A NATO Force in Central America?

In late June, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom brought up the matter of international military support in the fight against crime. His remarks came just before the presidential debate in which several candidates talked about the possibility of increasing the level of US troops in the region to fight drug trafficking. In an interview with the Guardian,

"This is a war without quarter," Guatemala's president, Álvaro Colom, told the Guardian. "There is a lot of infiltration, a lot of corruption. We need a Nato-type force to fight back."

And later in the interviewed

He suggested the region form "a type of Nato" to fight organised crime.

I meant to write up his call for a NATO-type force at the time, but I didn't exactly know for what he was calling. It just looked like Colom was simply calling for a military force comprised of soldiers from neighboring countries.that could confront common external enemies. They would also have the authority to cross each other's borders. His use of NATO was just confusing things.

Anyway, he brought it up again this week in an interview with Adam Thompson of the Financial Times.

Mr Colom, who is now in his final year in office, told the FT that while the region’s governments have learned what sovereignty means, the drug traffickers have not: while they travel through Central America almost at will, the region’s national armies and police forces cannot cross international borders without the permission of each country’s congress.

“What good is it if the forces of one country are pursuing drug traffickers who cross a river but then have to stop to avoid an international incident?” he said. “Why not have a type of Central American Nato?”

As it is, he says, too many security operations are hampered by having to communicate between authorities to solicit and then obtain the appropriate permission. “There are procedures that interrupt operations,” said Mr Colom. “Sometimes it is just a question of minutes but that can make all the difference.”

It sounds like President Colom is stating that the Guatemalan army has been handicapped by an inability to pursue drug traffickers and organized crime across its international borders (Mexico, Belize, El Salvador, and Honduras).As the army closes in on them, they dart across an international border to safety. It sounds plausible, but I can't say that I've come across a story where this has happened. The closest is the near miss on former President Alfonso Portillo who was arrested just before boarding a boat to Belize. If this has been a problem, the armies and border police could probably work something out short of forming a new Central American Treaty Organization (CATO).

If hot pursuit is a problem, they might be able work something out where there's a 24-hour hotline in place to authorize cross border operations. Another possibility might be joint operations or mixed-units that operate within so many miles of the frontier. These mixed units or operations would probably limit each population's reluctance to have another country's army operating within its border.

The region's armies need to increase their intelligence sharing capabilities, modernize their weapons (ships, planes, etc.), and increase their number of soldiers, among other things. If each country's army presently cannot handle drug trafficking and organized crime within its borders, combining these poorly prepared and equipped forces isn't going to do much good.

And this says nothing about the needed investments in social programs, the police, the courts, and state, local and federal government, etc.

Peten's State of Emergency

Peten State of Siege Extended

President Alvaro Colom extended Peten's state of siege earlier this week. The state of siege was initially put in place following the massacre of twenty-seven people at the Los Cocos Ranch. According to Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz, Guatemalan authorities have already arrested dozens of people connected to the massacre. Interior Minister Carlos Menocal, however, said that authorities need more time to improve the security situation in the department.

Call me skeptical. December's state of siege in Alta Verapaz also led to the arrests of several Zetas as well as increased repression against civil society organizations. However, once the state of siege ended, the Zetas moved right back in. They're a little less conspicuous now, but they're back. It's not clear that it had any impact whatsoever.

Alta Verapaz is also smaller than the Peten, located closer to the capital, doesn't really border Mexico, and is much more populated. The Peten shares a very long border with Mexico, is sparsely populated, and is not nearly accessible to the capital. If a siege couldn't work in Alta Verapaz, there's no way one will work in the Peten, a department that comprises one-third of the nation's entire territory.

The state of siege is unlikely to work (long-term reduction in drug trafficking and organized crime) in the Peten and might not even have been necessary. While the massacre of farm workers was terrible, violence in the Peten has been on the decline in recent years. According to Carlos Mendoza,

Homicide rates per 100 000 inhabitants in Petén reveal that violence was on the decline, compared to 2008 when it recorded a rate of 77, which fell to 71 in 2009 and reached 60 in 2010.That explains why, with a total of 366 homicides last year, ranking improved Petén department of homicidal violence, to occupy the 7th position out of 22.This means that in 2010 there were six departments even more violent than Petén.

The violence is extreme in Peten and Guatemala, but homicide rates have been surprisingly flat for the last several years.

That's why I said that one should not have concluded that Guatemala was on the verge of becoming a failed state even following the Los Cocos massacre. It was a horrible event, but one event does not make the country a failed state.

