THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

T

he border zones of Central America are profoundly marginalized from the political 

and economic life of the nations to which they belong. Border communities tend 

to be poor, lacking of public services and infrastructure, and isolated. Borders themselves are permeable at best and mostly nonexistent. Local residents cross them 

regularly to shop or sell their goods, for jobs, to access services at the closest town, 

or to simply visit family members or friends. In the past, these regions, their sparse 

and often indigenous populations, and these constant flows of goods and people 

went overlooked. But during the last decade, a surge of drug trafficking and human 

smuggling has brought attention to them as “ungoverned” spaces that undermine 

the sovereignty and security of the countries of the region and of the United States.

The Dilemma of Lawlessness explores in-depth three towns typical of Guatemala’s 

border regions and examines the economic, political, and security effects of the amplification of the drug trade in their streets, across their rivers, and on their footpaths. 

The cases reveal that trade has brought prosperity, but also danger, as illegal profits 

penetrate local businesses, government offices, and churches as longstanding local smuggling networks must contend with or accommodate the interests of Mexican cartels. The authors argue persuasively for the importance of cultivating local 

community capital to strengthen these communities’ resiliency in the face of these 

threats.
Front cover:

The Pacaya Volcano crater offers hidden paths for those 

wishing to move without a trace across Guatemala. 
Organized Crime, Violence, Prosperity, and Security along Guatemala’s Borders

Ralph Espach

Daniel Haering

Javier Meléndez Quiñonez

Miguel Castillo Giron

A JOINT PUBLICATION OF CNA AND

MARINE CORPS UNIVERSITY PRESS

2016

THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS
II

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

Names: Espach, Ralph H., author. | Haering, Daniel, author. | Melâendez

 Quiänâonez, Javier, author.

Title: The dilemma of lawlessness : organized crime, violence, prosperity,

 and security along Guatemala’s borders / Ralph Espach, Daniel Haering,

 Javier Melâendez Quiänonez, and Miguel Castillo Giron.

Description: Quantico : Marine Corps University Press, [2016] | Includes

 bibliographical references.

Identifiers: LCCN 2016033781

Subjects: LCSH: Crime prevention--Guatemala. | Border security--Guatemala. |

 Drug abuse and crime--Guatemala. | Organized crime--Guatemala.

Classification: LCC HV7434.G9 E87 2016 | DDC 364.97281--dc23

LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2016033781

1st Printing 2016

ISBN 978-0-9973174-4-2

This book represents the best opinion of the authors at the time of printing. The views and opinions 

are the authors’ own, and do not necessarily represent those of CNA, the Department of the Navy, the 

U.S. Marine Corps, Marine Corps University, or the U.S. government. 

Marine Corps University Press

111 South Street

Quantico, VA 22134

www.usmcu.edu/mcupress

1st printing, 2016

CNA Corporation

3003 Washington Boulevard

Arlington, VA 22201
III

CONTENTS

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS V

INTRODUCTION VII

BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND

NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA 1

SAYAXCHÉ 21

GUALÁN 34

MALACATÁN 45

KEY FINDINGS FROM THE CASE STUDIES 55

IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY 60

POSTSCRIPT 75

BIBLIOGRAPHY 78

INDEX 82

V

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

Many friends and colleagues contributed to the research and writing of this 

book. First and foremost, the authors would like to thank the excellent 

Guatemalan research and analysis team at the Ibn Kaldún International 

Research Centre at Francisco Marroquín University: Eduardo Fernandez, Rodrigo 

Fernandez, Jalvier Calderon, Marizza Herrera, Santiago Fernandez, and Jorge Dardon. Without their field research and data collection across the country, this study 

would never exist. In addition, we owe a great deal of gratitude to Pedro Trujillo—the 

director of the Institute of Political Studies and International Relations at Francisco Marroquín University—and his team, especially for organizing two workshops at 

which we had the opportunity to share our research with Guatemalan and international officials and experts who provided important additional perspectives on 

the complexity of Guatemala’s security situation. Similarly, we wish to thank Cynthia 

Arnson and Eric Olson and the rest of the staff at the Latin American Program of the 

Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars in Washington, DC, for cohosting 

a conference with us in November 2011 that allowed us to learn from experts and 

practitioners from across the United States. 

We are likewise grateful to the various friends and colleagues who have shared 

their insights and ideas to improve our understanding and analysis, especially Julie Lopez and Werner Ovalle. Christopher Ashe, formerly the U.S. Department of 

State action officer for the Central America Regional Security Initiative program, also 

provided helpful guidance and commentary. Many Guatemalan friends provided 

valuable help and knowledge of their country and its complicated relationship with 

informality and illegality, but we are grateful in particular to Tani Adams, Carlos 

Mendoza, and Fernando Carrillo. Finally, many thanks to our translators Alixe Huete, 

Silvia Amador, and Iciar Gomez, and the editors and staff at Marine Corps University 

Press.

VII

INTRODUCTION

F

or centuries, the Central American region has been among the world’s most important transit zones. The Spanish shuttled the gold, silver, and other valuables 

from Southeast Asia and from South America across the Panamanian isthmus. 

Later, the French and the Americans competed to control and improve that route 

with a water canal, either in Panama or Nicaragua. Since the emergence of the United States as a major economy and consumer market, the region has been a key zone 

for the northward flow of all kinds of products—legal and illegal.

Economically, the countries of Central America, particularly northern Central 

America (including Guatemala, Belize, Honduras, and El Salvador), have traditionally been among the most unequal in the Americas. Throughout most of these 

countries’ histories, political power and state resources were controlled by the same 

families and networks that owned most of the land and industries. Relatively few 

resources and little state attention were dedicated to improving the lives of the poor, 

especially in isolated rural areas. 

Except during infrequent instances of insurgency, civil war, or interstate conflict, border control or even preserving a state presence in rural areas in these regions 

was not an important concern. In practical terms, national territorial borders were unmarked and did not exist. What is today considered smuggling was a normal, everyday practice. Many border communities had closer economic ties to cities, agricultural 

zones, or economic infrastructure such as railroads or ports in countries across the border than they did to those within their own country. Moreover, most of the residents of 

these rural areas were indigenous and largely disconnected from the country in which 

they lived and the government that notionally had authority over them.

In this way, most border zones in these countries have traditionally been “ungoverned,” or “undergoverned,” in terms of their relations with the national and 

provincial or departmental governments. Over the decades, numerous groups have 

taken advantage of the porousness of these borders, and the general lawlessness 

of these remote areas (many of which are heavily forested and/or mountainous), 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

VIII

to elude governments or armed forces. In addition to the ever-present smugglers, 

armed insurgent groups from both the left and the right, as well as paramilitaries of 

all stripes, crossed borders to conduct their operations during the Cold War. 

Drug Trafficking and Guatemala

The most recent, and by some accounts the most dangerous, type of actors to exploit these weakly governed, porous borders in northern Central America have been 

narcotics trafficking networks. Illegal drugs have been smuggled from the world’s 

foremost coca production zone—the northern Andean foothills—to the world’s richest 

and largest drug consumption market—the United States—since at least the 1980s. 

Beginning in the 1990s, however, an international crackdown on drug smuggling 

through the Caribbean region led Colombian cartels to favor overland routes 

through Central America and Mexico.1

 The Colombians moved product through 

the region largely by buying the services of local trafficking networks. These networks were particularly well developed in Guatemala as a result of the intelligence 

and transport networks the military created during that country’s civil war from the 

1960s to the 1990s. 

Over time, Mexican trafficking networks grew into competitive cartels themselves and began to fight each other for control over valuable transport and smuggling routes. Mexico’s largest cartels—including the Sinaloa Federation, the Gulf 

Cartel, and the Zetas—grew their operations from merely trafficking the product of 

others to buying the product upstream and controlling its transit in Central America.

Traditionally, Colombian- or Mexican-run trafficking cartels operated in Guatemala by buying the services of local trafficking networks, but around 2008 they 

began to seek to control routes themselves. Many of these routes lie along the Guatemalan coast, where drugs are brought in by boat and then transferred onto land 

for transit into Mexico. Other routes enter from Honduras, with the drugs being 

flown in from Venezuela or brought in via boat. Recently, there has been evidence 

not only of a broad presence of Mexican drug-trafficking networks across Guatemala 

but also of the expansion of their operations there, particularly into drug processing. They also sell more of their product in local markets, rather than shipping it 

onward, fueling local gang activity and urban violence. 

1

 For an excellent account of the spread of narcotrafficking networks through Guatemala, see Julie López, Guatemala’s Crossroads: Democratization of Violence and Second Chances, Working Paper Series on Organized Crime in the Americas (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, 2010).
INTRODUCTION

IX

As a result of this combination of weak state security capabilities and highvalue narcotics trafficking, Guatemala today faces a major public security problem. 

Territories and routes that for decades bore a moderate flow of contraband and humans have become superhighways for the transfer of high-value narcotics, chemicals, weapons, and cash required by the illicit drug industry. Due to Guatemala’s 

border with Mexico and a permissive environment for contraband and crime, the 

country has become a funnel for an estimated 80–90 percent of the cocaine sent 

from South America to the United States.2

Guatemalan criminal organizations have long enjoyed special ties and arrangements at the local and national level with elements of the national police, 

army, courts, and government. It was estimated in 2010 that as much as half of Guatemala’s territory could be under the control of these organizations.3

 Although such 

assertions are impossible to validate, it reflects the seriousness and pervasiveness 

of the country’s struggle against criminality. Guatemala traditionally has high rates 

of violent crime, and impunity for traffickers and murderers has long been the rule, 

not the exception. 

Beginning around 2009, new actors altered this landscape. Many—though 

not all—smuggling routes traditionally operated by local groups fell under the 

control of such Mexican networks as the Sinaloa Federation, the Gulf Cartel, and 

the Zetas. These transnational networks with their extraordinary financial resources, 

military-grade weaponry, and reputation for brutality seemed to elevate the threat 

to national public security. At the time of our original research in 2010, a series of 

spectacular, execution-style mass murders gripped Guatemala and fueled fears that 

the Zetas and other Mexican groups were going to subject the country to a campaign 

of violence similar to what had occurred in Mexico. In fact, from 2009 to 2011, 

Guatemala’s murder rate was estimated to be as high as during the worst years of 

the civil wars in the 1980s. Since then, national murder rates have declined, though 

they remain significantly high in some departments and along some smuggling 

routes, as discussed later in this book. The Mexican networks remain an influential 

presence, but in general they have not supplanted their local, traditional partners 

as much as expected.

2

 United Nations (UN) Office on Drugs and Crime (ODC), World Drug Report, 2010 (Vienna: UN Office on Drugs and Crime, 2010). 3

 International Crisis Group (ICG), Guatemala: Squeezed between Crime and Impunity, Latin America Report no. 33 (Brussels: 

ICG, 2010).
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

X

Local and international drug-trafficking networks operate most intensely in 

communities on or near smuggling routes, many of which are located in border 

regions. Guatemala has more than 1,000 miles of borders that cross forests and 

mountain ranges; these borders are poorly monitored or, in many areas, even unmarked. The communities close to the borders tend to be rural and engaged in subsistence farming, often with little or no government presence, such as public clinics, 

Map by W. Stephen Hill

Geographical location of the three case studies
INTRODUCTION

XI

schools, or police. Without the presence of the law, these communities are left to 

manage criminal groups that use a variety of tactics, including not only threats and 

violence but also the provision of money, public services, and other benefits, to obtain compliance, acceptance, and, in some cases, even the support of local residents.

Various independent and governmental reports have explained the gravity of 

the violence and organized crime in Guatemala and the danger these factors pose 

to regional stability.4

 Most of them focus on the failures of national security policies, 

attempts to reform the national police and judicial systems, and international counternarcotics efforts. Local dynamics underpinning this national crisis, such as the 

relationships between criminal networks and local authorities and institutions, too 

often go overlooked.

This study addresses this gap by examining the effects of illicit trafficking and 

criminal organizations within the three border municipalities of Guatemala: Sayaxché in the northern department of Petén, Gualán in the eastern department of Zacapa, and Malacatán in San Marcos in the west. These municipalities sit on important 

smuggling routes and are well-known by Guatemalan police, intelligence agencies, 

and local populations to be regional centers for organized crime. We chose to focus 

on these three cases because of the economic, demographic, and political differences among them, hypothesizing that those differences should also lead to variation in the communities’ relations with and impacts from local organized crime.

The case studies demonstrate how history, demographics, economics, political 

institutions, and Guatemala’s idiosyncratic political culture combine to shape relations among government actors, organized criminal groups, and local communities. 

They reveal that, contrary to the typical depictions in the international and U.S. press, 

organized crime and drug trafficking in particular have, under certain conditions, 

provided important economic and other benefits to these communities. Because 

state-provided public goods tend to be minimal, community members tend to value these benefits and accept the trade-off they involve: to ignore and avoid contact 

with these groups’ criminal operations. These accommodations have been in place 

for years, if not decades, and in some cases are a reality of life in these border communities—unlike police, fair courts, or the rule of law. These dynamics suggest that 

security policies undertaken by the Guatemalan government (with the support of international partners) to reestablish a credible and legitimate state presence in these 

4

 Ibid.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

XII

areas will be complex and difficult to implement. We hope, however, that the recommendations offered in the final chapter can help inform a national and regional 

dialogue about this issue and the need for a broader, more structural approach to 

improving security in Central America’s peripheries.

The Three Case Studies

Our assessment is based on data collected during interviews within these communities and with civilian experts and public security and intelligence officials in 

the Guatemalan capital in the summer of 2011, augmented with follow-on analysis conducted in November 2012. A comparison of how these three economically,

demographically, and politically diverse communities have coped with local 

drug-trafficking and criminal groups provides a broader understanding of the relational dynamics that determine the impacts of trafficking on nearby communities. 

Our analysis led us to conclude that effective border control and law enforcement in Guatemala is more about changing the habits and attitudes of local residents and communities than it is about improving technology, infrastructure, or 

state presence per se. Based on these conclusions, we offer recommendations for 

policies designed to contribute to Guatemalan and international efforts to improve 

security, state presence, and the rule of law in these and other border communities. Considering that Guatemala shares its border regions with Honduras, Belize, 

El Salvador, and Mexico, the findings and recommendations could be relevant to 

the formulation of public security policies and programs in border communities of 

those countries as well.
1

Chapter 1

BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND

NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

S

mugglers have borne, trucked, or ferried food, household products, gasoline, 

human migrants, narcotics, and other contraband across Guatemala’s borders 

since they were established in 1841. In isolated, rural communities—particularly along Guatemala’s 600-mile border with Mexico—residents cross unmarked 

borders on a weekly or even daily basis to buy or sell products, to work, to visit family, or to receive public services.1

 As in most of Central America, and indeed the world, 

border communities are in part defined by the quotidian nature of border arbitrage 

and its effects on local life.

The surge in news coverage regarding violence, lawlessness, and organized 

crime along Central America’s borders would give the impression that these are new 

problems. In reality, porous borders, smuggling, and organized crime have been 

characteristics of Guatemala’s periphery for decades. Successive governments have 

announced new strategies, policies, and programs, but few have had any tangible 

results.2

BORDERS AND BORDER SECURITY

The Guatemalan government has focused its border security efforts on the border 

with Mexico, a 600-mile-long boundary that runs through 22 municipalities and 4 

departments. The borders with El Salvador and with Honduras are less extensive, and 

significant bilateral coordination has yet to develop. An initiative, called El Trifinio

(Tripoint), was started in 2010 to improve cross-border cooperation and integration 

1

 As part of a research project in 2010, CNA analysts visited and conducted interviews with community members in several 

small communities (or aldeas) and one town, Sibinal, in the mountains of the San Marcos Department along the Mexican 

border.

2 For example, several Guatemalan-Mexican bilateral meetings have been held since 2005 to design and adopt methods 

to improve border security. Diverse initiatives to increase the military presence on both sides of the border also have been 

launched. Later, the Álvaro Colom administration announced various measures to increase military spending, deploy the 

Guatemalan Army to the northern border, enhance civil intelligence efforts, and improve coordination among the diverse 

security forces. Nevertheless, in terms of spending and implementation, there is little evidence that these measures have had 

any impact.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

2

across the 45 municipalities along the border zone of Guatemala, El Salvador, and 

Honduras, but like most other border security agreements it has had no noticeable 

regionwide effect. The Pérez Molina government announced a new national security 

plan in July 2012. The plan comments on the need for improved border security but 

provides no detailed policy program or new resources for the effort.

According to official estimates, there are at least 1,200 “blind” or unobserved 

crossing points along Guatemala’s borders, 125 of which allow for the crossing of 

vehicles without any kind of immigration control. Even at formal transit points on 

major highways, the infrastructure and manning of guard posts are often insufficient to provide effective control. Corruption of customs and migrations officials 

also is widely reported to be common. With insufficient infrastructure, limited 

and poorly trained personnel, and law enforcement institutions corrupted and 

co-opted by criminal groups, the porous nature of the borders is used to full advantage by criminal organizations for carrying out illicit transnational activities.

In Central America, various studies have documented the active involvement 

of border and coastal communities, including indigenous communities, in providing logistical support—such as storage, transport, communication, and protection—for 

illicit traffickers smuggling drugs, arms, and human beings throughout the region. 

According to these studies, the isolation of these communities, their poverty, and the 

lack of communication and transit infrastructure enable illegal groups to corrupt local 

authorities and residents with relative ease.3

 A report on the situation by the Institute 

for Strategic Studies and Public Policies notes that the importance of Central America as a transfer route for international trafficking could not be otherwise explained 

without the surprising capacity of organized crime to capture, co-opt, and integrate its 

operations across diverse actors within border communities across Central America.4

A 2011 Washington Post article colorfully depicted the situation: 

To call this boundary “porous” would be to suggest that parts of it are 

not. For the indigenous peoples, ranch hands and smugglers who traverse it freely, there is no border at all. It is but a line on a map. 

On the Suchiate River near the Pacific Coast, boatmen pole make3

 Ivan Briscoe, Conflictos en la frontera: Las nuevas zonas calientes en América Latina [Conflicts on the border: Latin America’s 

new hot zones] (Madrid: Fundación para las Relaciones Internacionales y el Diálogo Exterior [FRIDE], 2008). 4

 Javier Meléndez Q. et al., Una aproximación a la problemática de la criminalidad organizada en las comunidades del Caribe y 

de Fronteras [An approach to the problem of organized crime in Caribbean and border communities] (Managua: Institute for 

Strategic Studies and Public Policies, 2010), 13. 
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

3

shift rafts through the currents like gondoliers, ferrying beans, gasoline, 

beer and diapers into Mexico or Guatemala in plain view of authorities. 

