Intelligence,Militarism,and Militarization in Latin America and the Caribbean Region

Since the end of the Cold War, the Latin American and the Caribbean security environment has been increasingly volatile and violent, triggered by a fusion of traditional security threats—both intrastate (civil wars, insurgencies, political violence, military coups) and interstate (border disputes)—and non-traditional human security challenges (economic, food, health, environmental, individual, community, and political security). All these sources of insecurity have contributed to increased violence across the region—propagated by domestic gangs, transnational organized criminal groups, migration, or even by the governments against their own citizens (Matei et al., 2022). These sources of insecurity—which have been testing the quality of democracies throughout the region, and, within this context, both the effectiveness and accountability of region’s security institutions—have prompted Latin American and Caribbean governments to resort to militarism and militarization as prevention and/or response tools and practices (Ramírez and Maria, 2019; Stavrianakis and Selby, 2013; Diamint, 2015; Flores-Macías et al., 2021).

On this background, on countless occasions, the governments in Latin America and the Caribbean Basin involved the military in supporting the police—or taking over law enforcement roles—when police forces have been unable to fulfill their roles effectively (Kruijt, 2017; Pion-Berlin and Acacio, 2022; Solar, 2021). ¹ As a result, militarization has been dominating Latin America and Caribbean Basin’s social, economic, and political life, with the national militaries controlling or influencing domestic politics, and security decision-making, policies, and practices throughout the region. Therefore, the end of the Cold War has not terminated the military role in the security-democracy equation in the region (Diamint, 2015; Solar, 2021). ²

Yet, the current connection between intelligence and militarism/militarization in Latin America and the Caribbean Basin also has a historic origin—rooted in the region’s authoritarian past (Solar, 2021; and Rodriguez, 2018). ³ Indeed, the intelligence agencies in the region played a cardinal—albeit notorious—political police role during the authoritarian (both military and civilian) regimes that emerged in the second half of the 20th century in reaction to the revolutionary movements across the continent that started with the Cuban revolution; and in an effort to inhibit the spread of communism throughout the region. By and large, these regimes afforded their intelligence agencies (whether part of the armed forces or supporting the militaries in the region) carte blanche to counter subversion—real or imagined—violently, in the name of fighting communism or insurgencies. In turn, the intelligence forces (alone or in collaboration with their counterparts in the region, as was the case of Operation Condor) in these dictatorships carried out repressive practices against their citizens—including, for example, illegal arrests, torture, and death squads—which in turn resulted in the deaths and disappearances of tens of thousands of people across the continent. As the legacy agencies in these countries have preserved some of their (informal, often illegal) power after the transitions to democracy, these services have helped perpetuate the intelligence-militarization/militarism nexus in the post-democratic era.

Taken together, these developments have generated a few intelligence-related trends in the region. First, militarization and militarism have contributed to the arrest of intelligence democratization—understood as a process of institutionalizing transparent and effective intelligence agencies—across Latin America and the Caribbean Basin (Matei et al., 2021; Matei et al., 2016; Matei et al., 2022; Swenson and Hirane, 2015). ⁴ To be sure, while several new democracies in the region have striven to undertake democratic reforms of intelligence—via enacting legal frameworks for intelligence agencies that stipulate roles and missions of the intelligence services (to include removing military intelligence agencies from domestic security roles), developing tools of democratic civilian control in all branches of government over intelligence (Brazil, Chile, Uruguay, and Argentina)—their efforts have been obstructed by the need for a rapid militarization of domestic security.

In this context, while some countries (Chile, Argentina, Central American countries, and Brazil) rushed to remove the military intelligence services from domestic security as soon as they transitioned to democracies, they paradoxically opted to bring back their military intelligence agencies in internal security roles, for such public security purposes as fighting drug-related crime (Diamint, 2015; Matei and Halladay, 2019; Matei et al., 2022; Swenson and Hirane, 2015). ⁵ Intelligence agencies in the region, preoccupied with their institutional survival in a post-authoritarian rule era, dominated by an intelligence culture that is rather adverse to intelligence, have accepted to carry out these types of roles and missions.

