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Guatemala: Violence, Corruption and Hope
For most of January, I led a group of Birmingham-Southern College students on an experiential learning trip in Guatemala. Most of our time was spent in Guatemala City volunteering through Cross-Cultural Solutions, a non-governmental organization that arranges placements in orphanages, schools, retirement homes, clinics, soup kitchens, and community development organizations in one dozen countries. The academic component was enriched by class time, guest speakers, day trips, and reading materials. Indeed, the trip was a great success, despite the initial challenge of selling the idea, especially to parents, of visiting one of the most violent and corrupt countries in the Western Hemisphere.
These are a just a few excerpts from the U.S. State Department’s Consular Information Sheet on Guatemala:
A peace accord, signed in 1996, ended a 36-year armed conflict. Violent crime, however, is a serious concern due to endemic poverty, an abundance of weapons, a legacy of societal violence, and dysfunctional law enforcement and judicial systems.
Violent criminal activity continues to be a problem in Guatemala, including murder, rape, and armed assaults against foreigners. The police force is inexperienced and under-funded, and the judicial system is weak, overworked, and inefficient. Well-armed criminals know there is little chance they will be caught or punished.
The number of violent crimes reported by U.S. citizens and other foreigners has remained high in recent years. Incidents include, but are not limited to, assault, theft, armed robbery, carjacking, rape, kidnapping, and murder. Criminals often operate in groups of four or more and are confrontational and violent. Gangs are a growing concern in Guatemala City and rural Guatemala. Gang members are often well armed with sophisticated weaponry and they sometimes use massive amounts of force. Emboldened armed robbers have attacked vehicles on main roads in broad daylight. Travel on rural roads always increases the risk of a criminal roadblock or ambush. Widespread narcotics and alien smuggling activities can make remote areas especially dangerous. Though there is no evidence that Americans are particularly targeted, criminals look for every opportunity to attack, so all travelers should remain constantly vigilant.
It would seem Guatemala is hardly a peaceful Shangri-La. Nonetheless, Lonely Planet portrays Guatemala as a must-see country:
Guatemala is a rare destination that rewards even the most jaded travelers with revelatory experiences�"a place where indigenous life endures much as it did before Europeans first arrived, and where no superlatives can capture the grandeur of the landscape. In the highlands it seems there’s always a volcano looming over your shoulder, and beautiful lakes large and small are scattered among pine, cloud and rain forests all over the country. This fabulous geography means travelers can hike, bike, dive, ride, cave and kayak ad infinitum.
However, Lonely Planet states: “No one could pretend that Guatemala is a very safe country. There are just too many stories of robbery, often armed robbery, for that. Rapes and murders of tourists have also happened.”
Moreover, an excellent article on openDemocracy did little to convince parents to let me take their children to Guatemala. In “Guatemala: A good place to kill”, Ivan Briscoe writes:
These are times of despair for Guatemala’s few good cops. Each day brings an average of fifteen fresh corpses, scooped up from roadways and ditches after the work of death-squads and criminals has been done. And each day, or so it seems, the police force loses more men, as the latest counter-narcotics cleansing shears through its dwindling ranks, and a fresh batch of guns goes underground.
Sixteen is now the popularly accepted daily murder rate.
Brisco further notes the fear, corruption, and gross inequalities that plague Guatemalan society. Impunity and a very low murder conviction rate mean many killers walk the streets often to kill again. Recently, a 20-year-old gang member was arrested, but only after he had allegedly killed ten people. Incredibly, less than three percent of murder cases in Guatemala result in a conviction.
Despite so much negative press, Guatemala is certainly not the most dangerous country in the Western Hemisphere. The odds of being killed in Colombia or Venezuela are much higher, and I felt much more secure taking students to Guatemala than I did when I took students to Mexico. Nonetheless, I did attempt to verify that we were staying in one of the safer neighborhoods in Guatemala City, Zone 2, by tracking the murders in the local newspapers.
What is so shocking about murder in Guatemala is not the number of people killed but how the killing is done. Of course, the most horrific murders are committed by the gangs (maras) who tend to choose their targets for specific reasons. Vengeance and competition for drug markets are the most common justifications for murder. There have always been local gangs in Guatemala, but hard-line, anti-gang policies in El Salvador and Honduras have pushed Mara Salvatrucha and Mara 18 into Guatemala. Now entire neighborhoods are controlled by maras who kidnap, run guns, deal drugs, and extort money. With shocking frequency, small shopkeepers and bus drivers are forced to pay protection money or they are killed. At least three bus drivers and a 71-year-old female shopkeeper were gunned down after refusing to pay in January.
