Rise of Latin America’s Drug Cartels

For much of the last century, the illicit drug trade has shaped the economic, political, and social landscape of Latin America. During the 1980s, drug cartels operating in South America became the world’s largest suppliers of narcotics, particularly cocaine. The rise of the cartels boosted the drug trade worldwide and precipitated major foreign policy disputes between the United States and Colombia, Bolivia, and Peru. The South American cartels had their origins in the late 1960s and early 1970s, when the United States cracked down on Mexican drug trafficking and thereby opened the market to South American suppliers. At the same…