The trafficking is so well established that the ferrymen from Mexico and 

Guatemala alternate work days on the river.5

VIOLENCE IN BORDER COMMUNITIES

Guatemala, El Salvador, and Honduras together form what is called Central America’s northern triangle, one of the world’s most violent regions. Guatemala has for 

decades been very violent, with annual homicide rates typically between 20 and 30 

per 100,000 people. During the last decade, however, murder rates have been exceptionally high. As table 1 shows, between 2005 and 2010, the average annual homicide rate in Guatemala was 44 homicides per 100,000 residents; in 2010, it was 

41 per 100,000. There is no consensus about why murder rates spiked during that 

period; neither is there a definitive explanation of why rates have fallen since then. 

Experts attribute Guatemala’s persistent violence to a variety of factors: widespread 

impunity and the lack of rule of law, the legacy of the civil war (which included the 

widespread killing of civilians), and recently more intense activity on the part of 

organized criminal gangs and trafficking groups.6

Table 1 shows the geographical distribution of homicide rates in Guatemala in 

2014. These statistics do not support the common assertion that drug trafficking is 

strongly linked geographically to violence. Some Guatemalan border departments 

where drug smuggling is common are exceptionally violent, others relatively peaceful. Those with high levels of violence are located on the country’s southern border 

with El Salvador (Chiquimula and Jutiapa) and Honduras (Zacapa and Izabal). In 

striking contrast, those departments bordering Mexico are among Guatemala’s least 

violent (Petén, San Marcos, Huehuetenango, and Quiché).

These variations in homicide rates across different border regions reflect the 

complexity of social and economic relations across border regions and communities 

as well as the differences across such communities in their relations with local and 

transnational criminal groups.

5 Nick Miroff and William Booth, “In Southern Mexico, A Neglected Frontier,” Washington Post, 21 June 2011, http://www

.washingtonpost.com/world/americas/in-southern-mexico-a-neglected-frontier/2011/06/20/AGt74KeH_story.html.

6

 Tani Marilena Adams, Chronic Violence and Its Reproduction: Perverse Trends in Social Relations, Citizenship, and Democracy 

in Latin America (Washington, DC: Woodrow Wilson Center, 2012), https://www.wilsoncenter.org/sites/default/files/Chronic

%20Violence%20and%20its%20Reproduction_1.pdf.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

4

DECENTRALIZATION AND LOCAL POLITICS

IN GUATEMALA7

Several factors contribute to the enduring weakness of public security policies in 

Guatemala’s border communities. Inefficient and dysfunctional police and judicial 

institutions, the shrinkage of the nation’s police and military forces after the peace 

accord of 1996, and longstanding local disputes over territorial and economic 

rights all contribute to insecurity. Of similar importance is the style and structure of 

Guatemala’s national political apparatus. Striking an optimal, functioning balance 

between the authorities and resources of the national government and those of regional departments and local governments is an enduring challenge in a country as 

geographically and ethnically diverse as Guatemala.

Guatemala’s local government institutions have been growing in strength 

since the enactment of the 1985 constitution that recognized the need for decentralization. Previously, municipalities were weak and lacked local resources. In the more 

traditional indigenous communities, local officials were elected only after climbing 

the ladder through a series of civil service posts or religious responsibilities in the 

community until they could reach the position of mayor. This practice has since disappeared, and election via secret ballot is the only legitimate process recognized locally.

In 2002, a national political reform and decentralization process enacted three 

laws that serve as a framework for the current system: the Development Councils 

Law, the Municipal Code, and the Decentralization Law. Although the process has 

encountered obstacles along the way, the municipalities are largely the country’s 

main source of services, while the central government’s relevance has decreased. 

For some observers, decentralization has opened a gateway for the installation of 

cartels and mafias in some regions of the country, whereas for others the process has 

opened up avenues for communities to manage and make decisions in a manner 

previously unknown in the history of Guatemala. 

The range and quantity of municipal commissions created in these 2002 

reforms is astounding: education, bilingual intercultural education, culture, and 

sports; public health and social assistance; services, infrastructure, land management, urban development, and housing; economic development, tourism, the 

environment, and natural resources; decentralization, municipal strengthening, 

7

 This section is distilled from a previous study by a member of our research team: Miguel Castillo Girón, El cuaderno de las 

ciudadanas y ciudadanos [The citizens’ notebook] (Guatemala City: Instituto Arpes, 2009).
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

5

and civic participation; finance; transparency; human rights and peace; and family, 

women, and children.8

Despite these extensive municipal responsibilities, the constitution allocates 

to municipalities only 10 percent of national revenues. Although the criteria used 

for determining disbursements has been criticized and in practice has generated 

accusations of favoritism (many municipalities have been discovered falsifying data 

to receive more funding), the overall effect of reform has been to increase municipalities’ resources, but not by enough to make them truly effective.

8

 Castillo Girón, El cuaderno.

Table 1. 

Guatemala: Annual rates of violent deaths, homicides, and autopsies (1986–2014) according 

to the INE, PNC, and INACIF

Ranking Department Homicide rate per 100,000 Percentage of

national total

1 Esquintla 74.4 11

2 Zacapa 73.1 3

3 Chiquimula 60.2 5

4 Guatemala 53.7 36

5 Santa Rosa 53.3 4

6 Izabal 52.6 5

7 Jutiapa 46.7 4

8 Petén 44.8 6

9 El Progreso 40.9 1

10 Jalapa 40.8 3

11 Retalhuleu 36.9 2

12 Suchitepéquez 32.8 4

13 Quetzaltenango 20.2 3

14 Sacatepéquez 18.4 1

15 Chimaltenango 15.6 2

16 Baja Verapaz 12.0 1

17 San Marcos 11.9 3

18 Alta Verapaz 9.1 2

19 Huehuetenango 7.0 2

20 Quiché 4.6 1

21 Sololá 3.8 0

22 Totonicapán 3.6 0

Source: Homicide rate (Policía Nacional Civil [PNC]), population (Instituto Nacional de Estadística [INE]), statistics (Central 

American Business Intelligence [CABI]); collection and integration by Carlos A. Mendoza.

Using per-population estimates from December of each year, based on INE projections. INACIF (1) includes strangulations and 

after 2012 also “dismemberments”; INE (2009–12) “Aggression including the firing of a firearm, not specified.” Elaborated by 

Carlos A. Mendoza, 14 March 2014.

Note: Guatemalan National Civil Police (PNC), Guatemalan National Institute of Statistics (INE), and the Guatemalan National 

Institute of Forensics (INACIF).
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

6

For some, the negative effect of this reform has been to reduce incentives for 

municipalities to generate their own resources. Guatemala’s congress is responsible 

for approving any increase in revenues, and it discourages any effort in this regard. 

This highlights another contradiction in the system. The municipalities provide a 

large portion of public services, yet they cannot exact or collect taxes for any of them. 

The delivery of the resources municipalities need to provide those services is negotiated politically. Municipal governments receive money in exchange for favors to 

congresspeople and national party leaders, such as the delivery of local votes or the 

direction of public contracts. This underpins national and local systems of political 

bosses and corruption.

The lack of legitimacy or presence of the central government has led to the 

development of civil society in peripheral areas as an attempt to control this process. One of the vehicles (and this is one of the most original aspects of Guatemala’s 

local structures) is a system created by the 1985 constitution that encourages the 

creation of civil society organizations in parallel, and in collaboration, with local and 

departmental government entities. These entities are the Community Development 

Council (COCODES), the Municipal Development Councils (COMUDES), and the Departmental Development Councils (CODEDES). The Law of Development Councils 

defines these councils in Article 1 as the principal method for public participation in 

management and development. 

Thus, a system of councils was established, structured from the bottom up to 

oversee appropriations from the top down. The COCODES are autonomous citizen 

assemblies in which the entire community is invited to participate. These assemblies 

are integrated into the COMUDES, which incorporate local political authorities, and 

these COMUDES are integrated into the CODEDES, which are chaired by the country’s departmental governors. 

This departmental classification is one of the aspects of the local Guatemalan 

system that is most criticized. Governors are selected by presidents—in many cases to 

pay back earlier favors—and they lack a clearly defined constitutional function. At the 

same time, departments are not regions with ethnic or geographical homogeneity, 

which makes them fairly ineffective. To compensate for this deficiency, municipalities have embraced the model of associations that collaborate in the management 

of services, such as waste and water, with increasing success.

Finally, the CODEDES are integrated into the National Development Council, 
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

7

or CONADE, which is headed by the president and is responsible for initiating the 

process leading to action on petitions received. 

For many critics, decentralization has become a pretext for the creation of local 

bosses (i.e., mayors who serve for four and five terms), although the parties may 

change. One can see the strengthening of the bosses in the proliferation of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), many of which seem to be employed by the municipality to carry out business in which municipal officials have private interests. For 

other critics, the transition of many grassroots organizations into NGOs dependent 

on state funding has led to a decline in their quality and an increase in corruption.

Others believe that it is a price one must pay to allow the inhabitants of each 

municipality to elect officials of their choice, and what should be done is to prohibit 

the practice known as acarreo—adding outsiders to a community’s list of voters—and 

the use of NGOs in the construction of public works, as well as the establishment of a 

“second round” electoral system to increase the legitimacy of the winning candidate.

Another aspect of the dynamic described above is the influence of the Guatemalan diaspora communities in the United States that finance many of the municipalities’ services, such as schools and health centers as well as local town fairs. In 

many municipalities, it has become common for candidates with greater resources 

to do their campaigning in U.S. cities with large Guatemalan populations. 

NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA: 

A RECENT HISTORY

Highland Guatemalans have cultivated poppies and sold heroin paste to Mexicans 

for decades. Larger scale drug trafficking and the trafficking of cocaine became significant in the country only in the 1980s, however. In those years, a combination 

of circumstances and policies combined to create an enduring national patchwork 

of trafficking routes and local criminal groups, many with ties to national and local 

political parties and legitimate economic and social institutions.9

 In some cases, 

including two of the case study communities discussed in the next section, these 

groups and their interrelationships with legitimate businesses, political parties, and 

officials have endured to the present.

During the 1980s, particularly after 1983, the Guatemalan Army’s counterinsur9

 This section is based on information from a report commissioned for this study and written by Rodrigo Fernández Ordóñez, a 

lawyer and researcher at the Ibn Khaldun Institute at the Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala City.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

8

gency campaign succeeded in shrinking guerrilla activity and driving it into remote 

areas. As a result, the level of violence declined. Areas of Guatemala that had been 

the focus of bloody and turbulent anti-insurgency campaigns, waged by thousands of 

troops and paramilitary civilian patrols, quieted. At around the same time, Colombian 

traffickers faced growing efforts by the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) and the 

U.S. Department of Defense to interdict the illegal drug shipments that flowed from 

Colombia across the Caribbean to Florida or the Gulf of Mexico’s shores. These cartels 

sought new routes and found in Guatemala a network of existing trafficking zones 

and routes, controlled jointly by local community leaders and by military officials who 

could guarantee easy transit even at formal border crossings.

By 1980, the civil war had lasted 20 years, and the country had been under military rule for 26 years since the U.S.-sponsored coup against President Jacobo Arbenz 

in 1954. The military was present in virtually all of the country, and due to the prolonged violence that included the complete elimination of several hundred villages, 

the presence of other state agencies, including the police, had dwindled to virtually 

nothing. By dint of its perch in the executive branch and the control imposed by army 

commanders from bases and mobilized units across the country, the military controlled or oversaw practically all political and economic activity in the country. Over 

the years, as military officers retired, many of them went into business and formed 

a class of elites with close personal ties to politicians and officers still in power.10

The Guatemalan military collaborated with counterinsurgency advisors from 

Taiwan and Argentina to create new systems and structures for intelligence gathering. 

One area of focus for these efforts was the extension of control by the army, and more 

specifically by the Intelligence Service, of the country’s customs and border control 

offices, ports, and airports. The goal was to stop the smuggling of arms or other materials in support of the guerrillas. This network of intelligence officers ran operations 

from a secret office, nicknamed “la oficinita,” on the eleventh floor of the Ministry of 

Public Finance. This office controlled intelligence over all points of national entry and 

egress, and during the 1980s several of its top officers and their partners held a monopoly over the trafficking of illicit goods, including drugs, throughout Guatemala.11

10 Jennifer Schirmer, The Guatemalan Military Project: A Violence Called Democracy (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania 

Press, 1998), 19, quoted in International Crisis Group, Guatemala: Squeezed. 11 Rodrigo Fernández Ordóñez, citing Juan Hernández Pico, Terminar la guerra, traicionar la paz (Guatemala: Editorial de 

Ciencias Sociales, 2005), 438. At a meeting in Guatemala City in October 2010, a former general of the Guatemalan Army told 

CNA analysts, “The nation’s borders are not so big that they cannot be controlled. In the 1980s, the army controlled, more or 

less effectively, every stretch of the border.” 
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

9

One of the instruments the military used to gather intelligence on and control 

the activities of communities around the country was the figure of the civilian military commissioner, or comisionado militar, a position that dated from 1938. Military 

commissioners were granted their authority by the army commanders of local military zones, chiefly for the purpose of collecting information about potential local 

insurgent activity and recruiting local young men for military service. In practice, 

military commissioners were the link between the army and the local population.12

Evidence from various sources, including information from DEA reports, indicates that Colombian traffickers gained access to trafficking networks along key 

routes throughout the south and west of Guatemala beginning in the 1980s. These 

networks were composed of military intelligence officials, their subordinates and 

former colleagues, and informants and partners—including military commissioners. 

With this collaboration, Colombian groups moved increasing amounts of cocaine 

through the country into Mexico.13 Also during the early 1980s, allegations began 

to arise that military officials were involved in a growing range of criminal activities, 

including drug smuggling as well as kidnappings for ransom, car theft, and various 

types of trafficking. As levels of violence and anti-insurgency activity dropped, the 

military’s pervasive economic, political, and geographic presence, and its control 

over national intelligence, opened the institution—and several layers of the Guatemalan government—to widespread corruption and criminal penetration. Hundreds 

of small runways appeared across the countryside in the 1980s, often in close proximity to army locations and bases.

These conditions persisted and deepened even after the return to democracy in 1986. Formally, power was transferred to President Vinicio Cerezo and his 

administration, but informally the military continued to control the country and to 

operate with impunity against its perceived enemies in the human rights and labor 

movements and within the government—using measures that included assassinations. This control remained concentrated in the army intelligence services and the 

Presidential General Staff (Estado Mayor Presidencial). Notably, the return to civilian 

rule did not lead to significant measures to reform or rebuild the national police, 

12 Comisión para el Esclarecimiento Histórico, Guatemala: Memoria del silencio, vol. 1 (Guatemala: Comisión para el 

Esclarecimiento Histórico, 1999), chapter 2, paragraph 426. 

13 According to some reports, while the DEA monitored the increase in the smuggling of cocaine and other drugs through 

Guatemala and the military’s growing involvement, the Central Intelligence Agency approved of and even facilitated some 

trafficking because the proceeds in part supported the counterinsurgency activities of civilian patrols and other paramilitary 

groups.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

10

an institution that had shrunk and stagnated under military rule. The new national 

constitution of 1985 continued the pattern from preceding constitutions in failing 

to provide constitutional status to the national police. By default, the army bore constitutional responsibility for the security of the nation and its citizens.

The influence of this network of former and current military officials—and their 

civilian partners, including former local military commissioners—was especially 

Map by W. Stephen Hill

Major narcotrafficking routes in Guatemala
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

11

strong in rural areas. Historically, the attention of Guatemala’s elites and political 

class was focused on the capital, the key cities, and the rich agricultural and coffee 

zones in the western coastal plain. As the demands of the civil war ebbed, this pattern returned. Communities in the north, north-central, and along the borders tended to have little or no contact with the national government, and local affairs were 

overseen largely by informal political structures. In areas of intense trafficking near 

or on key border crossings, highways, ports, or airports, these informal structures 

were necessary to provide protection to Colombians and others who required transit. The key figures in these structures or networks found such cooperation increasingly profitable and secure under protection from military and political partners and 

with the lack of effective police forces.

In several cases, former military commissioners who for over a decade had 

been able to use their ties to the military as a means to assert their interests on 

local communities were at the center of these informal structures. Along many key 

trade and trafficking routes, these individuals had complete knowledge and control 

over local trafficking, as well as judicial impunity and a free hand in the use of violence. Several of the individuals who control or until recently controlled Guatemalan trafficking routes, such as Juan Juancho León, Waldemar Lorenzana, and Juan 

“Chamalé” Ortiz in San Marcos, are former military commissioners.

THE PEACE PROCESS AND THE EMERGENCE

OF CURRENT CONDITIONS

The first major Colombian organization to establish itself in Guatemala was the Medellín Cartel, which cooperated and later merged with the Cali Cartel. Throughout 

the early and middle 1990s, Colombian groups were the dominant clients or partners of Guatemalan smuggling networks. With little fear of government or police 

interference and with informal structures—linked to military and government officials—overseeing operations, the system was not especially violent. This activity, and 

particularly the operations of the large cartels, almost certainly operated with an 

understanding from the highest levels of the military.14

The Guatemalan participation in this activity was limited to providing services 

associated with the transit of the drugs—for example, transport; contracting with local fishermen or ranchers for the use of boats, cargo space, or territory; and storage, 

14 López, Guatemala’s Crossroads.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

12

when necessary. Guatemalan criminal organizations tended to involve themselves 

mostly in the transport the provision of services related to the transport and retailing 

of drugs (especially the gangs or maras in urban areas), but not generally in the 

purchase of raw product or its production or refinement.

In December 1996, Guatemala’s civil war officially ended with the signing of a 

series of peace accords between the government and the umbrella guerrilla organization Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity. The peace accords envisioned major cuts to the military and a national program to reform and rebuild a civilian police 

force. As various other reports describe in detail, the military was drastically cut, from 

approximately 44,000 soldiers in 1997 to 16,000 in 2009. Yet, the reform and establishment of a professional, effective national police force was hindered by several 

factors, including a lack of political commitment, inconsistency in administration, and 

a lack of consensus among elites and human rights groups regarding appropriate 

policing structures and models. By the early 2000s, it was clear that the government 

of Central America’s largest nation—with more than 40,000 square miles of territory, 

1,000 miles of border and coastline, and more than 14 million citizens—had no persistent, effective police or security presence or control in the majority of its territory.

