Americas Quarterly - Winter 2012

Without the need for support from opposition parties to change the constitution, Sandinista opponents and international observers have raised concerns about dictatorship.

Although Ortega said he won’t seek “dramatic changes” to electoral laws for his reelection, he already altered the constitution once in 2009.

The 66-year-old Nicaraguan president, who sports white, band-collared shirts and a black leather jacket, will continue to promote popular social programs in one of Latin America’s poorest nations. “If things are going well and we are getting results, why are we going to change?” Ortega said in his victory speech.

But security increasingly domi-
or beaten in public squares by their
neighbors, mostly in rural towns.

ORTEGA, WHO CHANGED THE
CONSTITUTION TO PERMIT HIS
REELECTION, WAS HELPED BY AN
UNEVEN ELECTORAL PLAYING FIELD.

cades of civil war are increasingly interested in this Central American country. Tales of drug runners operating on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast have already begun to surface.

To combat insecurity, both Pérez Molina and Ortega favor the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), a plan that would require Central America’s seven nations to swap information about criminals. They will look for guidance to Mexican authorities, who militarized the drug war in 2007, and will seek foreign donations to modernize outdated security equipment. Still, according to Bruce Bagley, a security expert at the University of Miami, “For the foreseeable future it’s going to get worse in all of Central America.” This means that the answers go beyond direct security responses. For its part, the U. S. will continue to fund counternarcotics operations in Central America via regionwide measures like CARSI, but will also implore countries to boost domestic revenue to pay for security operations and increase police budgets, a goal that has so far proved elusive to governments in the region.

Nicaragua, while so far avoiding the complete decay of public order, has seen an increase in criminal networks operating in and around its territory. The country is buffered by Costa Rica and Panama to the south and Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador to the north, providing it some shelter from drug lords in Colombia and violent cartels in Mexico. Youth gangs known as Maras have wreaked havoc on Central America’s Northern Triangle, demanding extortion money and slaying those who don’t pay, are largely absent in Nicaragua, which has a murder rate that is nearly a quarter of its northern neighbors.

Ortega’s government proudly proclaims that soldiers have protected national borders and prevented cartels from entering. But organized criminals looking to prey on public institutions hollowed out by de-

Beyond Security:
More Challenges

Presidents Pérez Molina and Ortega must also address the underlying
conditions behind the region’s rising
crime: lackluster economic growth
and inequality. “We are in danger-
ous territory,” said Mynor Cabrera, a
Guatemalan economist. “Improving
security, health and education won’t
be possible without some kind of fis-
cal reform. Even if there were com-
plete austerity, our resources are
insufficient.”
At 11 percent of GDP, tax collection
rates in Guatemala are among the
lowest in the Americas. Tax evasion
through contraband and unpaid
sales taxes is estimated at $1 billion
annually. Pérez Molina backs an anti-
tax evasion bill that has been stalled
in congress for years, encountering
stiff opposition from the country’s
nates the policy agenda in much of
Central America, and Nicaragua and
Guatemala are no exception.

The homicide rate in Guatemala has doubled since 2000, and while it has dropped slightly since 2010, it remains the seventh highest in the world at 38. 6 murders per 100,000 people, according to January 2012 figures released by the Guatemalan Ministry of the Interior. Massacres and beheadings have become common as rival gangs battle for control in a country whose location makes it a key transit point for cocaine traffic to the United States.

Pérez Molina’s top priority and greatest challenge will be restoring order to this largely lawless country, where communities have lost faith in law enforcement and often take justice into their own hands. In 2011, more than 230 people were lynched