This article explores security cooperation between the Caribbean and Mexico,looking specifically at strategies being pursued to shift the focus in Latin America and the Caribbean from ‘the war on drugs’ to ‘the war on guns’ to address the problem of gun trafficking. This is a shift away from the United States’ priority to that of the region and a move towards a more assertive model of South–South security cooperation. The Caribbean Community and Common Market’s (CARICOM’s) strategy to support Mexico’s tortious and historic lawsuit against American gun manufacturers and to declare a ‘war on guns’ reflects its inability to independently influence the United States’ priorities within the region. Mexico, a Southern country, makes a difference because of its geopolitical relevance to the US, their shared border, and Washington’s attempt to stop the flow of Mexican immigration. We read the Mexico–Caribbean coalition as a significant development in South–South security cooperation (SSSC). Our analysis contributes to an understanding of the nuances and complexities of security cooperation, capacities for scaling up action through SSSC, and the political and legal manoeuvrings involved in challenging hierarchies of power between the so-called global North and South.

This article critically examines reasons for the persistent use of states of emergency (SOEs) as a tool of crime control in Jamaica and risks associated with normalising these measures in small, low-capacity, competitive democracies in Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC). We attend to the question of permanent SOEs as an issue of law and certain policing methods becoming normalised. This differs from scholars who think about the use of permanent SOEs as suspension of law or executive rule and make a clear distinction between law and violence and normalcy and emergency. Our findings show that persistent usage of SOEs in Jamaica reflects the incapacity of the state to control violent crime as well as its effort to strengthen its coercive capabilities and compensate for the ineffectiveness of the police. It is also a response to public demand for SOE policing. State strengthening is a necessary condition for a more peaceful and law-abiding society but is also a carrier of risks of democratic degeneration via rights-disregarding policing. Nonetheless, we have seen authoritarian management of crime without descent into authoritarianism, in general, and strong boundary-marking and patrolling by some state-oversight institutions that enjoy the support of civil society.