The dominance of Colombian groups as the principal suppliers of drugs to 

Guatemalan traffickers diminished quickly after the peace accords. The big Colombian cartels suffered from increasingly aggressive and effective police and military 

actions on the part of the Colombian government, which reduced their ability to 

manage international routes. Also, during the months and years after the peace accords, the dissolution of the military and its presence across the country ruptured 

many of the networks and relationships that had controlled trafficking for years. Local informal capos, or heads of trafficking gangs, were approached by new partners 

and suppliers and diversified their activities. 

In 1998, Mexican cartels began to fill the void in narcotrafficking left by the 

retreat of the Colombians. The first Mexican groups to enter Guatemala in the late 

1990s were the Sinaloa Federation and Gulf Cartel. By the early 2000s, these two 

groups had established significant supply networks across the country. In the same 

fashion as the Colombians, these cartels paid local Guatemalan traffickers to handle 

transport and related services. Routes or zones, and the traffickers that managed 

them, were used by different cartels without much contention or violence. The Guatemalan groups, families, or networks (sometimes referred to simply as transpor-
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

13

tistas) were generally satisfied earning their modest cut and did not try to engage 

in other, more lucrative, aspects of the trade. In most regions, this drug trafficking 

occurred alongside other types of smuggling, especially of people and basic commodities (e.g., rice, gasoline), and the same trafficking networks (comprising drivers, vehicle refitters, police controllers, etc.) and capos were involved. 

The drug traffickers’ penetration into the government and police continued. In 

2002, the United States revoked the visas of several Guatemalan officials for alleged 

ties to trafficking, and the following year, the Guatemalan government dissolved 

the special antinarcotics unit after 16 members were convicted for participating in 

extrajudicial killings.15 This problem continues to plague the government of Guatemala and its partners in counternarcotics efforts, in particular the DEA and U.S. Department of State. There is abundant evidence that criminal organizations engaged 

in trafficking have penetrated even the highest levels of the Guatemalan military 

and police.16

2008: BREAKDOWN IN THE SYSTEM

Before 2008, the local trafficking of drugs, humans, arms, and other contraband was 

mostly controlled by local capos, individuals and families with a long tradition of 

ownership and influence within their communities. Not just criminals, capos were 

landowners and businessmen, community employers, benefactors, and leaders to 

some extent, whose operations benefitted from legitimacy in the eyes of local residents. They built roads, clinics, and soccer fields; they provided local citizens money 

for their childrens’ parties and for medical emergencies; and—as the case studies 

show—they provided order and security on the streets so that residents felt safe doing their everyday business. They were able to conduct these various activities, licit 

and illicit, under the protection provided by their connections with military, intelligence, and government officials.

But the stable, controlled, relatively peaceful system of trafficking in Guatemala, in which foreign groups paid Guatemalan traffickers for safe and secure passage 

and otherwise for the most part left them alone, ended in 2008. Part of the rupture 

15 International Crisis Group, Guatemala, 15. 16 For example, weapons clearly identified as Guatemalan military property were seized from drug cartel operations in March 

and April 2009, and in February 2010, the director of the National Police Commission and the head of the government’s 

counternarcotics unit were both arrested for activities linked to drug trafficking. Similar events, evidence, reporting, and arrests 

also indicate that Guatemala’s judiciary, congressional, and executive offices suffer from similar levels of corruption. See López, 

Guatemala’s Crossroads, 24–31.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

14

of this system can be attributed to the arrests of top level Guatemalan transportistas. 

Otto Herrera, considered the chief contact for the Gulf Cartel in Guatemala, was arrested in 2007, and Jorge Mario Paredes, linked to the Sinaloa Federation, was arrested 

in 2008. These arrests set off a series of competitions among subordinate groups and 

individuals who sought to establish control over certain territories and to eliminate 

rivals. This caused turbulence and uncertainty across several key trafficking routes.

Map by W. Stephen Hill

Areas of operation of the largest trafficking networks, 2013
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

15

Also around that time, various Guatemalan transportistas began to experiment 

with a new tactic to increase their revenues called tumbe, or the stealing of drugs in 

transit and their resale. By 2008, the transportista Juan José Juancho León, head of 

the León family whose operations were based in the southwestern departments of 

Santa Rosa and Tiapa, had gained some noteriety as a tumbedor, and others were 

following his example. In February 2008, Juancho stole a shipment that was under 

the management of the Lorenzana family that belonged to the Sinaloa Federation. 

In March, he and 10 others were gunned down in a military-style strike in Zacapa, along the Honduran border. The Mexican Zetas conducted the assassination, 

demonstrating for the first time in Guatemala their prowess as a paramilitary rapid 

strike force and their willingness to kill even the highest rank of capos in Guatemala. 

This attack was followed in November 2008 by a Zeta assault against Sinaloa partners at a horse show in the north-central town of La Democracia that left 17 dead.

The rise of the tumbe precipitated the need for a firm response on the part of 

the Mexican cartels. This type of response was the specialty of the paramilitary Zeta 

cartel, which was originally organized and is largely trained by former special operations troops. The year 2008 marked the breakdown of a relatively peaceful, stable 

trafficking system, the emergence of violent contestation over Guatemalan territory 

and routes between Mexican cartels and their local networks and partners, and the 

pronounced entry into Guatemala of the Zetas.

As of this writing, this violence and contestation continues. The Zetas have managed, in a short period of time, to gain dominance over a key east-west route from 

Izabal through Alta Verapaz and Petén, with their operational core in and around 

Cobán. The Sinaloa Federation remains dominant in its traditional trafficking zones 

along the coast and in San Marcos. In recent months the most important zones of 

conflict have been in Huehuetenango and Quiché, with fighting between the Zetas 

and the Sinaloa group, and numerous local networks and groups associated with 

one or the other of these cartels.

This violent struggle among the cartels creates significant danger for the traditional capos, or transportistas, who have for decades managed criminal activity in 

certain regions of the country. These individuals and their families face decisions 

whether to align themselves with one or the other cartel, thus becoming potential 

targets for the other, or to seek to continue to work neutrally for various groups. 

At the same time, local networks are under increasing pressure from the 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

16

Guatemalan government, in partnership with the DEA, which in recent years has 

arrested several top capos. These include Juan “Chamalé” Ortiz, whose operations 

centered in San Marcos (arrested in March 2011); Walter Lorenzana, the head of 

the Lorenzana family of Zacapa and Izabal (arrested in June 2011); and the son and 

several members of the Overdick family and group (arrested in July 2011) of Alta 

Verapaz, who are closely associated with the Zetas.17 In some cases, such as Zacapa, 

these arrests of top leaders appear to have increased violence, as smaller groups 

and mid-level leaders compete for control over routes and for leadership within the 

network. In others, however, the removal of the capo has had little effect on local 

networks and smuggling operations. In no instance, unfortunately, is there any evidence that the arrest of these top-level criminals has slowed or disturbed at all the 

flow of illegal drugs and money across the region.18

2012–PRESENT:

THE ZETAS AND THE RISE OF SYNTHETIC DRUGS

The Sinaloa Federation and the Gulf Cartel, like other Mexican and the Colombian groups who shipped drugs through Guatemala before them, operated through 

businesslike partnerships and contracts with Guatemalan transportistas. These 

transportistas provided secure transport services because they had the best local 

intelligence regarding routes, local topography, and potential law enforcement 

operations. Because these transportista capos were also local community leaders 

and benefactors, operating through them had the advantage of maintaining legitimacy and acceptance for these activities in the eyes of the community. The legitimacy that local capos like Chamalé and the Lorenzanas have enjoyed in the nearby 

communities has been demonstrated by the protection that the communities have 

provided when law enforcement has attempted to arrest these leaders, and the 

protests they conduct in their support once they have been removed.19 The Sinaloa 

17 Julie López, “Nueve años de cacería para ocho narcos guatemaltecos” (three-part series), Plaza Pública, 17 May 2012; http://

www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/nueve-anos-de-caceria-para-ocho-narcos-guatemaltecos-i; http://www.plazapublica.com.gt

/content/nueve-anos-de-caceria-para-ocho-narcos-guatemaltecos-ii; and http://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/nueve-anos

-de-caceria-para-ocho-narcos-guatemaltecos-iii.

18 Julie López, “Nueve años de cacería”; and Steven Dudley, “El nuevo narcomapa de Guatemala: Menos Zetas, el mismos 

caos,” Insight Crime.org,16 September 2013, http://es.insightcrime.org/analisis/el-nuevo-narcomapa-de-guatemala-menos

-zetas-el-mismo-caos. 19 Rosmary González, “Manifestarán en solidaridad con la familia Lorenzana,” El Periodico, 24 July 2009; Oscar Herrera, 

“Bloqueos de carreteras en apoyo a los Lorenzana,” El Periodico, 29 July 2009; and Ronald Ochoa, “Caminata a favor de Juan 

Ortiz,” La Noticia Coatepeque, 1 April 2011.
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

17

Federation, the Gulf Cartel, and others were comfortable operating through local 

service providers of this sort because, in the beginning, these Mexican cartels grew 

similarly out of locally rooted criminal groups.

The Zetas have tended to operate differently, especially during their expansion into Guatemala in 2009–11. In contrast to other Mexican cartels, the Zetas 

are a criminal organization without geographic roots and are made up of individuals with no familial or regional ties upon which to base their loyalty.20 Because of 

their origin as Mexican special operations troops and their emphasis on recruiting 

Guatemalan special operations personnel, the Zetas’ structure, training, and tactics 

tend to be fundamentally military—especially special operations—in nature. This 

helps explain their extraordinary penchant for violence. Essentially, the original 

Zetas were trained killers who were entering the drug-trafficking business, instead 

of traffickers who from time to time had to kill.

During their first years in Guatemala, the Zetas did not tend to traffic product 

like their competitors by paying local providers and cutting deals with a patchwork 

of regional capos. Instead, the Zetas seemed to seek territorial control. They would 

penetrate a region and seize control by establishing intelligence, presenting offers 

and threats to whomever currently trafficked in the region, and committing violence—sometimes horrific violence—against those who would not subordinate their 

operations to them. Unlike traditional criminal organizations in Guatemala who 

have ties within local communities, seek accommodation with local political and 

community leaders, and operate under low risk of interference, the Zetas seemed 

to operate more by extorting, coercing, or killing local criminal groups until they 

capitulated. 

One prominent example was the May 2011 massacre and decapitation of 27 

workers at a farm outside of Los Cocos, a village near the Mexican border in Petén. 

The Zetas left messages in blood on nearby walls, written with the severed arms 

and legs of their victims. Strategic communication, via messages pinned to corpses, bedsheets bearing messages hung from highway overpasses, or spectacular 

acts of violence, were at that time a common element of Zeta operations.

Because of their different tactics, the impact of a Zeta presence on a local 

20 Among the most important questions about the Zetas is how they preserve loyalty, obedience, and effectiveness within 

their ranks among recruits from different countries and regions. Presumably, they achieve this through methods that include 

elements of extreme violence. For example, evidence indicates that Zeta members may consume drugs on a regular basis, 

which is often prohibited within other cartels and groups.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

18

community would be expected to differ from those of other Mexican criminal organizations. In 2010 and 2011, the label of Zetas inspired remarkable fear among 

Guatemalans who were not overly concerned about local criminal organizations, as 

our case studies show. The massacre in Petén seemed to signal prospects for widespread brutality. For instance, a city official in Gualán expressed his attitude toward 

local organizations and his fear of the Zetas in the following way: “Los señores are 

calm, and they don’t mess with you. But the Zetas, they are bad. If they come here, 

we are going to end up like Ciudad Juárez.”21 A restaurant owner in the town of Mayuelas in San Marcos was even more explicit: “Since the death of Juancho [León], 

the people fear the arrival of the Zetas. Los señores and their people always say the 

same thing: ‘You have to put up with us because we are the good guys, because 

the Zetas, they are indeed the bad guys.’ And the people think, ‘Better the devil you 

know . . .’ ”

Since 2011, however, the Zetas’ tactics in terms of the use of violence seem 

to have changed. The massacre in Petén has proved, at least through 2012, an 

aberration more than a signal of future tactics. The Guatemalan government 

moved more aggressively against the Zetas in Petén and other areas, and at least 

partly as a result the Zetas have kept a lower profile. Guatemala has not yet experienced the kind of open warfare among trafficking networks, and persistent sensationalist violence, that has plagued communities on or near trafficking routes 

in Mexico.

In 2010–13, the Zetas seemed more committed than their competitors (chiefly, the Sinaloa Federation) to the complete control of routes and networks. Where 

successful, chiefly across Alta Verapaz and Petén, the Zetas achieved control via a 

type of franchising arrangement with low-level, relatively unestablished local criminal groups.22 The Zetas tended to colonize territories by linking with local groups 

and obliging those groups to use the name “Zetas.” In exchange, the Zetas provided such goods as weapons, training, and resources for protection against local authorities. In some cases, the Zetas provided drugs for the groups to sell as payment. 

From that point on, the local groups were effectively franchises of the Zetas and 

paid the Zetas a percentage of their revenues from their local operations, which 

21 Los señores is a term commonly used to describe the circle of informal local elites. As we describe in the case studies, 

these individuals are often the heads of powerful local landowning and/or business families, community leaders and political 

bosses, and at the same time senior leaders of local criminal organizations.

22 García González, “Diagnóstico y escenarios de la violencia en México: entrevista con Eduardo Guerrero,” LetrasLibres, 14 

November 2012, www.letraslibres.com/revista/dossier/diagnostico-y-escenarios-de-la-violencia-en-mexico.
BORDER SECURITY, LOCAL POLITICS, AND NARCOTRAFFICKING IN GUATEMALA

19

often range far beyond drug trafficking or retail to include extortion, robberies, 

kidnapping, and hired killing.23

By 2014, however, the Zetas’ strategy seemed largely to have failed. Their 

use of spectacular violence, as well as their reputation for unbridled brutality in 

Mexico, led the Guatemalan government to target them for investigation and arrests.24 Also, their lack of close, longstanding ties with well-established Guatemalan networks and families likely left them more exposed than their chief Mexican 

competitor, the Sinaloa Federation, to local and national police and government 

action. Along with the arrests of several top Zeta leaders in Mexico and their weakening there, Guatemala’s actions seem to have reduced their influence and scope 

of operations in the country. 

In one sense, it was a positive development that after 2011 in Guatemala the 

Zetas chose to use violence less openly and frequently than they had in 2009–10. 

This suggests that government policies in Guatemala and Mexico to single out for 

focused attention violence and killings from the wider range of criminal activities 

(i.e., drug smuggling and production) were successful. Reducing violence made 

good business sense because it lowered the costs of having to stave off law enforcement actions. This logic may have come about too late, however, for the Zetas. 

Also, it appears that the exceptional fear the Zetas inspired in many Guatemalans 

led them to partner with the Sinaloa or other alternatives, complicating the Zetas’ 

purposes.25

Another important development in Guatemala since 2011 is the rise in the 

seizures of precursor chemicals (chemicals used in the manufacture of synthetic 

drugs such as methamphetamines) and discoveries of production labs for synthetic 

drugs. Recent seizures suggest that most of these chemicals enter Guatemala via 

maritime shipping, at times apparently under the eyes of authorities at state-run 

port facilities.26 It is unclear how much of these chemicals are entering the country; 

23 Ioan Grillo, “El fantasma de los Zetas” [The ghost of the Zetas], LetrasLibres, 3 November 2012, www.letraslibres.com/revista

/dossier/el-fantasma-de-los-zetas?page=full.

24 Dudley, “El nuevo narcomapa.”

25 Daniel Haering Keenan, “Impacto del Narcotráfico en el Ámbito Municipal de Guatemala,” ACTAS IV Jornadas de Estudios de 

Seguridad, Madrid, 22–24 May 2012, ed. Miguel Requena (Madrid: Instituto Universitario General Gutiérrez Mellado—UNED

2012), http://iugm.es/uploads/tx_iugm/ACTAS_IV_JORNADAS_DE_EST_DE_SEGURIDAD.pdf.

26 Claudia Palma, “Puerto Quetzal, la estructura que facilitó la entrada de precursors” [Quetzal Port: the structure that facilitated 

the entrance of precursors], El Periodico, 15 August 2012; and “PNC decomisa precursores químicos en Petén” [The National 

Civil Police seizes precursor chemicals in Petén], Siglo 21, 24 February 2012.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

20

experts believe only a small fraction of them have been discovered.27 One difficulty 

is to distinguish the chemicals destined for illegal use from those that are legally 

used for industrial purposes. According to Guatemalan analysts, the bulk of these 

chemicals most likely go to labs in Guatemala and Mexico operated by partners in 

the Sinaloa Federation. Thus far, the labs discovered have been much smaller than 

those discovered in Mexico, and analysts fear that the actual flows and operations 

are much larger than commonly assumed and could be well integrated into legal 

industrial facilities.28

27 Rodrigo Baires Quezada, “Investigación: drogas sintéticas: de país de paso a fabricante” [Investigation: synthetic drugs: 

from a transit country to a producer], El Periodico, 11 June 2012. 28 Ibid.
21

We are going to end up like Ciudad Juarez, with the drug traffickers taking over all the businesses. If that happens there, where the 

Mexican government is strong, just imagine what it will be like 

here. . . . The state is absent and people find work wherever they 

can. The business will continue and so will the violence. Oh well, 

the same thing is happening all over the country.

~Resident of Sayaxché

S

ayaxché is a relatively poor, isolated community in the flat forestlands of 

northern Guatemala that is undergoing rapid demographic change. Most residents interviewed for this study expressed dislike and distrust for the local 

government, and they complained about corruption. Few churches, community and 

municipal councils, and NGOs are active in this community, compared to more economically developed, urban areas of Guatemala. Drug trafficking and activities by 

international criminal organizations, such as the Zetas, are growing and overlapping 

with contraband activities that have always been a part of the lives of the local population. Yet, in Sayaxché the weakness of local institutions and of social capital means 

that the Zetas, the Lorenzana family, and other criminal organizations are able to 

operate in the region without having to accommodate themselves to the interests 

of the local groups, beyond the government. 

The presence of traffickers seems to have had some positive effects. Economic 

growth is evident, primarily in the zones closest to the border with Mexico. Private 

schools are expanding as a small but growing middle class can afford to send its 

children to town for education. The drug traffickers also provide a certain degree 

of protection from common delinquency. Nevertheless, the community anxiously 

watches the spreading presence of drug traffickers—particularly the Zetas—and the 

pull of ever more local residents into drug smuggling and related businesses.

