Caribbean & Central America - July 2015 (ISSN 1741-4458)

For the past five years, Nicaragua’s livestock industry has registered impressive growth. Meat is now one of the country’s most significant commodities, comprising 27% of its total exports. However, in the first five months of 2015 there was a 10% drop in meat exports, as the country’s four main slaughterhouses reported a shortage of cattle. Canicarne, Nicaragua’s chamber of beef exporters, blames the shortages on an increase in cattle rustling.

Cattle rustling costs Nicaragua around US$276m in lost tax revenue, according to Canicarne. Around 300,000 heads of cattle have been illegally removed from Nicaragua between 2013 and 2014, according to the organization. In mid-June, a number of Nicaraguan businesses signed a document requesting the government do more to investigate blind spots along the country’s borders with Honduras and Costa Rica.

But not all farmers are convinced that cattle rustling is to blame for the shortages at slaughterhouses. Some argue that it is the result of increasing competition between abattoirs, with a new slaughterhouse owned by the Mexican company Sukarne having recently opened. Others blamed the severity of El Niño weather phenomenon last year, which led to farmers slaughtering more of their herd.

• Cattle rustling

Cattle rustling in Central America has traditionally gone hand in hand with other criminal activity, including drug trafficking. The cattle trade has been used to launder money, and the routes taken by cattle rustlers have sometimes been adapted to traffic drugs. Some Central American drug transport groups, such as the Leones in Guatemala and the Cachiros in Honduras, started out as small-time cattle rustlers.