HomeNewsBriefNicaragua Announces Commission in Wake of InSight Crime Report
BRIEF

Nicaragua Announces Commission in Wake of InSight Crime Report

NICARAGUA / 19 JUL 2012 BY CHRISTOPHER LOOFT EN

Following InSight Crime's publication of an investigation into drug trafficking on Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast, an Ortega administration official announced the creation of a commission tasked with investigating the issue.

Two days after the publication of InSight Crime’s three-part report on drug trafficking in the country, Nicaragua’s La Prensa reported that the government is focusing more attention on the influence of drug cartels along the Caribbean coast. According to the newspaper, Deputy Director of the National Police Ramon Avellan visited the troubled city of Bluefields on Tuesday to discuss the security situation there with local religious leaders.

There, Avellan announced that the government had created a "special commission" to address the insecurity faced by the hundreds of thousands of residents of the North Atlantic and South Atlantic Autonomous Regions (the RAAN and RAAS).

The members of this commission and the exact nature of its task are, as yet, unclear.

InSight Crime Analysis

The location of Avellan's announcement is no coincidence. As InSight Crime noted in its profile of the city, Bluefields is one of the main transshipment points for cocaine along Nicaragua’s Caribbean coast. Its harbor is heavily frequented by go-fast boats, which transport tons of largely Colombian cocaine every year.

While the announcement is a sign that the government is starting to take the threat of drug trafficking in the east more seriously, the issue extends beyond citizen insecurity. In its visit to Bluefields last year, InSight Crime found evidence of collusion between drug traffickers and local officials. Worse, there were also indications that drug trafficking organizations have replaced the state in some ways, providing services that government does not.

Considering the deteriorated rule of law and the weakness of state institutions, the Nicaraguan government will have to do much more than form a commission to improve the security situation on the eastern coast.

Also in InSight Crime's Nicaragua Special:
Folk Singer's Death Shines Light on Nicaragua Police Corruption
Video: An Interview with Nicaragua's Police Chief

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Tags

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

CONTRABAND / 18 MAY 2022

Cattle from Mexico and the Central American nations of Guatemala, Honduras and Nicaragua help feed the domestic beef markets of…

CARIBBEAN / 11 FEB 2022

Latin American countries scored poorly on Transparency International’s latest corruption index, with the worst joining the ranks of war-torn nations…

COLOMBIA / 29 MAR 2022

A record cocaine seizure off the coast of Colombia’s San Andres is the latest in a string of million-dollar drug…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Rights Watch Draws on InSight Crime's Haiti Coverage

18 AUG 2023

Non-governmental organization Human Rights Watch relied on InSight Crime's coverage this week, citing six articles and one of our criminal profiles in its latest report on the humanitarian…