Guyana: Narco-Violence and a Failed State

Oct 26, 2009 Features / Columnists, Freddie Kissoon

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The title of this essay is taken from George Grayson’s forthcoming book; “Mexico: Narco-Violence and a Failed State.” Grayson argues that one of the most important economies of the world and one of Latin America’s powerful countries has become a failed state.

Grayson describes a country in which the State’s ability to curtail, muchless stop the Mexican drug trade is so pronounced that the drug lords, perceiving this reality, have literally become untouchables. The author writes that the “white lady” business has deeply penetrated all levels of Mexican society. According to Grayson, the cocaine business has reduced Mexico to a failed state.

Once you examine Grayson’s arguments why Mexico is a failed state, your conclusion is inevitable – Guyana is a failed state. There are pathways in Mexico where the cocaine barons have not reached, yet Grayson sees Mexico as a failed state. That is why I believe one’s conclusion is inevitable about Guyana being a collapsed society.

In Mexico, executive power is still one dimension of life that the violent killers have not incorporated into their embrace. This is the very crucial aspect of narco-trafficking in Guyana that the State has not been able to insulate itself against. In this territory from 2003, narco-oligarchs reached into the heartland of power. I find it impossible that US authorities will read Grayson’s book without indicting those who currently rule Guyana.

If narco-violence has reduced Mexico to an ungovernable situation then isn’t this what Guyana has come to? Testifying before a judicial commission into his descent into extra-judicial activities, then Home Affairs Minister Ronald Gajraj admitted that the security forces were paralyzed by fear and a shadowy, nocturnal figure of death had become his main source of intelligence gathering.

Mexico has not reached that level of social nihilism yet Grayson classifies it as a failed state. Before we examine narco-tyranny and its interlocking directorship with executive power in Guyana, let us clear up some misconceptions of what a failed state is.

I would not even consult any book on the subject for this essay. There are some PR spokespersons that seek to deceive the Guyanese people into what is a failed state. It reminds me of my argument two years ago on the nature of elected dictatorship in Guyana with Ravi Dev.

Dev thought that he could pass off a 1920 typology of dictatorship by using the paradigms of the German writer Karl Liebnicht. The concept of dictatorship has changed profoundly since Liebnicht wrote more than a hundred years ago.

Theorists like Farred Zakaria and others have adumbrated the concept of elected dictatorship. The spin doctors at the Office of the President paints a failed state as in places like Somalia and the Sudan where there is no strong central government.

These are examples of failed state whose demise came about because of civil war. You can have a failed state where there is still a President and Cabinet, large constructions going on, schools still open, civil servants going to works and insurance companies and banks conducting their business as usual. In Mexico, the complexion of the society from another planet looks like any other normal polity.

What a failed state means in this context is that a parallel economy and government exist that the legal structures including the executive governors, the judiciary and the security forces cannot stop. These legal institutions are paralyzed by the horrible dimensions of narco-violence and in many cases the narco-kingpins have a working relationship with executive power.

 

In Guyana, we have seen these characteristics since 2003. Four witnesses in the US have stated that a Cabinet Minister in Guyana facilitated a violent narco-trafficker, even procuring spy equipment for him that is only sold to governments, and official government stationary was used.

The executive corridor comes in because a middle-level political actor does not have that authority to interface with the country’s largest trafficker and conduct state business with him without the approval of the highest echelons in the executive branch. Guyana is a failed state not because the drug lords have taken over the country and we have a breakdown in total order.

We are a failed state because a lengthy nexus has developed between the criminal world and the executive corridors that have contorted the normal functions of the State.

State administration then has degenerated into pathological levels of shocking immorality of which sexual escapades and incredible corruption have extensively damaged the soul of the nation. It is unthinkable that the Americas will remain unmoved. Soon there may be some more indictments that may involve politicians this time around.

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