The World Economic Forum on Latin America has been in session this week, shining a global spotlight on the region and discussing it’s future growth and prosperity.

Although the region  has made incredible progress over the past decade in reducing poverty, encouraging investment and technological innovations, there is still a large impediment to progress as many still associate Latin America with high levels of corruption.

Unfortunately, amidst all the positive changes, corruption persists in the majority of Latin American countries. But unlike other developed nations, strong ties to organized crime are preventing change.

If you look at the map below from the Economist with data from Transparency International, you can see two-thirds of Latin American countries are in the bottom half of the “corruption perceptions index.” This is abnormal low for middle-income countries.

No matter how much economic growth the region experiences, if the cartels and drug traffickers continue to have power, corruption will be impossible to get rid of. As of late, cartels have been increasingly involved with politics in Mexico and this could continue to worsen if demands for transparency are not met. It is difficult to recommend the safety of doing business in Latin America with the recent cartel affiliated robberies of gold mines and the continued siphoning of oil.

In order to fulfill all the high hopes of this year’s World Economic Forum, more attention must be given at the highest levels to the ties between government and organized crime. There is a very ongoing cycle of drugs, money and power in Latin America that will prevent Mexico and many other nations from peace and prosperity. At the center of this deadly cycle is the demand for drugs in this country and the failures of the United States’ War on Drugs. If we really want to examine why corruption persists south of the border, let’s first examine the endless demand for illicit drugs north of it.