HomeObama to Visit El Salvador While Guatemala is the New Front Line

Obama to Visit El Salvador While Guatemala is the New Front Line

EL SALVADOR / 17 MAR 2011 BY GEOFFREY RAMSEY EN

Obama visits El Salvador this week to discuss drug trafficking, poverty and street gangs, but it is Guatemala that is the new front line in the drug war as the Mexican cartels expand their operations to escape U.S.-backed pressure at home.

Guatemala’s main criminal threat is the Zetas, a Mexican cartel that has expanded operations in the country tremendously in the past few years. The Zetas – who definitively broke from Mexico’s Gulf Cartel last year – first moved from Mexico to Guatemala in 2008, setting up operations in the city of Coban, Alta Verapaz, in a remote but strategic region in Guatemala’s interior. According to a recent report by Central American news outlet El Faro, the Zetas were “invited” to the region by Walter Overdick, a representative of Guatemala’s powerful Lorenzana drug trafficking family.

With the help of smaller local gangs, they began taking territory from the wealthy family then in charge of criminal enterprises in Alta Verapaz. According to the Miami Herald, soon after arrival the Zetas allegedly gave the Lorenzanas two choices: merge drug trafficking operations with the Mexican cartel or pay $1.5 million upfront followed by a monthly “rent” of $700,000.

Since then, the group has largely been able to maintain a low profile, evading Guatemalan security officials while continuing their drug smuggling operations. This led Guatemalan president Alvaro Colom to declare a two-month “state of siege” meant to crack down on drug trafficking operations in the province of Alta Verapaz.

However, it appears that the project made little progress. Although officials arrested 22 suspects during the course of the campaign, only two of them have been conclusively linked to the Zetas. In fact, local sources told InSight that six detainees have since been released, apparently due to a lack of sufficient evidence.

It has been nearly a month since Colom ended the state of siege, and while the president has maintained that the operation was effective in “reducing violence,” some in the region disagree. Fredy Ochaeta, head of the Legal and Social Studies Department at Coban’s Rafael Landivar University, is one such skeptic. According to him, there has been no significant improvement in citizen security in the region since the state of siege was declared.

"The courts are all manned by the same judges that were in place before the siege, the same Public Ministry authorities, and the same municipal government officials,” Ochaeta told InSight. "The political leaders themselves are the same, as are the ones who fund them, financing all kinds of activities related to the illegal narcotics trade."

Ochaeta’s pessimism is backed by local crime statistics. According to police data for the department, although the number of murders spiked to 24 in January, numbers for December and February are nearly identical (17 and 16, respectively). Judging from these numbers, coupled with the fact that the military failed to seize a large-scale quantity of illicit drugs, it is clear that the government's rhetoric does not match up with the realities of the state of siege.

Despite this, Guatemalan authorities recently announced that they are pushing ahead with a plan to deploy the military to other remote zones in the country. ·The troops are likely to be stationed along the country’s 550-mile long border with Mexico, 70 percent of which, according to an anonymous official cited in a recent·Washington Post report, is controlled by the Zetas.

As InSIght has reported, this announcement comes as President Colom and other Central American leaders seek to convince the United States·to fund a combined regional counter-narcotics force. Although the region already receives $165 million in aid under the terms of the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), they say the amount is not nearly enough to strengthen the region’s relatively weak judicial institutions and modernize its police and military forces.··While it remains unclear whether this project has U.S. support, it will almost certainly be addressed by·President Obama's during his visit in the coming days.

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

BOLIVIA / 23 SEP 2022

As world leaders met for the United Nations General Assembly, Latin American presidents expressed various concerns about organized crime.

BOLIVIA / 8 MAR 2023

InSight Crime reviews Latin America and the Caribbean's cocaine seizure date from 2022 to find out what it reveals about…

CYBERCRIME / 20 OCT 2021

A month after El Salvador’s government introduced Bitcoin as a national currency, an illegal corner of the new economy has…

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Chemical Precursor Report continues to be a reference in the region

19 MAY 2023

For the second week in a row, our investigation into the flow of precursor chemicals for the manufacture of synthetic drugs in Mexico has been cited by multiple regional media…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime’s Chemical Precursor Report Widely Cited

THE ORGANIZATION / 12 MAY 2023

We are proud to see that our recently published investigation into the supply chain of chemical precursors feeding Mexico’s synthetic drug production has been warmly received.

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime’s Paraguay Election Coverage Draws Attention 

5 MAY 2023

InSight Crime looked at the various anti-organized crime policies proposed by the candidates in Paraguay’s presidential election, which was won on April 30 by Santiago Peña. Our pre-election coverage was cited…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in OAS, CARICOM Reports

28 APR 2023

This week, InSight Crime’s work was cited nine times in a new report by the Organization of American States (OAS) titled “The Impact of Organized Crime on Women,…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Staff Cited as Experts by International Media

21 APR 2023

This week, InSight Crime deputy editor, Juan Diego Posada, was interviewed by the Associated Press about connections between the ex-FARC mafia and Brazilian criminal groups, and…