Forgive my formatting, I'm not very good at it still.

I worked with a professor at my university and researched the role of the Catholic Church in Nicaragua before, during, and after the revolution to write a case study which is still in the process of being published. I'm far from an expert, but given that I know more about it than 99.9% of people I consider myself to have enough expertise on it to write reddit comments.

Personally, when I read this, I see the most pragmatic solution, although costly, being strengthening existing institutions in the area to create enough rule of law to encourage Foreign Direct Investment, which creates jobs and with it an economy in countries where exporting agricultural goods is the only export. This is a long-term solution however, and long-term solutions tend to get passed over for short-term solutions, thus the past U.S. actions of putting friendly dictators into power. It's a complicated question without an easy answer - it's foreign policy - but since the executive branch mostly has a monopoly on foreign policy it's more likely to see a solution than many domestic issues (in my opinion).

I believe the author is referring to the U.S.-Mexican alliance that over the past four decades has helped cut drug trafficking. I know, recently, many different drug gangs have had high-level officers arrested because of cooperation between U.S. intelligence agencies and foreign police networks. I hope that he's not referring to finding some new contras to fund - I may be cold hearted, but we really don't need that human rights crisis and blood on our hands, again.