Policy Brief - Violence and Politics in Latin America: A Long and Tragic

Indeed, it is sad to expect that refugees would come from war zones in the wider Middle East and Africa, so when the UNHCR notes that 42% of the world’s new asylum seekers come from Latin America and the Caribbean, it underlies the dramatic human cost and the high level of insecurity that people and communities in the region experience. [...] This was the case because under the military dictatorships of the 1960s, 1970s, and early 1980s, there was a militarization of the police in the region, and it was hard to separate the police from the military: the former was dominated by the latter or contributed to its rule (Frühling, 2009, p. [...] But left-leaning politicians are not anti-police and, some, like Andrés Manuel López Obrador (AMLO) in Mexico, and Lula in Brazil, admit that the poor as much as the elites, need the police and need police protection, so they argue for the necessary reform of the police, and for the need to bring the police closer to the people, all the people. [...] Indeed, the fact that the press has immediately entitled the Moroccan drug lord as ‘Escobar of the Sahara’ underlines the relevance of the comparison, and the many lessons that can be learned from the Latin American case. [...] About the Policy Center for the New South The Policy Center for the New South (PCNS) is a Moroccan think tank aiming to contribute to the improvement of economic and social public policies that challenge Morocco and the rest of Africa as integral parts of the global South.