This rushed militarization or remilitarization, along with other factors—most notably the existence of weak, uninterested, inexperience, or corrupt politicians, who are unable to exercise de facto and de jure democratic civilian control over their intelligence agencies, or devise policies that would improve recruitment processes, expertise, career paths, and codes of ethics, weak judicial and legislative branches, unable to impose and enforce the rule of law, and limited resources—has resulted in under-professionalized (Weber et al., 1958; Huntington, 1957; Larson, 1978; Jackson, 2010) ⁶ intelligence agencies throughout the region, plagued by corruption, limited capability to fulfill their roles, unethical conduct, and deficient accountability and transparency (Matei et al., 2022; Moloeznik and Marcos, 2013; Swenson and Hirane, 2015). While, as research on the professional intelligence services in long-established democracies reveals, intelligence professionalism does not per se guarantee that the intelligence agencies remain totally insulated from politicization or act in a more benevolent, democratically oriented way; perpetual corruption and substandard codes of ethics, coupled with the services’ self-preservation interests (which propels them into recurring transgressions to remain relevant to politicians), make agencies more deleterious to democratic values and norms.

Second, and a consequence of the previous trend, militarization and militarism have enabled corruption and human rights violations by intelligence agencies while either directly—or supporting police or military—carried out domestic security roles. In this connection, Gagne stresses that “‘There is no doubt the military has the biggest capacity, not only in terms of intelligence but also law enforcement’,…[which]…creates a strong incentive for the government to permanently rely on the military for policing, rather than as a last resort” (Gagne, 2019, n.p.). As Gagne further reveals, “in many Latin American countries, it is increasingly difficult to distinguish between police units and military brigades” (Gagne, 2019, n.p.). Militarization allows the armed forces’ intelligence agencies to treat suspects like enemy combatants, and not like civilians (Gagne, 2019, n.p.). In this context, for example, granting intelligence agencies arrest powers—a practice that is usually associated with non-democratic regimes (Venezuela, and Nicaragua)—has resulted in egregious human rights abuses (Estévez, 2016; Pion-Berlin, 2016; Matei et al., 2022; Swenson and Hirane, 2015). ⁷

Similarly—and third—militarization and militarism have helped perpetuate intelligence politicization and vice versa; whereby these institutions (continue to) serve as the political police for both authoritarian and democratically elected governments, by committing human rights abuses for political purposes (to help these governments consolidate power) in the name of safeguarding domestic security (de la Torre. 2020; Matei et al., 2022; Swenson and Hirane, 2015). ⁸ On the background of militarization and militarism, intelligence services—along the armed forces and law enforcement agencies—in the region have become “key political allies of governments…serving election victors as police officers, as praetorian guards, and even as leaders of what amounts to a political party,” as Diamint (2015, 157) stresses when discussing the armed forces.

As such, intelligence agencies in the region have been “swinging wildly between supporting the government of the day—either rightist or leftist—to the detriment of the democratization of intelligence” (Matei et al., 2022, 6). Indeed, well-publicized scandals of intelligence, cases of corruption and violations of human rights, political espionage, illegal surveillance, and misuse of secret funds, have resulted in intelligence crises in Argentina, Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, Trinidad and Tobago (Matei and Estévez, 2021; Matei et al., 2022; Herrera & Croissant, 2022; Zaverucha, 2008; Medeiros and Acácio 2021; Swenson and Hirane, 2015). ⁹ Ultimately, what Diamint (2015, 164) stresses about the armed forces in the region clearly applies to the intelligence services is many Latin American and the Caribbean countries:

…we see a record of privileged relationships between chiefs of state and militaries that essentially act as praetorian guards. There is cooptation, seduction, extortion, or complicity, but no real institutionalized control…In this climate, the armed forces begin to act as a “player,” looking to resist decisions that they dislike and seeking self-sufficiency or even autonomy. De facto autonomy under a de jure civilian-run government offers the armed forces the best of both worlds. There is no need for coups or threats of coups, since the military possesses ample grants of power from the national executive while at the same time enjoying the legitimacy that comes from the president’s democratically elected status. The armed forces are covered with honors and dignities bestowed by presidents.

The preceding discussion reveals that although the political landscape of Latin American and the Caribbean region is changing, intelligence democratization remains a constant challenge. The majority of these countries have yet to find the tradeoff between operational effectiveness and democratic transparency and accountability (Bruneau and Matei, 2012; Matei et al., 2021; Matei and Halladay, 2019; Matei et al., 2022; Swenson and Hirane, 2015). Militarism and militarization policies and practices—along with weak and ineffective institutions and corrupt, apathetic, and inexpert leaders—greatly contribute to this constant challenge.