, even if oc­ca­sion­ally state agents must show that they en­force the law and work to­wards that goal pointed out in 1998 by the UN, “a drug-free world.”

*Re­searcher. For­mer di­rec­tor of the Ob­ser­va­tory of Co­ex­is­tence and Cit­i­zen Se­cu­rity of the Min­istry of the In­te­rior.
Cover Im­age: Roberto Go­i­riz