Chapter 2

SAYAXCHÉ
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

22

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY

Petén is the largest department in Guatemala, larger than Belize or El Salvador. Its 

roads cut from Belize to Mexico. Its extensive, largely unpatrolled rivers and lakes 

connect national borders with several communities. Much of its vast airspace and 

territory lacks state presence or control. These features have served to convert Petén 

into a strategic zone for transnational criminal activities. Officials have identified 

18 clandestine border crossing points for vehicles along the Mexican border: 16 in 

San Andrés and 2 in La Libertad. The La Pasión and Usumacinta Rivers, upon which 

Sayaxché is an important port, are used extensively for drug and human trafficking.

Sayaxché is a city of around 30,000 residents, located in the southeastern part 

of Petén. Because of its history as a border crossing point, the community has relatively strong ties with its Mexican counterparts. Sayaxché has seen a constant flow of 

migrants who arrive from all over the country. The Q’eqchí ethnic group, in particular, 

has migrated into the area in significant numbers, and the other significant section 

of the population are Ladinos who have recently arrived from eastern departments, 

such as Zacapa and Chiquimula. 

Photo courtesy of Miguel Castillo

A sign marking private land outside of Sayaxché and prohibiting entry to “institutions” (e.g., the 

government, NGOs).
SAYAXCHÉ

23

In recent years, the Q’eqchí have managed to establish themselves as an influential group to the degree that in the September 2011 elections, the citizens of 

Sayaxché elected Rodrigo Pop, of Q’eqchí origin, as their first indigenous mayor. 

His principal task is the overhaul of a local government that has been weakened by 

allegations of corruption under the previous municipal administration. With this 

transition, local traffickers and criminal organizations may have lost an important 

ally in the previous mayor, as their relationship with the new mayor is uncertain. 

Though the local economy includes small-scale trafficking, corn cultivation, 

and transportation and other services, Sayaxché’s most important formal economic 

activities are the cultivation of African palm in the municipality’s southern sector and 

the raising of livestock in the north. The principal source of formal employment for 

local residents are the four African palm businesses—which together occupy almost 

30,000 hectares of land—around which have grown a number of hamlets, forming 

nodes of commercial activity. The growth of African palm production, ranching, and 

other services in the municipality have not resulted in a substantial improvement 

in the quality of life for the residents of Sayaxché and surrounding areas, however.

MIGRATION, LAND OWNERSHIP, AND A WEAK ECONOMY

BASED ON A SYSTEM OF EXTRACTION 

Sayaxché is and always has been isolated from the rest of the country. Its population 

tends to ebb and flow in response to the cycles of extractive economic activity. The 

city today is made up of communities of unrelated origins, histories, and customs, 

along with new generations born locally. This diverse community is similar in one 

regard in that most of its residents arrived in the rural, undeveloped region with the 

desire to own their own land and to overcome poverty. 

Petén, in general, and Sayaxché, in particular, provide examples of the pressure surrounding the issue of landownership in Guatemala. The process of locating, 

assigning, and legalizing land has passed through various stages under several 

governments, both military and civilian, with varying policy objectives and mixed 

results. Over the decades, numerous national institutions and programs have tried 

to resolve this situation, including the Guatemalan Army, the Promotion and Development of Petén program, the National Institute for Agrarian Transformation, the 

Program for the Protection of the Tropical Forests of Petén, the Ministry of Agriculture, the National Fund for Peace, and the National Land Fund. 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

24

The efforts of these overlapping institutions, however, have been frustrated 

by the lack of common criteria for designing the selection process for beneficiaries, 

for technical assistance, and for the distribution of land. For example, the promotion and development program transferred thousands of people from Guatemala’s 

southern coast into Petén, while the fund for peace encouraged the mobilization of 

complete populations originating from the department of Alta Verapaz, principally 

from Raxruhá, Fray Bartolomé de las Casas, and Chisec. For its part, the army organized the majority of the current communities according to criteria based on the 

army’s perspective (i.e., national security) and obligated displaced communities to 

group together in order to control their movements and to prevent them from providing logistical support to the guerrillas. 

The process of land parcel identification, distribution, and acquisition was 

improvised and chaotic. In the southern sector of the municipality, most residents 

interviewed stated that they arrived in Sayaxché on their own and that the distribution of land was carried out through informal agreements made among themselves. 

Later, “the institutions” arrived to make adjustments and, above all, to legalize the 

properties.

More recently, when African palm producers arrived and offered to buy the 

land, the inhabitants had not yet developed feelings of personal attachment to the 

land. Moreover, they tended to think that it was impossible to make a profit off of 

the land and that it would be better to sell it. Contrary to some accounts that describe 

landowners as forced to sell, residents in the area speak of “a fever” to get rid of 

lands and to use the money gained to establish other businesses or invade land in 

other sections of Petén. 

This uncontrolled process of land invasion or squatting, acquisition, sale, and 

further invasion, which continues today, facilitates illicit trafficking and crime in the 

area. For example, although no confirmed data exists, community leaders we interviewed agreed that the current invaders of the Laguna del Tigre reserve come from 

the southern sector of Sayaxché, and that in several cases criminal groups encouraged them to invade the land to facilitate drug smuggling by burning and clearing 

the forest areas. A local farmer described it in the following way:

The land no longer produced. Various products were tried, but the land 

wasn’t suitable, and that which was invested was lost. A few obtained a 

good harvest but there was no market; when the opportunity arrived to 
SAYAXCHÉ

25

1

 Manuel Ordóñez, “El narcotráfico y la deforestación amenazan la biodiversidad” [Drug trafficking and deforestation threaten 

biodiversity], InfoSurHoy, 3 May 2011. See also Kendra McSweeney et al., “Drug Policy as Conservation Policy: NarcoDeforestation,” Science 343, no. 6170 (2014): 489. 

sell the recently legalized land, many people made deals. . . . I didn’t 

have land, but I saw how the others were selling. . . . They were filled with 

dreams; they’d never seen so much money, and they thought it would 

last forever. Some left, and others stayed, spending their money badly; 

now they stay farming on their land, except in reality it’s no longer their 

land, it belongs to the palms.

A recent article, quoting the Technical Office on Biodiversity, by the National 

Council on Protected Areas of Guatemala reported that in the Laguna del Tigre reserve, the greatest problem is the illegal extraction of lumber because “the drug 

traffickers clear-cut wide swaths of land in the forests to create clandestine landing 

strips used by planes for transporting drugs.”1

 According to the report, Guatemalan 

authorities found around 50 clandestine landing strips for small planes transporting drugs and that community leaders supposedly paid by the drug cartels urge 

communities of farmers to invade and burn large extensions of the forest. In order 

to guard the ecological Laguna del Tigre reserve in Petén, the army created in 2010 

a 250-soldier Forest Infantry Battalion, also known as the “Green Battalion.”

As time passes, the issue of local landownership and property regulations will 

remain central to the drug-trafficking situation and the manner in which drug traffickers operate in the region. Guatemala is a trafficking corridor, and the acquisition 

and invasion of land within departments is critical to the operations of criminal organizations in the region. 

Drug-trafficking operations have penetrated Petén through massive purchases 

of properties. Criminal organizations and their partners, or networks, exert pressure 

on the landowners of Petén and other border departments to take over ownership 

of their properties for the purpose of storing the drugs. Drug traffickers will offer a 

good price for the land, and at the same time suggest that refusal will most likely lead to death. Once acquired, these properties are used for money laundering 

through “front” activities like livestock, the construction of storage warehouses and 

airstrips, and as places of refuge for criminal leaders. One report described this situation in the following way: 

The Mendozas, who have numerous properties in Petén and Izabal, very 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

26

politely obligate the land owners to leave them their farms so that they 

could pass through them. In the same way, one must ask the drug traffickers for permission if one wants to buy a property near theirs, in order 

not to disturb them. One land owner from Petén had to go to negotiate 

with the now deceased Juancho León in order to increase the size of his 

farm. León told him straight out that it wasn’t in his best interest to buy 

that land because in one way or another the land would end up being 

his (León[’s]) since it was already right next to his area for moving the 

drugs. . . . In other cases, the owners have been less fortunate because 

upon arriving at their farms, they find them already taken by the mafias 

which, being heavily armed and sometimes protected by the police, inhibit them from entering their own land.2

CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL CAPITAL 

Sayaxché’s lower reserve of social capital is related to the precarious nature of its 

local political institutions and its isolation from the rest of the country, factors that 

weaken the community’s identity and its capacity for self-organization. Residents 

express little confidence in their local government. The former mayor, Avi Maguin 

Cifuentes, is widely believed to have guaranteed certain drug-trafficking groups impunity from state actions.3

In addition to the distrust between the population and the municipal government, the national government has only a minimal local presence. The Ministry of Education provides public schoolteachers who live in the community, but the 

Ministry of Health has only a few community centers and those are inadequately 

equipped, with no locally resident personnel. 

Residents do express satisfaction with the recent Mi Familia Progresa (My Family Progresses) program (implemented under the previous Colom administration).4

According to some, Mi Familia Progresa is the first time that the national government has given them anything. They complain, however, that the allocation of funds 

and benefits are biased. Many who are truly in need do not receive benefits, and 

2

 “Narcos obligan a finqueros a venderles sus propiedades,” Prensalibre.com, 12 December 2007.

3 Grupos de poder en Petén: Territorio, política y negocios [Powerful groups in Petén: territory, politics, and business] (2011). 

Available at Insightcrime.org or at http://isla.igc.org/GuatemlElctns/the-peten-report.pdf.

4

 The primary objective of this program is to improve the quality of life for children younger than 15 years of age in the areas 

of health, education, and nutrition.
SAYAXCHÉ

27

some of the promoters charge a commission for handing over payments or supplies. 

In Sayaxché, there is no civic institution capable of mobilizing or constructing 

agendas to promote positive changes in the municipality and surrounding areas. 

The community organization COCODE is small and its leadership has remained the 

same for years, in spite of the arrival of new inhabitants. In some communities near 

the town, the auxiliary mayor or the president of COCODE has held those positions 

for more than 20 years. The COMUDE was created in 2005, but it has lost its validity 

due to a lack of relations with the mayor’s office. 

Catholic and evangelical churches are active in Sayaxché, but unlike in other 

cases they are said to have little impact in civic or political affairs and are not seen 

as agents of change or support for the communities. The local Catholic church has 

only a few available priests, though the Sayaxché parish is charged with mobilizing 

throughout all the villages, some of which are located on dirt roads or footpaths 

more than 60 miles away from its center. 

Few other outside organizations provide assistance to the communities of 

Sayaxché. The most relevant case is the community of San Fernando, where there 

is a permanent project of the National Coordinator of Small Farm Worker Organizations, which provides corn seed to each producer who commits to paying back 

100 pounds from his or her harvest. They have also provided training activities to 

the local COCODE, and the most outstanding leaders have travelled to learn of the 

experiences of other small farmers in El Salvador and Nicaragua. Also, the project 

Passion of the U.S. group Christian Children’s Fund visits occasionally and provides 

child foster care activities.

Environmental and agrarian NGOs are more active in the community, though 

most of these organizations are headquartered in the central zone of the department. Most important among these is Petén’s Apostolic Vicariate Pastoral Work program, which works on the diversification of export-oriented agricultural products 

and offers legal advice for people and communities with land issues. The Indigenous Women’s Defense Office also provides legal services to families. 

ILLICIT TRAFFICKING IN AND AROUND SAYAXCHÉ 

Smuggling has always been a part of the economic activity in Sayaxché and surrounding areas. Traditionally, the smuggling of grains, sugar, and other foodstuffs 

has been most common, but smuggling routes and operations once established 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

28

can be used to transport virtually anything. Residents report that “everything passes 

[through here], not only grains.” It has become common, primarily at night, to see 

several 4 x 4 vehicles with armed individuals bringing and carrying away sacks of 

goods, most likely drugs, from different areas of the town or surrounding communities. 

The options for community members who live and work along the river are 

limited, in terms of avoiding contact with narcotraffickers. Either they join the work 

of the criminal groups or keep silent and pretend that they see nothing. One resident described the dynamic of the drug-trafficking process in this way:

The transfer is fast because it is loaded onto big twin engine launches 

that head up river. Remember that the Pasión [River] goes to Usumacinta and to Mexico. Those who have become involved in that have done 

okay but it is risky, not because the police might catch you, as it’s been 

a long time since we’ve seen an agent of the National Civil Police, but 

because when another group wants to steal your shipment, you’re the 

first ones they look for, and even if you give them information, they’ll 

still kill you.5

Photo courtesy of Miguel Castillo

Informal crossing on the Rio de la Pasión near Sayaxché.

5 Grupos de poder en Petén.
SAYAXCHÉ

29

In Petén, a complex web of interests controls all kinds of licit and illicit businesses in the region. These networks are typically based on kinship ties with a strong sense 

of collective attachment to the family, the tribe, and the local area. Sayaxché is a typical 

case of the partnerships or alliances that often exist among municipal authorities, 

drug-trafficking groups, and other illegal businesses—all within the context of ongoing territorial disputes and transitions between different organized criminal groups.6

As recent research has shown, the infiltration of organized crime into government structures occurs chiefly in Petén through arrangements and agreements 

among families involved in local and international networks, thereby maintaining 

and protecting local drug-trafficking activities. The incentives go both ways as politicians and respectable “leading” families garner some of the profits and laundering 

that come from drug smuggling, and in return criminal groups receive protection 

from judicial or police actions over which these people and families have influence. 

In practice, these tend not to be one-off arrangements, but rather elements of a 

long-term, often cross-generational symbiotic relationship between the local political sector and organized criminal networks.7

In Sayaxché, the relationship between the community and the activities of 

criminal groups is less close than in the other cases. This is essentially due to the 

fact that criminal groups’ close relations with, and influence within, the local government provide them with the capacity to operate without the need for mediation 

from local community leaders or agents. Unlike in other cases, the criminal groups 

do not need protection or support for their illegal activities from local citizens. Therefore, there is no particular interest in forming parallel structures with the central and 

local governments to provide goods and services to gain the support of the local 

population for their activities. Drug-trafficking operations are basically business enclaves with a border mentality that function without ties to the community. 

Similarly, the inhabitants of Sayaxché and surrounding areas expect little from 

their legal authorities. The relationship of complicity, especially the tolerance of the 

National Police toward the criminal groups, has generated resistance and mistrust 

in the population toward the national government and local government institutions. Interviews indicate a general collective perception that those who hold actual 

power in the area are the criminal groups, not the formal authorities or institutions. 

6

 Ibid.

7

 Ibid.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

30

ECONOMIC AND SOCIAL IMPACTS

OF ORGANIZED CRIME IN SAYAXCHÉ

For the most part, residents of Sayaxché do not report a substantial improvement 

over recent years in the quality of their lives. Nevertheless, it is possible to identify 

some positive trends in the situations of some groups and zones that cannot be 

explained solely by income generated from the cultivation of African palm or sugarcane or by traditional (i.e., nondrug) contraband. The growth of demand for private 

schools is one example. 

As shown in table 2, school matriculation has increased rapidly, primarily in 

public schools at the primary and preschool levels, as well as in private schools at 

the primary and high school levels. According to some, among the possible causes 

for the increase was the establishment of large-scale production of African palm in 

Sayaxché, which involved a significant proportion of the population. With this new 

income, more residents could afford to send their sons and daughters to school. But 

evidence from interviews with community members and with officials at the departmental government indicate that, in reality, much of this money is likely the result of 

collateral benefits associated with drug trafficking, especially the gains seen in the 

smallest communities located along the border with Mexico. 

For example, here is how a boatman in the community of San José Caribe 

characterized this change:

Table 2. 

School matriculation in Sayaxché (number of students)

Level 1994 2002 2009

Bilingual Preschool 457 556 584

Preschool 88 1,057 2,727

Primary 5,436 11,969 18,291

Primary for Adults 25 87 67

Middle School 174 819 2,455

High School 0 381 841

TOTAL 6,180 14,869 24,965

Source: Based on Guatemalan Ministry of Education Statistics. 
SAYAXCHÉ

31

8

 Sibylla Brodzinsky and Sara Miller Llana, “Latin America’s Middle Class Grows, but with a Tenuous Grasp on Status,” Christian 

Science Monitor, 20 May 2011, www.csmonitor.com/World/Americas/2011/0520/Latin-America-s-middle-class-grows-but

-with-a-tenuous-grasp-on-status.

Before, only the children of the large cattlemen would cross the river 

(Usumacinta) and go to Benemérito to study, because here there was 

nothing. Now there are many more going to the satellite TV high school 

or they cross the river. The reason? There is more money, without a doubt. 

. . . All of a sudden others have arrived with pockets full of money, but we 

don’t get involved with them because they are dedicated to transporting 

other things. I promise not all of us are involved in that, because sooner 

or later it ends badly. Truly it is better to be poor but honorable.

Officials and residents in Sayaxché point to the proliferation of private schools 

and university extensions as manifestations of an emerging middle class that benefits at least in part from local revenues generated by drug trafficking but now is 

demanding goods that the Guatemalan state has not had the ability to provide.8

 An 

educator we interviewed stated it this way: 

In the municipal capitol, education has grown in recent years at an 

incredible rate. There is even a private school that has almost a thousand students. How is this possible? Well, for sure, the people, especially those in the border villages, have more money and can give 

motorcycles and cars to their kids to come here, or they send them 

as boarders during the week. In the village “El Pato,” they now have 

two public schools, one large and one small. There was no longer any 

room in the one, even with double sessions. It won’t be long before 

they put in a private school because there are people who can pay for 

it. As you see, we already have two Internet cafés, and they are full all 

day long.

This new prosperity seems most pronounced in the smallest communities, aldeas, located along the river bank and closer to the border with Mexico. These are 

the communities most closely involved with river transport and smuggling. Whereas normal contraband activity (e.g., grains, sugar, etc.) provides only a subsistence 

level of profit, today’s incomes in these villages seem to support full-time schooling 

and new construction. Community residents point to this pattern as evidence that 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

32

the municipality’s new, relative prosperity must be associated with drug trafficking, 

not traditional activities.

But the impact of drug-trafficking activity on the region is not only economic. 

In addition to situations in which incomes from drug-trafficking activity are generating prosperity, there are cases in which they also subsidize services that the state is 

not able to offer, such as local security. In Sayaxché, residents describe episodes of 

“social cleansing” by criminal groups when the need arises, particularly when gang 

members appear on the streets. It is a situation that, in the end, residents seem to 

perceive as beneficial, although also worrisome. According to one local merchant,

the presence of those people inhibits delinquency. You can see that there 

are very few police officers and they stay in the capitol. If it weren’t for 

the guards/patrols [las guardias] in the villages, the delinquency would 

create havoc.