Unlike the Italian Mafia, which usually refrains from targeting a rival’s family members, the maras sometimes first rape, mutilate, and murder the girlfriend, sister, or mother of a rival before he is killed. And the victims are sometimes killed in broad daylight in front of their own family members. Decapitation and dismemberment are classic gang signatures. According to newspaper accounts, at least three severed heads were found in plastic bags while were in Guatemala, and someone sent a human leg to one person’s workplace. Seven young men were killed in one January evening in the community of Chinautla, and at least one woman has been killed everyday so far this year. Rivaling the murder of women along the US-Mexico border, there have been approximately 2,500 femicides in Guatemala since 2004.
Maniacs do indeed walk the streets in Guatemala.
A culture of violence is a legacy of the 36-year civil war, which only officially ended with the 1996 Peace Accords. Nearly 250,000 people, mostly Mayans, were killed in one of the bloodiest conflicts in 20th-Century Latin American history. Last year, the National Reparations Program conducted a survey of over 500 elderly residents of Guatemala City. Seventy-five percent of the respondents indicated they had been directly affected by the civil war, but 94 percent said that they were more fearful of being assaulted now than they were in the 1980s. Moreover, 80 percent of the respondents thought there was more corruption now than then.
Indeed, corruption and impunity are further legacies of the war. One of the most poignant accounts of recent Guatemalan history can be found in Francisco Goldman’s The Art of Political Murder. For a recent interview with Goldman click here.
Goldman, a novelist, traces the investigation of the 1998 murder of Bishop Juan Gerardi in his first work of nonfiction.
(An AP photo from Geraldi's funeral.)Gerardi was killed just days after the Catholic Church issued a report blaming the Guatemalan military for the vast majority of murders and abuses committed during the war. However, very few military officials have ever been prosecuted.
In fact, the government of Spain recently halted its attempt to bring to justice some of Guatemala’s worst human rights violators. In 1980, Guatemalan security forces burnt the Spanish Embassy to the ground, killing 37 people. Nonetheless, Guatemala’s Constitutional Court decided not to honor an extradition request for seven individuals, including the former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt who is currently a member of the Guatemalan Congress.
Ironically, the Guatemalan Congress recently divided up the various government agencies among the eleven political parties, and the Frente Republicano de Guatemala (FRG) now heads human rights. The FRG’s founder and leader is Ríos Montt, and Spain still maintains an arrest warrant for him. However, Ríos Montt has immunity from prosecution in Guatemala because he is a diputado (Congressman).
Guatemala is definitely one of the more corrupt countries in the Western Hemisphere. Only Haiti, Venezuela, Ecuador, Honduras, and Nicaragua are ranked by Transparency International (www.transparency.org) as being more corrupt than Guatemala. Nonetheless, a few recent stories of corruption stood out in the media while we were in Guatemala. For example, two former diputados had their immunity stripped due to overwhelming evidence they were involved in organized crime. Manuel de Jesús Castillo was linked to drug trafficking and the murder of three Salvadoran diplomats and their driver while Héctor Augusto Loaiza led a criminal gang dedicated to stealing gasoline tanker trucks. The stolen gasoline was then sold through Loaiza’s gas stations. Both former diputados are on the run with significant rewards for their capture.
Less severe government corruption was also revealed after Guatemala’s new president, Álvaro Colom, took office. Several new diputados found their offices completely stripped of all government-own furniture, computers, equipment, and artwork. It was also discovered that 70 of the former government’s secretaries never actually showed up to work. Friends, family members, and girlfriends received government salaries for doing nothing.
There is hope on the horizon, however. Not all Congress members are corrupt, and there does seem to be a generational change taking place in Guatemala’s government. Several new diputados ran on anti-corruption platforms, and more qualified individuals are entering into public service. For example, Marvin Orellano López from Alta Verapaz is emblematic of a new generation of diputados. Inspired by the current vice president and cardiologist, Dr. Rafael Espada (see: New York Times, “Healing Hearts and, Possibly Divisions in Guatemala,” Nov. 7, 2007), Marvin quit his medical practice to enter into politics. He told me that he is aware of the temptations made available working in government, but he is determined to leave politics just as he entered: with a clear conscience.
So far, President Colom is popularly perceived to be honest and competent. Many newspaper commentators have asked their readers to at least give him the benefit of the doubt and to be patient. His economic development and anti-crime programs will need some time to get going. However, immediately after assuming office Colom began cracking down on crime and corruption with a One-Hundred-Day Plan, but a recent bank robbery perpetrated by members of Mara Salvatrucha has forced his administration to focus even more on organized criminal gang activity. A significant increase in the number of arrests has been noted, but many suspects have been released due to lack of evidence or because judges have been bribed.
Guatemala’s problems are profoundly structural. That is, poverty, inequality, and lack of opportunity are the root causes of much the violence in Guatemala. Until average Guatemalans see real hope and opportunity, Guatemala will be plagued with gruesome violence and high-level corruption, an argument President Colom seems to understand well.
Hopefully, my next trip with students to Guatemala won’t be such a tough sell.
Vincent T. Gawronski is an Associate Professor of Political Science at Birmingham-Southern College. He can be reached at vgawrons@bsc.edu
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