A Deep Dive Into Guatemala’s Criminal Dynamics and Its Borders

A weak state presence and widespread corruption continue to enable drug trafficking and other criminal activity in Guatemala’s border regions.

Join us next Tuesday, February 2, for a discussion in which InSight Crime Co-director Steven Dudley — and investigators Héctor Silva and Alex Papadovassilakis — delve into Guatemala´s cross-border criminal dynamics. The event will be moderated by Marielos Monzón, coordinator of the Ciclos de Actualización para Periodistas (CAP), a Guatemala-based program that provides journalists with workshops to hone their skills. It is part of a series of country-by-country presentations titled “Border Crime: The Northern Triangle and the Tri-Border Area,” in which InSight Crime presents findings of investigative work carried out during the last two years in these border regions.

Live Broadcast in  Spanish  on Youtube and English on Facebook

Time: 5:00 pm (Central America)

Date

2 Feb 2021

Time

5:00 pm

Where

Live Broadcast in  Spanish  on Youtube and English on Facebook

Schedule

Drug trafficking and other transborder crime is rife along Guatemala’s borders, helped out by widespread corruption and a limited state presence. In border towns across the country, traffickers wage bloody turf wars to dispute even minor smuggling routes, often forging alliances with mayors to facilitate their business.

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Speakers

Steve Dudley co-director and co-founder of InSight Crime. Dudley is a senior fellow at American University’s Center for Latin American and Latino Studies in Washington, DC. He is the former Bureau Chief of The Miami Herald in the Andean Region, and the author of two books: “Walking Ghosts: Murder and Guerrilla Politics in Colombia” (Routledge 2004) and “MS-13: The Making of America’s Most Notorious Gang” (Harper Collins 2020).

Héctor Silva is a Salvadoran journalist. Spanish language editor and Senior Investigator for the InSight Crime Foundation. Silva studied journalism at the Central American University in San Salvador and in the University of Barcelona. He worked as a reporter and editor for La Prensa Gráfica in El Salvador for 15 years. He was a diplomat in Washington and a fellow at the Center for Latin American Studies at American University. In 2014 he wrote Infiltrados: A chronicle of corruption in the National Civilian Police of El Salvador (1993-2013) and founded Revista Factum, where he was co-director until 2019. He has collaborated with various media outlets for reports in Central America, including Spanish newspaper El País and The New York Times.

Alexander Papadovassilakis is an investigator for InSight Crime, based in Guatemala. He has spent several years researching security and crime in Latin America and Europe. With InSight Crime, he has conducted extensive fieldwork in the Northern Triangle and recently published an in-depth investigation into El Salvador’s street gangs.

Marielos Monzón is a Guatemalan journalist and producer, with more than 20 years of experience in print, radio and television reporting. In 2002, she began publishing a weekly analysis and opinion column in the newspaper Prensa Libre. She currently works as General Coordinator of the Initiative Cycles of Update for Journalists (Iniciativa Ciclos de Actualización para Periodistas – CAP). She has received numerous national and international awards for her reporting work and journalism career.