Overall, the entrenched drug and human trafficking operations, their expansion in recent years, and the growing violence associated with them as new groups 

become involved cause immediate concern to the residents of Sayaxché. They perceive themselves on their own to manage these new developments, given the corPhoto courtesy of Miguel Castillo

New development—roofs, satellites dishes, new building—in a town near Sayaxché on the Mexican 

border.
SAYAXCHÉ

33

ruption of the local government and the lack of effective national police. As in many 

rural Guatemalan villages, vigilantism is their best response to small, individual 

threats like thieves or “delinquents.” But they fear that against large, well-armed, 

brutal groups like the Zetas their only response is to avoid them or seek accommodation when they must.

RECENT TRENDS

Petén was one of the departments of Guatemala most affected by the aggressive 

entry of the Zetas in 2009–11, which peaked with the massacre of 27 farm workers 

at Los Cocos in May 2011. In the months following that massacre, the Guatemalan 

government issued curfews and increased the presence of the military in key cities 

throughout Petén. Since then, the Zetas have maintained and grown their local operations, but unlike many expected, their presence has not increased dramatically 

the levels of violence in the region. In the Sayaxché area, concern over drug violence 

has subsided, while land conflicts with African palm producers have become a focus 

of rising public attention. 

Although relatively quiet in their operations, the Zetas’ network has succeeded 

in supplanting the traditional Mendoza trafficking network in the region. After the 

massacre at Los Cocos, which was part of a series of killings aimed at the Mendoza 

family, members of the family left their homes in Petén. The government’s capture 

of Otoniel “El Loco” Turcios Marroquín in 2010, who was working with the Zetas, 

proved a long-lasting blow to the Mendoza family network. At present, most analysts 

believe the Zetas have scared off or, in most cases, co-opted the local trafficking networks in Petén and Alta Verapaz.9

9

 Julie López, “The Decline of Guatemala’s Drug Dynasty,” Plaza Pública, 7 June 2011, www.insightcrime.org/news-analysis

/plaza-publica-the-decline-of-guatemalas-drug-dynasty.
34

The people are afraid that the Zetas may come. Los señores and their 

people always say the same thing: “you have to put up with us because we are the good guys, because the Zetas, they are indeed the 

bad guys.” And the people think, “Better the devil that you know . . . ” 

~A merchant from the village of Mayuelas, outside of Gualán

T

he case of Gualán illustrates the benefits and costs of the increase in drug 

trafficking. Gualán is developing rapidly, especially through the production 

of export-ready tomatoes. It is evident, however, that much of the money is 

tied to drug trafficking as well. In spite of several active local civic institutions, the 

community’s social capital is poor. The mayor is perceived to be a defender of local interests against a predatory federal government, and a supporter of the status 

quo, rather than a reliable leader and public servant. For decades, Gualán has seen 

exceptional violence, and it is presently experiencing a further decline in security 

due to drug trafficking, even as the middle class expands. Instead of the police, los 

señores linked to local criminal organizations have traditionally been in charge of 

security and of keeping the streets safe from common delinquency. For many in the 

community, they represent the best local defense against the much worse Mexican 

cartels, and above all, the Zetas. 

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY

Gualán is a municipality in the department of Zacapa, located on a highway in eastern Guatemala near the Honduran border and the Caribbean coast. Beginning in 

1961, this municipality was the scene of confrontations between the Rebel Armed 

Forces (Fuerzas Armadas Rebeldes) and the Guatemalan Army, which was based in 

the municipal capitol of Zacapa and in Morales, Izabal. Beginning in 1966, many 

Gualantecos accused of being guerrilla sympathizers were “disappeared” by death 

Chapter 3

GUALÁN
GUALÁN

35

squads organized under the so-called Mano Blanca (White Hand) movement, presumably under the direction of a senator of that era named Oliverio Castañeda, a 

native of the municipality. 

The Gualán region is a traditional agricultural zone, growing local food crops 

and, more importantly, coffee beans. In recent years, however, the city has grown 

quickly from a population of around 40,000 in 2002 to more than 50,000 today. 

This growth has been driven in large part by a steadily increasing demand for labor 

in the cultivation of tomatoes and other agriculture, commercial service, and construction. The trafficking of drugs and other goods, and other criminal activity, is also 

perceived to be on the rise.

Gualán and Zacapa are among Guatemala’s most violent cities and departments. The ownership and public display of weapons (machetes, knives, and firearms of all types) and the use of violence to settle disputes are norms deeply entrenched in the local culture. In 2010, the department of Zacapa experienced 76 

homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the third highest homicide rate among all of 

Guatemala’s 22 departments. Gualán itself registered 85 homicides per 100,000 

inhabitants.1

 

Trade liberalization in the 1980s hurt the region’s farmers, particularly corn 

producers, driving them to migrate or seek other work. Until the early 2000s, the 

largest employers in the area were the coffee haciendas, especially those located in 

the neighboring municipality of La Unión. A critical drop in the price of coffee beans 

that year led to the financial ruin and closure of many haciendas, however, forcing 

a wave of families to emigrate to the United States. This situation changed the local 

economy, as an official from the mayor’s office in Gualán describes:

Because of the crisis, people started going to the [United] States. People 

went to Los Angeles, New York, Philadelphia. In those years, village festivals were paid for by the remittances.

Remittances sparked economic growth and financial activity in the region, 

which introduced new irrigation systems and generated a broad shift toward the 

production of tomatoes on lands previously used for corn. Tomatoes then became 

the region’s principal crop. Along with the spread of tomato production in Gualán, 

construction of new housing has increased tremendously, including the construc1

 According to data from the National Civil Police and population projects of the National Statistics Institute (2010).
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

36

tion of condominiums on the outskirts of the municipal capitol and in nearby villages such as Mayuelas, Shin Shin, Juan Ponce, and Guaranjá.

This rise in tomato production generated a flurry of land sales and purchases. 

According to residents, nearly all the properties changed owners, and a high proportion of the land now is in the hands of people linked to drug trafficking, who had the 

most resources at the time. Afterward, a production restructuring process was begun 

that centered on the reactivated Oaxaca irrigation system. This further increased the 

availability of money for the cultivation of tomatoes.2

POLITICS AND SOCIAL CAPITAL IN THE COMMUNITY

In 2001, Juan José Mejía Rodríguez was elected mayor of Gualán.He was reelected mayor in 2004 by the Gran Alianza Nacional or “Grand National Party” and later 

reelected for a third term in 2011. According to interviews, most citizens of Gualán 

rate Mejía Rodríguez’s municipal management as average; the community is of 

the opinion that, while he may not have spearheaded important projects, neither 

has he been involved in acts of corruption, as is frequently the case in neighboring 

municipalities. The mayor’s performance must be seen in the context of a region in 

which local politicians generally seek some form of endorsement from the domiPhoto courtesy of Miguel Castillo

New financial services and other businesses in Gualán.

2

 At the time this investigation was carried out, there were no claims of money laundering in banking institutions in the municipality, although informants think that it must be occurring.
GUALÁN

37

3 Juan José Mejía Rodriguez’s 26-year-old son, Luis Fernando Mejía Monterrosa, was murdered on the road to San Juan, near 

Colonia El Rodeo, by individuals trying to steal his car. But, as is common, many informants believe that other factors were 

involved in the motive and accuse the mayor of being tied to the Lorenzanas. 

nant drug-trafficking groups (e.g., campaign financing), however.3 These endorsements usually entail an understanding that under no circumstances will municipal 

actions interfere with smuggling operations. In terms of local politics, it is almost 

unheard of to show opposition to the criminal groups in charge of drug smuggling. 

This presents a situation analogous to the traditional relationship between local 

governments and the economic elite in the coffee and livestock farming regions 

of Central America. According to local political norms in this region, keeping one’s 

position in the municipal government, the administrative body of the municipality, 

implies understanding that one must maintain an attitude of cooperation or neutrality toward trafficking.

In Gualán, economic dynamism has not surmounted the traditional lack of 

organization that characterizes the municipality. The region is bereft of civic processes for consensus building aimed at creating agendas that seek the common 

good. It is virtually impossible to find the issues of drug smuggling, los señores, 

and the effects of their related activities on citizens’ security on any kind of public 

agenda.

Local businesspeople may belong to the chapter of the chamber of commerce, but there are no analogous workers’ organizations. Only three government 

agencies are active in Gualán, working on issues of health, education, and social 

cohesion. There are three NGOs in the municipality: Siglo XXI (Twenty-first Century), Asociación Guatemala (Guatemala Association), and Corazones en Movimiento 

(Hearts in Motion) that carry out programs for fostering impoverished children. 

There is also an Association for the Protection of the Sub-Basin of the Los Achiotes 

River. There are no international NGOs active in the municipality.

The most noteworthy municipal organizations continue to be those that resulted from the Development Council System: COCODES in the villages, and more 

recently, the COMUDES. The antecedent to the COCODES in the municipality were 

the Pro-Improvement Committees that played an important role as intermediaries 

between the communities and the state. As was the case in several other municipalities, the mayor and the municipal “corporation” of Gualán were reluctant players and delayed the organization of the COMUDE as much as possible for fear that 

it would become a source of power independent from local government structure. 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

38

Ultimately, however, the municipality’s need for access to international aid projects 

and resources—which require such a structure as a prerequisite—obligated the municipality to cooperate with the organization of the COMUDE. To date, the COMUDE 

has not become an independent force, and its relationship with the municipal corporation is cordial because the communities find that it is preferable to get along 

with the municipality rather than risk losing projects and resources. This issue was 

seen in the following light by a store owner in the neighborhood of La Estación: 

Although we’re not free from problems, the people, especially in the 

villages, continue to see the mayor as the maximum authority and as 

the defender of the municipality in dealing with the central government. For that reason, the people support his external management. 

But the flip side is that the mayor has to be capable of bringing in benefits from the outside; if he can’t, then he is ineffective.

The only active agricultural organization is focused on the management of 

the regional irrigation system and it has little interest in other kinds of activities or 

political lobbying, even though its members are the principal beneficiaries of the 

municipality’s economic growth. 

THE COMMUNITY AND CONTRABAND: 

“TOMATOES OF GOLD”?

Gualán is traditionally an agricultural region with rampant smuggling activities 

due to its proximity to the border. The longstanding weakness of controls on both 

sides of the border have helped Gualán to survive periodic crises caused by crop 

failures, droughts, political instability, and war.4

Trafficking is a flexible, market-driven activity. For example, Honduran subsidies for coffee production have stimulated smuggling of poor-grade Guatemalan coffee into Honduras, coffee which in turn is exported as Honduran product. 

Criminal activity related to smuggling drugs to Mexico is conducted on top of this 

fluid network of routes and service providers as almost a natural development. 

Residents of Gualán and surrounding areas learned long ago how to live with the 

4

 According to one anecdote from the interviews, during the coup d’état against Zelaya in Honduras, and before the decision of 

the Colom administration to close the border to local merchants, the possibility that the closure might last a long time resulted 

in such a high quantity of products being sent over the border into Honduras that the town was left literally empty. 
GUALÁN

39

presence of criminal networks, and there is a relatively sophisticated general understanding about the ways and means of drug smuggling and its impact on the 

community. It is widely understood, for example, that drug money is laundered 

through tomato production, in urban infrastructure, in new gas stations, in the financial system, and virtually everywhere. Yet residents interviewed for this study 

asserted that no one is interested in resolving the problem. The extent of criminal 

activity and its contribution to the local economy and politics are well known in 

Gualán and in the national capital. The authorities are well aware, but they have 

never within anyone’s memory acted against the problem beyond the occasional 

arrest of a drug kingpin or two. As one merchant stated,

For example, my sister works as a cashier in Mazatlán, but she had to get 

out fast because on one occasion she asked too many questions of one 

supposed client and he threatened to kill her because of it. Then we realized the name was of a town in Sinaloa, and we understood what it was all 

about. Later, she told us that not all the transactions are registered. Now, 

you tell me if the authorities in Guatemala City don’t know about this.

Interviews with departmental and city financial officers indicate that it is very 

difficult to determine, or even estimate, the extent to which activities connected 

Photo courtesy of Miguel Castillo

Example of a new gas station in Gualán. Such stations are a common means of laundering illicit 

profits.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

40

to tomato production, urban development, and the local proliferation of private 

primary schools is linked to drug money. One resident described the situation in 

the following way: 

The cultivation of tomatoes has grown a lot. Perhaps this comes from 

money laundering, but the banks also help out as well. In these cases, 

it’s hard to distinguish legal money from bad money. But I can tell you 

that the majority of tomato farmers are honorable people, although the 

money they use may not be, and although they may not necessarily be 

the true owners of the land.

One National Civil Police commissioner commented on the relative urban 

boom in the municipality: 

Well, yes, there are many new houses that, if you look at them, you can 

see that they don’t come from good money. Many people here are involved in questionable things. They build huge houses, God save them, 

but without a denouncement, we can’t do anything.

The proliferation of private schools cannot be attributed solely to the activity and 

prosperity generated by tomatoes, or to the impact of such initiatives as PRONADE 

and Mi Familia Progresa.5

 As one instructor commented,

It used to be that everything ended with primary school and very few 

were interested in going on to middle school. The truly rich used to go 

to Zacapa or to Puerto Barrios to study [for] the last years of high school 

and eventually [go] to the university. Today things have changed, and 

almost all aspire to finish their education. This costs money and it’s coming from somewhere. Before, almost no one came from the villages to 

study at the middle school or the private schools. Now they come in their 

own cars and mopeds—the very cream of the crop come in pickups. That’s 

what causes all the traffic in the afternoon and [accounts for] the high 

number of eateries.

Gualán and surrounding areas have indeed seen an impressive rise in school 

matriculation on all levels. Over 13 years, the school matriculation went from 6,500 

5

 PRONADE stands for the National Program for Self-Teaching for Educational Development (Programa Nacional de Autogestión para el Desarrollo Educativo).
GUALÁN

41

students to almost 25,000 in 2009, according to data from the Ministry of Education.6

 Programs such as PRONADE and Mi Familia Progresa resulted in almost total 

attendance for school-age children. What stands out in this dynamic, however, is the 

growth in the number of private schools for the children of people who feel that the 

public schools do not meet their aspirations. 

Local bank officers cannot provide precise estimations about the amount to 

which local income and spending accounts “don’t add up,” but like other residents 

they note the clear discrepancy. One banker in Gualán stated that 

only were they . . . cultivating tomatoes of gold could the movement of 

money here in Gualán be explained. And it’s not from the usual contraband because the families who dedicate themselves to that have always 

done so and the impact has already been established.

LOS SEÑORES AND SECURITY IN GUALÁN

The emergence of drug smuggling as a central element of the social and economic 

life of Gualán has also implied the rise in the influence of los señores, with whom 

no one wants to become involved, and of whom no one wishes to speak publicly. 

Los señores are figures from the community from diverse origins who, because of 

their family backgrounds (as landowners and/or as military commissioners during 

the civil war) or political or community activism, were successful in cultivating important loyalties. Their knowledge of the community, their leadership over these 

communities, and in many cases their ability (and willingness) to cooperate with 

the military to provide security in the region during the armed conflict, provided 

them privileged positions as sources of intelligence and logistical operations for the 

smuggling of drugs. The relationship between los señores, their illicit activities, and 

the community is described as follows by a local police official: 

Well, what can I tell you. . . . There is a lot of drug trafficking in the area, 

and we can’t do much about it. If you don’t get involved with los señores 

and their people, then they don’t get involved with you. For that reason, 

when there are operations [against them] we get worried, because los 

señores get angry and then take it out on us. They come and shoot up the 

6

 Ministerio de Educación de Guatemala (Guatemala Ministry of Education), Anuario Estadístico de la Educación 1994–2007

[Annual education statistics 1994–2007], Guatemala http://estadistica.mineduc.gob.gt/anuario/2007/main.html: 2007. 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

42

station or the radio patrols. Up until now it hasn’t gone beyond that, but 

one never knows. . . . Consequently, we don’t do operations without a 

direct order from the capitol. Not only is nothing accomplished by those 

operations, but one ends up getting into problems.7

The perception of an economic bonanza, accentuated by drug-trafficking activity, has strengthened the collective impression that “there’s money” in Gualán. This 

helps to explain Gualán’s recent increase in violent acts in the form of assaults, kidnappings, revenge killings, and mob violence. The role of the criminal networks, and 

los señores, is dual. On the one hand, groups fighting for control of drug-smuggling 

routes raise the frequency and intensity of violence in the region. On the other hand, 

los señores and their people make some selective efforts to control local violence 

and crime by conducting “social cleansing” operations against delinquent groups 

or gangs. Here is how a local police commissioner described this type of operation: 

They say that gangs from Zacapa were behind the extortions. And they say 

that los señores killed three or four delinquents and the rest went away, 

but one doesn’t really know the truth. There was a lot of talk about extortions, but we never got any formal reports. Then various kids showed up 

dead. They say that los señores involved in drugs killed them to clean up 

the zone, but as for us, it’s better if we don’t even get involved.

One local merchant offered a similar account:

The number of robberies increased, and the police didn’t do anything. 

The robbers came from Zacapa or from Morales. So, people stopped going out in the street because they didn’t know what might happen to 

them. Last year they said that los señores had established a curfew for 

nine o’clock, but in reality, it was to establish order and “disappear” those 

responsible (the robbers).

This social cleansing that the public attributes to los señores in the absence 

of police action seems to reinforce the local attitude that having los señores active 

7 In this regard, the zone was dominated by the Lorenzano family group. Some versions reveal that, particularly after the capture of the “patriarch” Waldemar Lorenzana, the rest of the gang mobilized in the mountains of the neighboring municipality 

of La Unión and at properties in Jocotán, Camotán, and Olopa (Chiquimula), taking advantage of the proximity to Honduras 

and the poor, almost impassable, roads. In the case of Gualán, both the Lorenzano family and the collaborators or proxies had 

sizable investments in agriculture and commerce. It is known that they also are particularly active in purchasing properties 

close to the borders and along the trafficking routes.
GUALÁN

43

8

 See the video report by Sylvia Gereda, “Informe especial: ingresa por primera vez en el territorio de los Lorenzana, buscados 

en extradición por EEUU” [Special report: first-time access to the territory of the Lorenzana family, sought for extradition to the 

USA], Canal Antigua, 21 November 2011. 9

 This is according to interviews with local community residents conducted by the authors in November 2012.

in the community, even with their violence and criminal operations, is better than 

having nothing. It is not unusual for residents to express support for, or at least acceptance of, los señores, who are after all people who were born and raised in the 

same community and who represent a sense of regional pride for the success they 

have achieved through their illicit economic activities. One municipal employee expressed the following sentiments toward los señores: 

Los señores are good, and they take care of establishing order. There are 

complications that must be put up with, but los señores are okay and 

they don’t interfere with anyone. But the Zetas, they are indeed bad. 

