As I approached the first monumental structure of the ancient Mayan city located deep inside Guatemala’s Sierra Lacandón National Park, the bright red graffiti on one of the exterior walls looked out of place. It was a clear sign that not even these natural wonders were safe from the territorial control of organized crime groups driving deforestation in this jungle region.
It was just after sunrise on that summer morning in July when I boarded a slender, wood-framed boat with a single outboard motor on the banks of the Usumacinta River. The clouds hung low over the horizon, hiding the vibrant green canopy that envelops this section of the Mexico-Guatemala border.
The skies cleared and the water was calm as we set off. We wound our way up the river towards Piedras Negras, a pre-Columbian Mayan city about two hours north. It is one of the largest archeological sites in this part of the river basin, but in recent years, these protected areas have also become targets of the criminal networks plundering the jungle.
We stepped off the boat, climbed the riverbank, and disappeared into Sierra Lacandón. After passing a sacred burial site, we approached a structure that housed a steam bath the Mayans once used to cleanse their bodies and souls before religious ceremonies. As I carefully scanned the ancient structure, I was shocked to see an outside wall had been defaced, spraypainted with a series of letters and symbols.
I’ve grown accustomed to seeing criminal graffiti throughout my years of investigating organized crime across Latin America. In Mexico, I’ve seen groups like the Chapitos and Mayiza factions of the Sinaloa Cartel mark their presence with different symbols. And in Honduras, I’ve frequented neighborhoods where street gangs like the Barrio 18 and MS13 spray paint their numbers on walls to identify the areas they control.
But here in the quiet calm of the jungle, far from the reach of environmental authorities and law enforcement, something just as sinister has been growing out of control. The graffiti on that wall in Piedras Negras, the park rangers I was with told me, marked the division of territorial control between crime groups operating in this part of the park.
Since the mid-2000s, drug trafficking groups have been carving up large swaths of Sierra Lacandón to receive cocaine sent from South America on clandestine airstrips cut out of the jungle. From here, it’s a short distance to the river and into Mexico, where factions associated with the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG) transport those shipments to consumers in the United States. In time, these groups have also established large cattle ranches as a means to launder drug proceeds and build social capital with the local communities they hire to build and manage them.
For Guatemala’s park rangers, protecting the environment here is a gargantuan task. When they patrol on land, they are unwelcomed, unarmed, and accompanied by only one or two members of the police or military. The criminal networks they’re up against, however, have high-powered weapons like AK-47s. Their machetes, they said, are no match.
“Many times you can’t even enter certain communities,” one of the park rangers said. “And some land defenders have been murdered, so they’ve followed through on the threats they’ve made against us.”
These rangers are on the frontlines of an environmental catastrophe fueled in large part by the advance of organized crime in Guatemala’s protected reserves. And as these criminal networks continue clearing the jungle to facilitate drug trafficking and illegal cattle ranching, re-thinking the strategies used to combat them is more critical than ever.
To learn more about the criminal dynamics driving insecurity and deforestation in Central America, check out all our recent coverage of environmental crime.
Related content
Something went wrong. Please refresh the page and/or try again.
