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Abstract
Transnational Organized Crime, considered one of the actors of contemporary geopolitics, has become one of the most difficult threats to combat by States. The risks faced by Mexico and Central America against Transnational Organized Crime, specifically against drug trafficking, increase due to the geopolitical position they share: they are located between South American producers and the largest consumer of drugs in the world: The United States of America. This work has the aim of analyzing the geopolitics of drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America in the first decade of the 21st century to identify the implications of risk and insecurity represented by the current policy against drugs in the region and the effects of the displacements of the criminal organizations, the centers of production and routes of drugs, both maritime and terrestrial.
To achieve the proposed aim, this article is divided into four parts. The first part analyzes the influence of the international system in the construction of the different anti-narcotics policy regimes and their relation to the different security visions. The second part analyzes the Central American region based on the traditional geopolitical delimitation and extends the debate about drug trafficking and its implications in the characterization of weak states. The third part studies the connection between Mexico, Central America and the Caribbean in the production of heroin and cannabis, in the displacement of criminal gangs and production centers. The last part questions whether the region can be considered a security complex in the drug trafficking problem and presents some final considerations.