If they get established here, we are really going to end up like Ciudad 

Juarez. The problems happen when the bodyguards drink. Since they go 

around armed, they shoot into the air and they make a big ruckus. We, 

with our little pistols, cannot control them. We have to then talk with 

them and convince them to calm down.

A local attorney described los señores in this way:

There has been smuggling of contraband here forever, and adherence to 

the rule of law is weak. Therefore, if the government doesn’t come here, 

it is preferable to put up with the drug traffickers, as long as they assure 

order and tranquility for everyone.

RECENT TRENDS

Since the government captured Waldemar Lorenzana, the patriarch of the Lorenzana 

clan, in 2011, Gualán has experienced an economic slowdown. The instability within 

the Lorenzanas’ operations has meant some agricultural activity has been stopped, 

new investments have been postponed, and—related to these developments—the 

funds from money laundering have dried up.8

 In response, many have returned 

to traditional economic activities, including the smuggling of foods and domestic 

items into Honduras, human trafficking to Petén, and the illegal export of coffee 

(small-scale coffee plantations have returned to the countryside near Gualán).9

In 2012, Gualán experienced a rise in murder rates and an increased number 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

44

of arrests for violence linked to organized crime. Part of this could be related to the 

weakening of los señores so that more disputes over land or within families are 

resolved via violence rather than mediation. Also, recent episodes indicate that criminal groups not associated with the Lorenzana network are competing for a presence 

in the region. An example of this is the November 2012 attempted murder of a cousin of Juancho León that took place in a village outside Gualán and led to the arrest 

of 17 alleged members of a narcotics smuggling gang.10 The department of Zacapa, 

and the Gualán area in particular, remains today a major route for drug smuggling. 

In fact, it is argued that perhaps even more illegal goods and narcotics pass through 

the region than before, not because of anything to do with the Lorenzana network 

or the other operators in the area, but because of the success of the Guatemalan and 

Honduran militaries (with U.S. support) at curbing contraband air flights. As a result, 

overland routes are the preferred mode of smuggling once again.11

10 Gerson Ortiz, “Detienen a 17 personas vinculadas al narcotráfico,” El Periodico, 16 November 2012; and “Atacan en Zacapa 

a supuesto narcotraficante,” Prensa Libre. For a more comprehensive overview of the dynamics between Guatemalan and 

Mexican trafficking networks in recent years, including in Zacapa, see Julie Lopez’s 2013 analysis “Guatemala: la cambiante 

cara del narco,” Plaza Pública, 18 July 2013, http://www.plazapublica.com.gt/content/guatemala-la-cambiante-cara-del-narco. 11 Dudley, “El nuevo narcomapa.” 
45

He could be a drug dealer and whatever, but at least with Juan 

“Chamalé” Ortiz, the delinquency was under control. Not because 

he was dedicated to combating crime, but because the robbers 

weren’t keen on operating in front of the bodyguards. But now, 

everything is going to get out of control.

~A microbus driver in Malacatán

Malacatán is a relatively prosperous municipality with a diverse economy, a 

dynamic financial system, and significant commercial activity. Traditionally, 

its wealth comes from coffee production, contraband going in both directions, coyotaje (migration services for moving Central Americans along the route to 

the United States), and serving as the commercial center for the southern part of the 

department of San Marcos. Malacatán has a relatively high level of community capital, exemplified in several civic associations and interest groups and episodes of civilian mobilization. The mayor also has a strong presence and is publicly recognized for 

his capacity to negotiate successfully between multiple sectors of the region, including traffickers and criminal networks. The trafficking network created and directed by 

Juan Alberto Ortiz López—alias Juan “Chamalé”—is typical of a criminal organization 

rooted in the local society and economy. Ortiz was considered a criminal but also 

viewed as a shrewd businessman and a local boy who made good, as well as a reliable benefactor of local churches and families in need of support. His arrest in March 

2011 generated uncertainty and some anguish in the community, but it has not yet 

appeared to destabilize the preexisting criminal networks he oversaw. 

GEOGRAPHY AND ECONOMY

Malacatán is located in the southern part of the department of San Marcos, near the 

border with Mexico. The municipal capitol is only 390 meters above sea level with a 

Chapter 4

MALACATÁN
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

46

hot and rainy climate, beneficial for growing tropical crops. In 2010, the population 

was 86,000 and growing at a rapid annual rate of 2.5 percent. The indigenous population constitutes only 20 percent of the total population, and the majority of these 

are of Mam origin, from the high plateau of the same department. Migration into 

Malacatán, and San Marcos in general, has accelerated in recent years due to strong 

local economic growth.

Because of its rich soil, range of microclimates, diverse flora and fauna, and 

abundant river and irrigation systems, Malacatán has traditionally been a prosperous municipality. Coffee producers have for decades been the leading source 

of local employment. The local industry suffered from the coffee price collapse of 

2001, however, and the number of local jobs it provided has not returned to previous levels. Cultivation of African palm has been increasing in the area in terms of 

fields planted and permanent employment, although the total area planted is less 

in Malacatán than in neighboring municipalities. Although there are no local employment statistics, Malacatán currently appears to be a municipality with practically 

“full employment.” Demand is high for unskilled labor for coffee harvesting and at 

the African palm plantations. Malacatán also benefits from high quality infrastrucPhoto courtesy of Miguel Castillo

Advanced commerce and services in Malacatán.
MALACATÁN

47

ture—by Guatemalan standards—built over the last century in response to the needs 

of the coffee industry. 

LOCAL POLITICS AND COMMUNITY CAPITAL 

Malacatán typically has a high number of mayoral candidates. In the 2007 elections, 

15 candidates participated. Héctor Rubén Chávez Pérez was elected mayor in that 

election, and in 2011, he was reelected for a second term with broad support. In 

contrast to the other case studies, residents in Malacatán frequently name the mayor as, without a doubt, the principal authority and leader of the region. The area’s 

prosperity allows the mayor to dedicate himself to acting in a political role, rather 

than being limited to matters related only to the municipality’s infrastructure. Local 

residents sometimes refer to the mayor as “the mediator” for his success negotiating 

among the diverse interest groups in the community, including associations of cattle farmers, coffee growers, merchants, and—less formally—drug traffickers. 

Unlike the municipalities of Sayaxché and Gualán, Malacatán is not only able 

to provide services, it also supports popular cultural and recreational activities. One 

Photo courtesy of Miguel Castillo

Malacatán’s impressive office of the municipal government.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

48

example is the city’s support for its candidates in the San Marcos department’s beauty 

contests. Out of the last five contests, the municipality has won three. In soccer as well, 

the local team has improved dramatically in recent years and attendance and support 

are part of the work agendas of the local government offices. Far from marginal, these 

are activities to which the public pays close attention, and the involvement of the 

municipal government elevates its relevance in the eyes of the community. 

There are 91 communities within Malacatán, all of which have COCODES representation. The COMUDE has normal work activities and its own building for meetings and activities. In Malacatán, these organizations work in partnership with local 

government activities.

In spite of coffee’s economic importance, and the fact that several coffee plantation owners have been elected mayor, coffee producers as an economic group do 

not exert an excessive degree of influence over decision making in the municipality 

because of their limited degree of organization. Similarly, the African palm sector, 

although economically relevant to municipal affairs, remains elusive as an actor in 

local politics. Owners do not tend to participate in municipal dialogues, as do owners in most other major sectors of the local economy. 

With economic growth has come the rise of new entities, such as sports clubs 

and small professional organizations, including a chamber of commerce. Most notable are the small farm workers’ associations, which in 2008 began playing an important role in mobilization against the Western Energy Distributor in regard to local 

energy distribution. 

Other civic associations and interest groups include the National Front for the 

Defense of Public Services and Natural Resources, the health sector unions, the National Magisterial Front, agrarian entities, and small farm workers groups who were 

assigned farms as part of compensation programs for victims of the armed conflict. 

These active groups have converted the southern region of the department of San 

Marcos into a zone of highly motivated citizenry with multiple agendas, some of 

which have led to situations of protest and social and environmental conflict. 

The Catholic Church has a strong influence in Malacatán, owing in large part to 

the leadership of the bishop of San Marcos, Monsignor Álvaro Ramazzini, and the extensive network of pastoral workers he oversees. The network engages in social issues 

ranging from youth services to land ownership to opposition to mining projects. 

In recent years, evangelical churches have also become more relevant as they 
MALACATÁN

49

have grown and built new churches and larger congregations. Community members interviewed suggest that the dramatic local growth of these churches is largely 

due to resources provided by Juan Chamalé, the region’s principal drug trafficker 

who is also a church pastor. These “narco-churches,” as they are called locally, perform not only the function of cleansing and calming souls, but also of laundering 

the proceeds from Chamalé’s criminal activity. However, coming across evidence or 

even serious investigation on the part of the authorities in this regard is not an easy 

task, in the same way that it is not easy to examine the claims made about links 

between tomatoes and money laundering in Gualán.

LOCAL TRAFFICKING AND CRIMINAL ACTIVITY

As in Gualán, other actors have played an important role in economic and political 

life in Malacatán for many years, often acting behind the scenes. These are groups 

dedicated to the smuggling of drugs, products, and undocumented migrants to 

Mexico and the United States. Although they have no visible structure, they operate 

in an organized manner in terms of routes, fees, and types of products. 

Those who smuggle contraband and humans are, for the most part, poor families who combine smuggling activities with other labor, such as agriculture. This 

activity seems to have increased dramatically in recent years.1

 The visible impact of 

human trafficking on the municipality can be seen in the great number of hotels 

and eateries in the urban zone and in the village of El Carmen, at the formal border 

crossing. As a taxi driver in the city of El Carmen Frontera commented, 

Because of close proximity with Mexico and the high taxes they always 

charge, supposedly to protect “national industry,” Malacatán has always 

been dedicated to fayuca (contraband), as the cowboys say. Now, as you 

can see on the highway, they are smuggling Mexican Pemex gas which 

is subsidized, but there is also a lot of contraband of Mexican chickens 

and eggs. As you can see, with so much business going on in the sale 

of chicken, it’s also being conducted on the highway, along with Camey 

soap and Herdez products. . . . And going the other way, a lot of corn and 

clothing head out as fayuca for Tapachula, Tuxtla, and the rest of Mexico.

1

 Carlos Ventura and Fernando Magzul, “Expendedores denuncian aumento de ventas ilícitas de combustible” [Gas stations 

denounce rise of illegal fuel sales], Prensa Libre, 12 May 2011; and Carlos Ventura, “Denuncian incremento de ventas de 

combustible de contraband” [Sale of fuel to smugglers denounced], Prensa Libre, 11 May 2011.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

50

In general, these smuggling activities and those of coyotaje are separate from 

drug trafficking. Most residents seem to view the smuggling of standard contraband 

as an activity for everybody and relatively normal, while in contrast drug trafficking 

is the business of just a few and provides money to fewer people. Two local residents 

explained the differences in the following ways. 

First resident: Mr. Chamalé is involved in drugs and money laundering. Other people handle the chicken and gasoline. In fact, smuggling 

spreads more money around because you can see that those who are 

selling gallons on the highway are poor people. Conversely, drugs, out 

of necessity, are the business of just the few.

Second resident: Smuggling contraband, the fayuca, has always been 

more significant than drug trafficking in the region. The difference between the two is that profits from contraband are distributed among 

more people and therefore it has more impact on the regional economy.

In Malacatán and surrounding areas, smuggling contraband is deeply entrenched in the community life. As one municipal employee stated, “It’s something 

that has been there ever since the border was created.” In contrast to the situation in 

Mexico, where cartels exert control over all kinds of trafficking, there is no evidence 

that drug traffickers in the region are getting involved in the lower-level trafficking 

of foodstuffs, gasoline, and common contraband. 

DRUG TRAFFICKING IN THE COMMUNITY

According to city officials and residents alike, the idea that the city’s prosperity might 

be related to drugs is erroneous because the source of that prosperity is the dynamism 

of economic activity generated by the productive sector and the relative well-being 

that, among poor families, comes from participation in low-level smuggling. Nevertheless, various reports insist that drug trafficking has more to do with the economy of 

the area than local residents think, above all when trying to explain financing for the 

African palm industry and the dynamic of local land purchases and sales.

As in Gualán and Sayaxché, residents view the national government mostly 

as a predatory agent that seeks opportunities for profit and corruption. The government is often viewed as part of the smuggling problem because of its corruption, 

which via bribes and bad laws pushes the population to seek ways to transfer goods 
MALACATÁN

51

wherever they can, not where they should. One resident made the following comment regarding the government and smuggling: 

Well, yes, there is a lot of smuggling. The borders are vast and have many 

crossing points, in addition to being mountainous. . . . The government 

has only the border crossing of El Carmen, and anything can get through 

there as well. And the customs system seems to have been designed to 

extract bribes from the merchants instead of trying to put order into the 

system. The only reason there isn’t more contraband smuggling going 

on is because the people don’t want it.

THE LOCAL COMMUNITY’S RELATIONSHIP 

WITH ANDREACTION TO ORGANIZED CRIME 

As observed in the municipalities of Sayaxché and Gualán, there is evidence of strong 

ties between criminal groups and local officials, not only in Malacatán but also in the 

nearby large border town of Tecún Uman. According to an interview with a former 

interior minister, Juan Chamalé had been buying the cooperation of the mayors, 

judges, attorneys, and police in those municipalities for more than a decade. Others 

may turn a blind eye to drug smuggling and other crimes to avoid assassination.2

The arrest of Chamalé in March 2011 sparked new consideration about drug 

trafficking and its role in the economy and society of Malacatán. Attitudes in the 

community seem polarized. Some consider Chamalé to be the misfortune from 

which all other misfortunes stem, from garbage in the streets (the result of a process of diminishing values generated by the drug culture) to high rates of local 

delinquency. For others, “Hermano Juanito,” as he is also known, is simply a successful businessman who has been awarded doctoral degrees in philosophy and 

theology from unspecified North American universities, who helps the poor, and 

who had the bad luck of running across the consumer mentality of the “gringos” 

and their need to justify their interventions and military-industrial complex by prohibiting the consumption of products that are, in and of themselves, not harmful.3

While many drug-trafficking organizations use intimidation and threats to 

2 “Investigan nexos de Chamalé con autoridades de San Marcos” [Links between Chamalé and San Marcos authorities

under investigation], Noticias, 4 April 2011, http://noticias.com.gt/nacionales/20110404-investigan-nexos-de-chamale-con

-autoridades-de-san-marcos.html.

3Cfr comments online. 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

52

gain access to or control of smuggling routes and services, Chamalé’s operations 

relied more on a network of local and regional partners. He built and supported 

this network, in part, by making donations to many churches across Malacatán and 

the nearby town of Catarina, where Chamalé’s farms and other businesses are located. This allowed the construction of several enormous and luxurious churches. 

According to some residents, none of the local churches went without “donations” 

from Chamalé, which bought the drug trafficker legitimacy in the eyes of congregation members. As one Catholic educator stated, 

Well, all the churches here have eaten out of Chamalé’s hands. Look at 

each building. With local incomes, you can’t explain how they could have 

been built. In exchange, none of the churches said anything about him 

[Chamalé]. Even the Catholic Church, with Monsignor Ramazzini . . . kept 

quiet about him.

Chamalé built his own church on the land of one of his farms. It is believed 

that he contracted workers for his business from among his church members, and 

that, in order to work in any of his businesses, one had to be a member of his 

church. In the end, an excess of confidence and, in the opinion of local residents, 

the fact that he moved away from a simpler lifestyle, prompted Chamalé’s capture. 

One resident of the area explained the affair in the following manner: 

In contrast to most drug traffickers, he was a very reserved and discrete 

person. No luxury houses or wild parties. He seemed like just another 

farm owner, and because of this it was easy for him to maintain a low 

profile. The police, who were on his payroll, didn’t bother him in the 

least and only those who knew him really well suspected something 

strange about his income. Since by that time he was a pastor, it was 

hard for many people to believe that he was involved in strange things. 

Even the tourism and recreational center he built was discrete and very 

welcomed by families because it was one of the few centers of entertainment in the region that didn’t serve alcohol. . . . Everything began to 

change when he met Salomón. Now, Salomón was a less-refined drug 

trafficker: women all over the place, houses with screaming colors, 

large handheld and automatic weapons, unhinged parties, and luxury 

cars. In the beginning, Ortiz was the decent boss and Salomón was the 
MALACATÁN

53

scandalous subordinate, but little by little, Ortiz began to change. It first 

started with his nonsense about being a doctor in I don’t know what . . . 

but I think he didn’t even finish high school. Then came all the rest: the 

luxury houses, latest model cars, his participation in mundane activities 

such as beauty pageant elections in San Marcos and Malacatán.

Residents tell a number of stories about Chamalé: his wealth and success as 

a drug trafficker, his contributions to the community, and of course the reason behind his arrest. A local police commissioner described his success in the following 

way: 

Juan Ortiz started his businesses 10 years ago. I don’t know if he started 

out with opium poppies as did many drug traffickers or if he dove right 

into the cocaine business. The point is, little by little, he began to grow. 

His genius was to establish direct relationships with Mexico kingpins 

instead of being comfortable just dealing with intermediaries.

The arrest of Juan “Chamalé” Ortiz has generated widespread concern in the 

community of Gualán and surrounding areas about the violence that may result 

from struggles over control of the business. Without Chamalé, they fear local criminal networks may have lost the ability to control delinquency in the community in 

the way Chamalé is believed to have done.

RECENT TRENDS

The arrest of Juan Ortiz in 2011 led to the fragmentation of local trafficking networks. So far, no single individual or group has arisen as the regional leader, or 

capo. Given the longstanding presence of the Sinaloa Federation in Malacatán, it 

may be that, without Chamalé, trafficking operations are proceeding as before but 

are being run by former subordinates or Sinaloa operators with a much lower public profile. According to one report, Chamalé’s network and his family thrived in 

part by laundering revenues through legal companies in Nicaragua, and according 

to Costa Rican authorities, those activities persist today to serve as a base for future 

expansion.4

 More recently, it is also believed that Chamalé continues to direct operations and influence relationships, including with Mexican networks, from prison. 

