This book explores one distinctly understudied aspect of the international drug trade: the experiences of bridge countries, that is, states that may neither consume nor produce sizable amounts of illegal drugs but that lie on favoured paths carved out between centres of production and key consumer markets. In the 1980s the Central American republics became critically important to the international drug trade and have remained so ever since, with illegal drugs continually transiting en route to North American, European, and various emerging markets. Central America is particularly well suited for one of the first comparative studies of bridge-state trafficking, because its trade in drugs has long been emphatically multipolar. Significant drug transit has occurred not only across the territories but in the skies above each state and through offshore Pacific and Caribbean waters. By studying Central American drug trafficking, we offer a first examination of social, political, and economic phenomena of extraordinary importance to an often overlooked region of the world.

Certainly, by the 1990s massive inflows and outflows of cocaine had come to affect profoundly each small republic. Nevertheless, no sound empirical foundation has yet been compiled, much less have theoretical explanations been offered, to illuminate the manner in which drug traffickers and law enforcement have contended with one another in Central America. One leading authority on drugs has written, The topic of transnational smuggling attracts a good deal of rhetoric but not much that could be called research. Another recent work declares, Although studies of drug use are numerous and our understanding of local drug markets is growing, our understanding of the multimillion-dollar business of international drug smuggling is considerably less well developed. This book thus aims to fill a gap in the literature by using extensive primary and secondary research to elucidate the dynamics of the Central American drug trade.