And while the state of siege probably won't work and might not have been needed, maybe it will make Guatemalan's feel better and make it look to the international community that Guatemalan authorities are taking the threat of organized crime and drug trafficking seriously.

Poverty and other El Salvador links

FMLN Supporters in Berlin, El Salvador

Locavore del Mundo writes about the cycle of poverty in rural El Salvador. Gloria Moran at ContraPunto looks at Fundación Círculo Solidario's attempt to break that cycle of poverty. And finally Carin Zissis at the Americas Society has a report on Latin American Childhood Poverty under the Lens. According to a recent joint survey from the Economic Commission for Latin America (ECLAC) and the Caribbean and UN Children’s Fund (UNICEF), over two-thirds of Salvadoran children live in poverty.

Tim has posts on Aeroman aircraft maintenance in El Salvador, the Texis cartel in El Salvador, and Desperate lives packed into a tractor trailer that are each worth a look. While most of the migrants in the tractor trailers were from Guatemala, nearly fifty were from El Salvador.

Here's the El Faro video that accompanies the Texis cartel story.



And if you'd like to read a horrific story about why the US, Canada, Mexico and Central America need to design a migration policy that puts people first, you can read The Horror Filled Journey of an 8-yr Old Attempting to Reunite with U.S.-based Parents at Hispanically Speaking News.

Developments in the Peten Massacre

Then if his wife and father went to pay the Q400k ransom, they must have been killed because they did not have enough money to cover the entire payment, right? However, the police also believe that Salguero was being extorted for both money and drugs. Maybe he only paid the money and not the drugs? That would have infuriated the Zetas and led to their attack upon the ranch. The ransom only amounts to $52,000. Given the amount of money involved in the drug trade, I guess I don't see such an escalation of violence coming out of such a small amount. It's likely that the murders involved more than a $52,000 ransom gone bad and involved drugs or Salguero's land.

That's what I wrote yesterday. Well, it turns out that I am mostly correct. There's more to the story than meets the eye. There are now two explanations for the killings.

First, according to a report in today's El Periodico, Salguero Morales had problems with a drug trafficking organization from Izabal. According to an unnamed rancher in the Peten, Salguero Morales refused to sell his land to the traffickers. The Zetas went looking for him and when they could not find him they massacred 27 workers on his ranch.

Second, according to a report in the Guatemalan daily, Prensa Libre, Otto Rene Salguero Morales, the owner of Los Cocos where the remains of twenty-seven victims were found over the weekend, stole more than 2,000 kilos of cocaine from this group of Zetas in April. In early May, the Zetas went looking for him. They wanted him to hand over the drugs, the money, and his land.

When they couldn't find Salguero Morales, they kidnapped his nephew. He then sent the nephew's wife and father to pay the ransom. It's possible then that the three relatives were killed because Salguero Morales agreed to pay the ransom (from all accounts that's what was happening when the two were killed), but he refused to return the drugs and hands over his land. We don't know if that's the case, but it sounds like a much more plausible motive for the massacre at the ranch than a failed $52,000 extortion.

Salguero Morales does not look like an ordinary farmer who happened to be extorted by the Zetas. According to authorities, his land in the Peten was not suitable for what he allegedly grew (zacate) and while he has been describe as a cattle rancher with several hundred cattle (doesn't sound like much to me, but I'm a city guy), there were no cows on his ranch. The stalls were empty and they did not appear to have been used in some time.

Investigators claim that Salguero Morales is involved in a Izabal-based drug trafficking organization and the cocaine that he intercepted was on its way to Mexico and then, presumably, north to the United States. He owns four properties - one a short distance from the Honduran border and a second (Los Cocos) a short distance from the Mexican border.

Yesterday, I also said that we shouldn't try to point to this one massacre as evidence of Guatemala becoming a narco-state or a failed state. I also don't know which of these two stories are true if either of them are. We all remember too well what happened after Rodrigo Rosenberg was murdered. A video tape emerged posthumously  in which Rosenberg accused President Alvaro Colom and other government officials of causing his death. It turned out that Rosenberg had concocted an elaborate suicide. There's also the story of Bishop Juan Gerardi. Following his murder in 1998, all sorts of rumors were flying around. At one point, a German Shepherd was arrested.

There are likely to be several more twists and turns especially as investigators look more closely at twenty former army officials allegedly involved in the Zetas and connections between Salguero Morales and current and former elected officials.