4

 José Meléndez, “Cárteles centroamericanos, en ascenso” [Central American cartels on the rise], El Universal, 13 November 

2012, www.eluniversal.com.mx/internacional/80115.html.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

54

This could help explain why the arrest and apparent removal of Chamalé did not 

have the destabilizing effect many expected.5

Beyond narcotrafficking, Malacatán continues to sustain numerous smaller 

criminal organizations that engage in smuggling, the theft of electrical services, 

and illicit retail. These networks continue to thrive.

5

 Lopez, “Guatemala: la cambiante cara del narco.” 
55

Chapter 5

KEY FINDINGS FROM THE CASE STUDIES

T

hese three case studies highlight the effects of criminal organizations and trafficking in the communities of Sayaxché, Gualán, and Malacatán. Taken together, these cases suggest that four factors significantly influence the dynamics of 

communities’ relationships with local criminal groups:

• the community’s history, economy, and geography create context for the interplay between illegal trafficking and organized crime and the rest of the community’s economic and social activities and production;

• levels of collective action and civic-mindedness—a quality we refer to as “community capital”—that influence the mode and intensity of the insertion of criminal networks into the social and economic life of communities;

• the autonomy and competence of the local government, in particular its capacity to mediate among the interests of the local organized criminal groups, those 

of other legal special interests, and those of the community at large; and

• the choices criminal organizations make to operate efficiently, regarding the relationships they form with local authorities and community actors, as well as with 

actors outside of the community who have influence over community affairs.

Because these factors affect the extent and quality of cooperation and collaboration between criminal networks and the community, they strongly influence the 

degrees of violence and other negative impacts to the community from organized 

criminal activity.

Of these four factors, the first cannot be affected in the short or medium term 

by public policy, and therefore it is not an issue for further exploration. The last—the 

choices of organized criminal groups—can be speculated about but is beyond the 

scope of this study. The two upon which we focus our analysis and our policy recommendations are those that could potentially be affected by public policies in the 

short or medium term: a community’s reserve of community capital and the autonomy and competence of the local government.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

56

COMMUNITY CAPITAL ANDGOVERNMENT COMPETENCE

“Community capital,” a key variable in explaining the relationship between local organized criminal activity and its impacts on border communities, requires definition. 

We use the term to capture a community’s collective reserve of “social capital,” a concept long used by sociologists and others to describe “the ability of actors to secure 

benefits by virtue of membership in social networks or other social structures.”1

 Our 

term community capital refers to a community’s demonstrated capacity for voluntary 

association and collective action on issues regarding public goods and political action, in particular (for our interests) public security. Our use of the term is similar to 

the concept of social capital as used by Robert Putnam, to mean “features of social 

organizations, such as networks, norms, and trust, that facilitate collective action and 

cooperation for mutual benefit.”2

 We use the term for descriptive and explanatory 

purposes, restricted to our case studies and their importance for understanding patterns of public security, not to refine or test any theory(ies) of social capital. 

Indicators of a high level of community capital include numerous and active 

clubs and associations, church groups, industry associations, and NGOs, especially 

when such groups cooperate or engage in dialogue with each other on matters of 

public interest. Active COCODES and COMUDES are included, especially when community residents express support and respect for their work. The lack of such associations, inactivity on their part, or a dearth of legitimacy in the view of community 

residents are treated as indicators of low levels of community capital. 

The cases of Sayaxché, Gualán, and Malacatán indicate that efficient, largescale drug-smuggling operations require at least a clear understanding of nonintervention and, at most, tacit cooperation between criminal groups and the local 

political power structure.3

 This mutual accommodation seems more developed in 

1

 Alejandro Portes, “Social Capital: Its Origins and Applications in Modern Sociology,” Annual Review of Sociology 24 (August 

1998): 6.

2

 Robert D. Putnam, “The Prosperous Community: Social Capital and Public Life,” American Prospect 13 (Spring 1993): 35–36. 3

 The patterns of criminal organizations’ relations with local communities within these three case studies echo Enrique 

Desmond Arias’ analysis of the phenomenon of criminality and violence in the slums or favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil (see 

Enrique Desmond Arias, “The Dynamics of Criminal Governance: Networks and Social Order in Rio de Janeiro,” Journal of Latin 

American Studies 38, no. 2 [2006]: 293–325). According to Arias, the reasons for violence lie not only in the lack of capacity of 

public institutions, but also in the nature of the contacts and relationships that criminal groups establish with civic, political, 

and police leadership. According to Arias, “These contacts protect traffickers from state repression and help them construct 

political support from among the residents and favelas where they operate.” In this way, criminal networks establish other 

networks, tying them to political and social systems within and beyond the favela, rather than creating a parallel state from 

within. Through these connections with state officials and civic leaders, they make their criminal activities possible. 
KEY FINDINGS FROM THE CASE STUDIES

57

cases of low levels of community capital and civic-mindedness, as in Sayaxché and 

Gualán. 

In Sayaxché, criminal networks, local political leaders and parties, and many 

of the municipality’s elites maintain cooperative relationships to ensure the viability 

of drug-smuggling operations. This helps to explain the fact that criminal groups in 

Sayaxché are less concerned with maintaining relationships and contacts with other 

actors in the community. They have little need for broader public acceptance of or 

support for their drug-smuggling operations, and as a result there are few efforts to 

create quasi-parallel state systems to provide public goods and services. 

The Sayaxché case illustrates the effects of a dearth of community capital. There 

are relatively few local organizations, and the ones present are relatively small and 

have little capacity. There is hardly any public mobilization. Also, Sayaxché residents 

seem to express a relatively weak sense of community involvement or belonging, 

most likely due to the large number of transient and newly arrived members to 

the community. There is a widespread sentiment that not much can be done about 

growing levels of drug trafficking and violence. The municipal government, in addition to being weak and insignificant in the life of the community, has a history of 

collaboration and alliances with criminal groups. 

Of the three cases studied, Sayaxché is the one in which formal public power is most controlled by criminal groups. The certainty that criminal groups are in 

control of the public administration system, due to what community members see 

as the impunity with which criminal organizations operate, has created a profound 

mistrust toward the judicial system and the police, and has deepened feelings of 

mistrust toward the government as a whole. In Sayaxché, the alliance between institutions and criminal groups has undermined whatever legitimacy the weak state 

had, as well as its capacity to provide basic services to the community.

In the case of Gualán, drug-smuggling activity by criminal groups is carried out 

with implicit understanding and cooperation from the community. This is analogous 

to traditional relationships in the region between the local rural population and the 

landowners and overseers of coffee cultivation or cattle raising. Los señores are native to the community, and community members tend to accept and even endorse 

them as long as they do not act excessively against the interests of the community. 

Moreover, los señores are perceived to be paying the community for its silence with 

goods and services. 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

58

Unlike in Sayaxché, there is no clear evidence that los señores are directly involved in local politics. However, according to residents and Guatemalan security 

experts, it is impossible to imagine anyone in Gualán attaining the office of mayor 

without demonstrating neutrality, if not a willingness to be cooperative, toward los 

señores because these are people who not only smuggle but control much of the 

municipality’s land and agricultural businesses. 

Gualán presents an interesting case of community capital because formal local organizations appear to be relatively weak, but community capital exists in the 

form of the community’s acceptance of authority within an informal network of local 

landowners, business owners, and traffickers. Local criminal groups do not directly 

control local politics and work to some degree to preserve community acceptance to 

ensure the viability of their operations. Gualán’s community capital includes generations of local families and a relatively strong—especially when compared to Sayaxché—feeling of municipal and departmental community, enough so that los señores 

also feel themselves to be part of the community. Their provision of local services 

and benefits follows a normative, as well as functional or cost/benefit, type of logic.

Malacatán exhibits a relatively high level of community capital, reflected in 

the various civic institutions that mobilize around demands for political and economic goods from the municipal and departmental governments. Although there 

have been efforts to create a public dialogue and action on the topic of security in 

San Marcos, analysts judge it unlikely that public officials will seriously address the 

topic of drug smuggling and its effects.

Collective demands for political action via civic associations; an environment 

of economic well-being; and a more pluralistic, diverse local political system fundamentally distinguishes the Malacatán case from the others. Leaders of organized 

criminal groups must seek ways of achieving social acceptance to facilitate their 

drug-smuggling activities. They present themselves as benefactors of the community and minimize the use of threats of force and violence to protect their operations. From the community, they expect nonintervention and perhaps some degree 

of intelligence gathering and sharing. From politicians, they require noninterference, impunity, and the allowance to expand their activities into other sectors of the 

community’s economic life either to diversify their investments or simply to launder 

their illicit profits. As in Gualán, there is a normative as well as a cost/benefit logic 

to Chamalé Ortiz’s group’s beneficence to the community. Chamalé grew up in the 
KEY FINDINGS FROM THE CASE STUDIES

59

community, lived and worked openly within the community, and used his personal relationships and network—achieved through both crime and formal, legitimate 

ties—to further his success. Giving back to the community in part also reflects traditional Christian values, common across Guatemala.

Malacatán, our “best” case in terms of limited negative impacts to the community from local organized crime, reflects the importance of a community with a 

relatively high reserve of community capital combined with a relatively active and 

autonomous municipal government. This indicates that community capital is less 

a good that by itself protects communities from harm than it is an asset or reserve 

that responsible public leadership can utilize to help protect the community. A high 

level of community capital in a community that has an incompetent or corrupt government does little to protect the community from criminals willing to use violence, 

corruption, and the withholding of key public goods to coerce the community. It 

is only when community capital is engaged and mobilized by public leaders, who 

can provide state backing and resources, that this capital can generate observable 

positive effects in terms of security. 

The dynamic of organized crime in these border regions plays out within complex geographic, socioeconomic, political, and cultural contexts. Up to now, the government’s efforts to confront the problem of organized crime and trafficking have 

focused on improving the administrative management of border control operations, 

involving customs and immigration agencies, and deploying military forces to deter 

further violence. In order to be effective, policies to address border insecurity and 

organized crime must consider these border communities in their entirety. This includes their dynamics of long-standing accommodation and interaction among diverse local and national actors and community institutions—including local criminal 

groups—as all parties seek to improve their economic and political situations and, in 

some circumstances, to survive.
60

Chapter 6

IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS 

FOR PUBLIC POLICY

T

hese case studies highlight two factors that shape the degree to which illicit 

trafficking and criminal organizations affect ordinary life in border communities that are, for the most part, little touched by formal government. These factors are political leadership at the municipal level and the extent of a community’s 

reserve of community capital. These findings underscore the difficulty of increasing 

state presence—and especially a security presence—in communities where individuals and groups associated with criminal networks offer legitimate sources of informal authority over community affairs. 

The case studies indicate that where there are higher levels of community capital, and high institutional density, criminal organizations are more inclined to seek 

ways of ingratiating themselves with the local community. Their methods include attempting to capture social support by sharing privileges from their (illicit) success and 

providing public services, including street-level security. In contrast, in zones with low 

levels of community and weak institutional density, criminal groups are more likely to 

establish relationships of control and alliance directly with public institutions. In those 

cases, criminal enterprise is more of an enclave activity, less linked to the community 

and more focused on gaining the compliance of the local government.

Policies that aim at disrupting these informal networks could worsen the security and economic circumstances in the community unless they are accompanied 

by efforts to sustain local economic activity when the incomes and investment generated previously by criminal activity dry up. In our judgment, it is likely that these 

cases will require incremental, phased reintroduction of state services and presence, 

without directly threatening these longstanding networks, to prepare the ground 

for strengthened state efforts at policing and security. Beginning, for example, with 

health services, improvements in schools, and better sanitation programs, the government could gain public support and legitimacy before it attempts to confront 

local organized crime. The critical objective is for the government (at all levels: mu-
IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

61

nicipal, departmental, and national) to win “the hearts and minds” of community 

residents so that they come to see criminal organizations and actors as unwelcome 

and to regard state institutions as competent and responsive to their needs. 

Essentially, border security is less about improving the capabilities of the police or border control institutions than it is about changing the attitudes and behaviors of residents who live on and near the border. The traditional and popular view 

that the smuggling of drugs, humans, and other contraband is something inevitable due to the lack of economic options, the weakness and corruption of public 

institutions, and the power of organized criminal groups to cause violence needs to 

be addressed and changed.

EXISTING MODELS FOR PUBLIC SECURITY

IN UNDERGOVERNED AREAS 

The best-known regional models for responding to “ungoverned space” are those 

applied by the Colombian government in territories previously held by the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia and by Brazilian police forces in favelas in Rio de 

Janeiro and other cities.1

 There are several differences between these cases, but both 

consist essentially of integrated intervention. Aggressive, overwhelming actions by 

security forces to seize territory are followed quickly by coordinated, interagency inflows of government services (e.g., alternative economic development, health and 

education services) to hold that territory and integrate the community back into the 

nation’s legal, economic, and political fabric. Wresting territory from nonstate actors 

who provide informal forms of governance is not enough if the state cannot also 

begin to provide these communities’ fundamental needs. 

Guatemala has experience with a similar initiative: the “model precinct” 

program conducted by the National Civil Police with support from the U.S. State 

Department. Since 2004, the program has trained and equipped police in special 

suburban and urban districts near the capital in advanced community police operations, including techniques oriented toward improving community relations.2

 These 

efforts are combined with expanded social programs for at-risk youth to reestablish 

1

 See Peter DeShazo, Johanna Mendelson Forman, and Phillip McLean, Countering Threats to Security and Stability in a Failing 

State: Lessons from Colombia (Washington, DC: CSIS Press, 2009); and Adam Isacson, “Rio de Janeiro’s Pacification Program,” 

Washington Office on Latin America, 5 January 2011, www.wola.org/rio_de_janeiro_s_pacification_program.

2

 More details are available from the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs 

in Guatemala City.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

62

police control and reduce delinquency in poor neighborhoods plagued by gang violence. The program has had success in the town of Villa Nueva, near the capital, and 

was subsequently introduced in the neighboring town of Mixto. 

There are several challenges to implementing these types of approaches effectively. First, they require several competent government agencies (social, economic, 

and security) working effectively together. Second, they require enormous amounts 

of human, financial, and agency resources, especially from security forces who must 

seize and control the territory. These resources often must come at the cost of other 

programs and priorities. While the security situation in the community improves, 

the state must also find ways to generate new economic opportunities that might 

help to discourage smuggling or drug-trafficking activities as well as establish a new 

system of political relationships based on the rule of law. 

Because of the financial and political difficulty of sustaining these measures, they 

tend to be treated initially as if they are temporary, to last a matter of months or a year 

until normalcy is restored. But the path to economic development, sound governance 

through formal channels, and lasting security without well-established and functioning 

institutions for the rule of law is long and in most regards unproven. Thus, the holding 

of territory, and the surge in government social and economic development programs, 

tend to become prolonged even when restricted to a few regions. 

In both Colombia and Brazil, the amount of state resources available across 

the government and military seems nowhere near sufficient to apply this strategy 

everywhere it is needed, even to relatively small sections of territory. In a country 

such as Guatemala, an initiative of this kind would demand an unprecedented 

amount of economic and human resources and would probably cover only a portion 

of its extensive borders. 

Such approaches—coming from outside the community and requiring a range 

of government programs and an extraordinary outlay of resources—seem impractical if not impossible in Guatemala. For that reason, we recommend consideration of 

measures aimed at mobilizing local-level resources in the form of collective citizen 

action and cooperation with formal authorities to promote security in border zones. 

These types of initiatives that begin from within the community, and then are supported by resources at the municipal and national level, are more likely to galvanize 

and utilize better local capacities.
IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

63

3

 According to the Inter-American Development Bank (IDB), international donors have given more than $1 billion since 2009 

in grants or loans in multiyear projects to improve security in the region. At a conference in Guatemala in July 2011, the U.S. 

secretary of state pledged almost $300 million to support regional security efforts; the IDB announced a $500 million fund for 

projects in the same area; and the World Bank promised to create a similar fund.

SECURITY REFORM AND POLICIES PERTAINING

TO BORDER COMMUNITIES 

Providing security effectively in a democratic Guatemala will require fundamental 

reforms and strengthening the country’s law enforcement, judiciary, and penal systems. The international community has pledged hundreds of millions of dollars to 

support these reforms and investments.3

 These efforts are critical. Given the difficulty of passing security reforms legislation, however, these foreign-funded initiatives 

are unlikely to lead to meaningful short-term changes. Our intent is to provide additional ideas that could help reverse the worsening trends in violence, crime, and 

drug trafficking in the short and medium terms, without compromising efforts at 

longer-term institutional reforms.

Guatemala faces two overarching challenges to improving security in border communities. The first is the need to expand the presence of the state in those 

communities, in particular to introduce police units that the community views as 

reasonably effective and responsive. This goal seems extremely difficult to achieve 

within the next several years, given the slowness of Guatemala’s efforts at reforming its National Civil Police. Challenges the national police and government must 

overcome include the present state of dysfunction and corruption at the federal 

level, the skepticism and scorn of many border community residents toward the national government (which hinder cooperation with the police or government), and 

resource shortages that leave local police—when they are present in these communities—poorly trained, unequipped, and ineffective. In the long run, improved law 

enforcement will also be insufficient to ensure security if not combined with greater state presence in other areas, particularly those like education, job training, and 

conflict mediation that help prevent crime. Two objectives must be pursued more or 

less simultaneously: to increase state presence and control in these communities, 

particularly in the area of security, and to broaden and improve the economic prospects for community residents.

A second critical challenge to improving security in border communities is to 

close the operational gap between Guatemala’s federal government and its munic-
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

64

ipal government so that the two systems communicate and coordinate strategies, 

policies, and spending more effectively. At present, security is entirely the responsibility of the national government, and municipal governments have a host of responsibilities and functions which very few of them have the resources to fulfill. This 

ignores the fact that the chronic lack of security impedes the execution of most of 

these other functions. The national and local governments are incapable of providing security to the communities; into this vacuum step nonstate actors, such as los 

señores, who are able and willing to provide at least selective, self-serving forms of 

local security. 

This division of responsibility for public security also ignores that the effective 

provision of security is multidimensional, involving not only law enforcement but 

the exercise of the rule of law and development and social welfare provisions. “Either build schools or build prisons,” as the saying goes. This longstanding lack of effective coordination between Guatemala’s national and local governments—a problem the COCODES/COMUDES system was designed to resolve—profoundly impedes 

security policies. Some of our recommendations below are aimed at addressing, in 

part, this structural deficiency.

