ABSTRACT
By the early 1960s key police officials from Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador, and Venezuela had received training from the US Federal Bureau of Narcotics training school facilitating the promotion of US drug war priorities. The ostensible objectives associated with the US drug war were subordinated to the more immediate objective of removing the Sandinistas from power—a bigger threat to the expansion and consolidation of capitalist globalization than the exports of drug trafficking organizations. Open markets and drug prohibition were wedded at the very start of US foreign drug policies. The first few decades of the twentieth century would witness the US seeking to integrate more prohibitionist elements in international drug control treaties. During the post-World War II period the US increasingly downplayed its interest in democratic politics or individual political liberty in Latin America, preferring the stability of authoritarianism over the risks associated with democratic societies and the popularity of nationalist and/or socialist movements.