In practice, the effective provision of security is an interrelated process. Thus, 

a central theme in our recommendations is to try to find institutions, channels, and 

instruments through which national efforts toward security, centered on improved 

police and military operations, may be much better coordinated with efforts, programs, resources, and demands within the country’s border municipalities. Coordination across the national-departmental-municipal levels must be improved, led 

by security priorities and needs defined as much as possible at the local level, with 

complete transparency and community participation.

PUBLIC POLICY RECOMMENDATIONS

We present our recommendations by theme. First, we address the issue of community capital, one of the chief factors that explains deviation in our case studies and 

a factor relatively amenable to policy. Second, we address the need for competent 

and independent municipal leadership. Beyond these thematic measures, we propose two larger reform measures that we believe would improve the capacity of the 

government at all levels for providing security. The first involves the creation of new 

structures for interagency coordination of intelligence and security operations to 
IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

65

strengthen whole-of-government efforts and improve accountability in Guatemala’s 

border regions. The second involves raising significantly the tax revenue share that 

goes to municipalities in exchange for new measures of transparency and accountability at the municipal level.

MEASURES FOR PROMOTING COMMUNITY CAPITAL

The case studies illustrate the importance of community capital as an asset that improves the resilience of communities before the negative effects of organized criminal activity. From our consideration of community capital, its development, and 

the conditions under which it flourishes, we derive the following suggestions for 

policies. 

Encourage local economic diversity. This encouragement can come via several 

policies or initiatives and with a range of public-private partnerships, including

• tax incentives to investors who bring substantially different types of business 

into a municipal economic zone;

• cooperating with local banks to offer lower loan rates for businesses investing in 

industries without an existing presence in the economic zone;

• reviewing local laws, licensing criteria, and processes that may be unnecessarily 

complicating the ingress of investment in new types of industries and activities; 

and

• revising customs legislation and procedures that promote the smuggling of basic consumer goods in border zones.

Promote the growth of local community capital. Studies indicate that degrees 

of community capital at the local level are slow to change but can be developed 

through certain actions. One path to improving community capital seems to be the 

reduction of income inequality. Though the relationship between lower levels of income inequality and higher levels of community capital seems intuitive, the causal 

process is uncertain.4

 Other measures can be implemented more directly, and we 

recommend Guatemalan municipal authorities, departmental governments, and 

federal agencies give them consideration. The following recommendations have 

4

 Anirudh Krishna, “How Does Social Capital Grow? A Seven-Year Study of Villages in India,” Journal of Politics 69, no. 4 (2007): 

941–56.
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

66

been derived from well-known international projects and NGOs with experience at 

building community capital.5

• Host events that highlight local culture(s), traditions, and features of the community. Invite and promote active participation on the part of local organizations (e.g., churches, schools, clubs, youth groups, unions).

• Promote local events that feature dialogue about issues of local political or cultural importance. 

• Encourage local organizations, potentially via cost-sharing programs, to engage 

in voluntary public service activities. Encourage different organizations to plan 

and conduct such activities together.

• Create and/or support programs that bring together different groups (e.g., different religious, ethnic, or socioeconomic groups) in the community for collaboration in such public service projects as youth education, recreation, cultural 

celebration or development, philanthropy, etc.

Reward and encourage effective governance at the municipal level. The case 

studies, particularly the Malacatán case, demonstrate the importance of political 

leadership at the municipal level. They also suggest, however, that such leadership 

is uncommon and difficult to create via policies or spending. In Malacatán, a diverse, 

relatively prosperous community supports a mayor who works effectively across various local groups and associations, reaching negotiated solutions to common concerns and treating criminal organizations informally like any other interest group. 

In all three cases, illicit trafficking thrives, but at least in Malacatán its effects 

on the population are modest and the political system and the rest of the local economy function largely independently from its influence. The effectiveness of the municipal government can be attributed partly to its competence and vision. Yet, it is 

also at least in part because Malacatán’s prosperity and economic diversity led to the 

creation over many years of various associations and groups tied to special interests, 

a relatively rich web of local institutions with and through which a competent municipal authority can work productively.

In Gualán, however, municipal authorities operate more or less alongside informal authorities, the leaders of which are los señores and their network of legal 

5

 Barbara J. Nelson, Linda Kaboolian, and Kathryn A. Carver, The Concord Handbook: How to Build Social Capital Across Communities (Los Angeles: UCLA School of Public Policy and Social Research, 2003), http://concord.sppsr.ucla.edu.
IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

67

and illegal businesses in the region. The municipal government seeks to avoid and 

certainly not to provoke these groups, and community residents recognize that in 

many aspects of their lives, especially concerning security, they rely more on los 

señores than on the official government. In Sayaxché, community residents perceive 

their mayor and his administration as corrupt and ineffective in terms of providing 

public services. There are no local institutions or individuals who intermediate between the community and the criminal organizations, the most dominant of which 

at present is the fearsome Zetas. Community members simply try to avoid involvement, stay out of the path of these groups, and feel themselves largely at the mercy 

of fate. It is important to point out that in these cases the lack of both institutional 

density and social capital enables criminal networks to operate as economic enclaves 

without close ties to the community to win their support, acceptance, or compliance. 

The findings across our case studies suggest that the greater the institutional 

density and community capital of a community, the less intense and constant will 

be the control of criminal organizations over government functions. Also, when municipal governments are able and willing to carry out visible and measurable actions 

in the interests of the community’s well-being, community residents are more likely 

to perceive local criminal networks as a detriment to community affairs. In Malacatán, for example, the ability of the local authority to mediate and resolve conflicts 

of interest among different interest groups, and its active role in areas completely 

unrelated to security, dilute the influence of criminal networks in community life.

Modernization theory suggests that in Malacatán the demand for more efficient local management can be explained by a more diverse and modern economy 

and a society that includes a small but growing middle class, with greater resources 

for mobilizing around their interests. Malacatán offers some lessons for politicians 

interested in promoting similar processes of modernization in small, more traditional communities, as well as economic policies for attracting more investments from 

outside of the community. 

The concept and practice of an “effective government” defy objective measure. 

This is especially true when the measure of effectiveness includes success in managing the negative effects of local organized crime. For example, if conflicts related 

to drug-smuggling groups are not resolved, many Guatemalans will consider the 

management of community interests a failure. Thus, the subject of rewarding or 

encouraging specific policies or results in the local environment through national 
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68

programs, could certainly become politicized, above all when it is assumed that the 

municipal work effort must be aligned with national government policies. Therefore, rating and encouraging the municipal initiative are actions that must come 

from nonpartisan organizations independent of state institutions.6

A review of possible approaches for creating incentives for more efficient management on the municipal level produced the following policy recommendations:

• the promotion of rules and instruments that improve transparency and accountability so that residents and others are more aware of what the government is 

doing; and

• recognition by an objective, nonpartisan organization with public credibility of 

mayors and/or municipal governments that are judged to be particularly effective at building community capital and improving citizen security.

SECURITY ZONES AND OTHER MEASURES

TO IMPROVE INTERAGENCY SECURITY OPERATIONS 

Public policies oriented toward improving the state’s performance in dealing with 

organized crime in border communities require institutional reform processes that 

are consistent, coherent, and simultaneous on national and departmental levels. It 

is difficult to achieve effective, professional police services at the local level without 

a consistent, successful police reform process at the national level. It is also difficult 

to create comprehensive policies for approaching the problem of drug trafficking 

without reforms that strengthen coordination and cooperation between agencies. 

In spite of the challenges involved in local policing and security reform efforts, it is 

essential to reform public policies to provide flexibility for the government in acting 

in socially and economically complex border regions. 

We encourage the efforts underway, and the consideration of other methods 

and reforms to increase the presence of a well-functioning and responsive state in 

border communities. These reforms are, or should be, advancing on several levels: 

• Define, advance, and strengthen the program for the reform of the National 

Civil Police. 

6

 One such organization is Transparency International, a global network that combats corruption worldwide, bringing together 

actors from government, civil society, commerce, and communications media to promote transparency in elections, public 

administration, hiring, and business. Through local partners, they rate and highlight municipalities that have made efforts to 

improve municipal accountability and to prevent corruption. For more information, go to http://www.transparency.org/about/.
IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

69

• Clarify the army’s role in providing security to the population and border security.

• Implement joint interagency efforts to confront organized crime, including 

the creation of special security supervisory groups with a flexible, interagency 

framework in regions where criminal organizations operate.

POLICE AND INSTITUTIONAL REFORM

It would be helpful, if not necessary, if the government would clearly define the 

objectives of Guatemala’s police reform process and how these objectives and their 

expected results relate to security policies and operations in border communities. 

The reform process must clearly indicate the role of national police in border communities and define police action in relation to the increasing military presence in 

border zones. It is important to keep in mind that the National Civil Police has very 

limited authority and in the view of community members we interviewed also tends 

to have little legitimacy. Although the Guatemalan constitution makes reference to 

local police entities, currently there are no clear efforts to establish such systems.

Reforming a police force is both technically and politically complex in any 

country. In ones with political systems widely penetrated by personal and special 

interests, including criminal interests, powerful forces strive to undermine efforts to 

improve police performance. Still, such reforms are essential for national and citizen 

security. In our view, the following efforts should be included:

• a clear statement from the president and the chief law enforcement officer that 

defines the functions and authorities of the National Civil Police and its relationship with the citizenry;

• an explanation of what parts of the reform process have been inefficient in their 

execution and why;

• a defined system of internal promotion and career paths within the National 

Civil Police, one that makes full use of and provides incentives for hard work 

and talent;

• the improvement of the police training and professionalization process; and

• measures to ensure internal and external transparency and accountability.

In addition, three possibilities should be discussed publicly and considered 

seriously by the government: 1) a reform of the security sector that, for example, 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

70

could result in the creation of a border guard; 2) the redefinition of the model and 

role of the army in their fight against drug trafficking and other expressions of organized crime; and 3) the reconstitution of local police institutions, the lack of which 

clearly affects the capacity of communities to respond to local crime and insecurity.

The absence of a nonpolitical debate has resulted in the overuse of military 

force in dealing with security problems in border communities. Given the state’s 

limited resources, the viability of these policies is ever more uncertain. In our view, 

there is inadequate public discussion in Guatemala today about the costs involved in 

the implementation of the peace accords, referring to those initiatives that dismantled the military without first creating an effective civil security and law enforcement 

system. These policies and failures created numerous incentives and opportunities 

for traffickers and organized criminal groups to exploit Guatemala as a drug-smuggling zone.

Guatemala requires a serious and open public discussion—led by its government but including civil society—about the kind of army the country needs. Opinions 

vary on this subject, and sentiments are intense given Guatemala’s recent history of 

civil war and corruption within the military. There are influential sectors of Guatemalan society that see the army as the institution best prepared to confront challenges 

related to security and the fight against organized crime, especially when dealing 

with the control of airspace and national borders. There are also equally influential 

sectors concerned by the deployment of the military to confront organized crime 

activities, given the current nonexistence of an institutional environment of transparency, civilian control, and accountability in Guatemala. 

MEASURES TO IMPLEMENT 

JOINT INTERAGENCY ACTION

The provision of security in border communities is complicated by the lack of integrated national, regional, and local efforts and information sharing. When the presence of national security forces is minimal, this leaves municipalities to face criminal 

organizations and other threats largely on their own. We recommend consideration 

of a set of legal and institutional reforms that would restructure the territorial divisions in which national security policies are implemented, creating what could 

be called “special security zones.” These would be geographical areas administered 

by working groups or task forces that include members from different state agen-
IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

71

7

 This complementary mechanism would strengthen good practices of progressive “deconcentration” and “decentralization” 

that have been proposed and launched in civil regulations and practices in Guatemala’s recent past to provide more relevance 

to the local environment, a subject that is explicitly included in the peace accords of 1996 and continues to be a constant since 

then, with disparate results.

8During the presidential campaign, candidate Pérez Molina described a similar idea for the establishment of Inter-Institutional

Task Forces, which would consist of personnel from the National Security System with the support of the attorney general’s 

office and the federal human rights office. Each task force would be assigned a geographic area where they would combat the 

principal crimes: drug trafficking, drug dealing, extortion, assassinations, and gangs. In each of these areas, civilian organization will be promoted to facilitate the recuperation of public areas and to sustain community security.

cies (e.g., police, military, health) and civilian institutions (e.g., security think tanks, 

NGOs). These task forces would collect and integrate information on organized criminal operations from the police and municipalities across the zone, analyze this information, and choose the most appropriate antitrafficking and antiorganized crime 

policies and tactics for the zone. An initiative of this nature would require open communication, coordination, and clear measures for oversight and transparency at the 

levels of both national and local government. One of the fundamental objectives 

of creating these special security zones would be to promote the responsible use 

of public resources.7

 By integrating the expertise and professional experience of 

officials from civil society and across various state agencies, these councils would 

bring resources and know-how to border communities that lack any such support 

from outside at present.

Such a system would improve vertical and horizontal information sharing and 

coordination between actors at the national and local levels and across a range of 

stakeholders, including government agencies, to increase capacity for designing 

and administering public policies for enhancing economic and human security. The 

government would be made more present across its national territory and more 

effective because of its increased capacity for integrated interagency actions. These 

task forces would bring together a wealth of public and private experiences developed over many years by people working in and for border communities in such 

areas as environmental, commercial, public, and security services. These groups 

would also benefit from the full participation of local governments. This could include community participation, based on models from the existing, diverse participatory experiences at the community level in Guatemala.

The multidisciplinary nature of these task forces would be a key element of 

their value to the government and, more broadly, the national political system.8

They could include officials from the government, the army, the National Civil Police, and local police, as well as civil society actors. Through this joint effort, several 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

72

institutions together—public and private, national and local—would share responsibility for seeking solutions to the diverse problems of security confronting border 

communities in Guatemala. 

IMPROVING CITIZENSHIP AND SOCIAL CAPITAL

BY INCREASING THE RESOURCES AND

AUTHORITIES OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

Ultimately, what is required to control the impact of the criminal organizations and 

illicit trafficking in the border communities is an increase in the active and effective 

presence of the state in these communities, properly integrated with and in support 

of community institutions. It is clear that expansion of the legitimate presence of 

the state will be difficult under any circumstances, especially when faced with limitations related to scarcity of financial resources in a country with critical needs such 

as Guatemala. But it is also clear that the reform process could streamline the use of 

some resources currently being misspent to reduce the vulnerability of the country 

in the struggle against organized crime.

The potential for expanding the presence of the state is relatively easy to imagine in cases similar to Sayaxché, where the social and political infrastructures are 

minimal and the needs are great. Isolated and underdeveloped communities like 

these would most likely welcome any future efforts by the government that would 

lead to services being provided. Nevertheless, long-term, sustainable improvements in these communities’ security will require more than additional troops or 

police. For instance, citizens must gain social capital by developing the capacity for 

cooperation and trust, first among themselves and second in coordination with and 

support of government initiatives.

In Malacatán, there are also various options for incrementally increasing state 

presence with the support of the community. The local government, the private sector, and actors from civil society exist in abundance and would likely be interested in 

reaching agreements with public institutions that would allow for coordinated efforts 

toward increasing state presence. As the case study showed, organized criminal activity 

in and around Malacatán takes place within a broader, stronger legal economic environment. National agencies would be welcomed within this formal sector for the benefits they bring, and would pose no danger to most of Malacatán’s society and economy.
IMPLICATIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS FOR PUBLIC POLICY

73

It appears that such cases as Gualán present the greatest challenge because 

of age-old patterns of services provided by entrenched traditional groups like los 

señores and the greater relative importance of trafficking and related activities 

to the local economy. In such cases, popular support for these groups and profound mistrust of the Guatemalan government could cripple efforts to alter these 

long-standing dynamics and curb criminal activity in the area. The community will 

be suspicious and skeptical, and is likely to rally around local institutions and associations, at least at the beginning. Success will require patience and a cautious 

strategic approach via the early insertion of such nonsecurity agencies as health, 

sanitation, and public works. A greater share of resources will likely be required before national institutions, and eventually state security forces, gain acceptance and 

collaboration in these communities.

FISCAL DECENTRALIZATION 

AS A LONG-TERM CONSIDERATION

Our case studies consistently demonstrate that residents of border communities 

tend to view the Guatemalan national government as unhelpful at best—and predatory at worst—and unworthy of their trust at any rate. For this reason, we suggest 

that the most effective, short-term course of action must be policies and programs 

designed at the local level, with input but not firm guidance from institutions of 

the central government. The Guatemalan government should increase its presence 

largely via the strengthening of local municipal entities and particularly the reserve 

of social capital with which they can work so that the communities themselves may 

be effective coordinators of the process of improving local security. 

Clearly, part of strengthening the capacities of local governments relates to 

improving their access to economic resources to allow them to supply services demanded by the community. In our view, Guatemalans should reflect seriously on 

their tax structure. Not only—as is often stated within Guatemala and by outside 

observers—does the central government need far more resources for its security 

institutions, reforms, and operations, but local governments also need greater resources to serve the needs of their communities. Reforms along the lines of fiscal 

federalism, by which municipal and departmental governments collect and spend 

a greater share of total taxes (their current share of total public spending is fixed, 
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

74

constitutionally, at 10 percent), would place greater responsibility and resources on 

local governments.9

A more decentralized tax system would help increase the autonomy of local 

governments and improve the institutional capacities. By strengthening the autonomy and effectiveness of local governments, their legitimacy in the eyes of the 

community will improve as well. Bringing state institutions and policymaking closer 

to the citizens they serve improves government performance. As more citizens see 

government as beneficial instead of detrimental to their welfare, citizen support 

and involvement would likely increase. By providing incentives for citizens in border communities to be more active in their local politics and in their communities in 

general, decentralization or fiscal federalism could improve the quality of Guatemalan citizenship and social capital. 

However, given the mixed and in many senses negative experiences with 

decentralization in Colombia, Mexico, and other Latin American countries (where 

the penetration of the political system by criminal groups has been an enduring 

problem), measures for accountability and transparency will be crucial in Guatemala. With transparency and accountability in municipal government operations and 

electoral processes, competition among parties vying for municipal control would 

empower the community via the ballot box. As is clear from other Latin American 

cases, to be effective decentralization will require autonomous and active local judiciaries and attorneys general, free press, and electoral councils, which at present few 

Guatemalan municipalities could claim. For this reason, it is not a reform that should 

be undertaken all at once; instead, it should occur piece by piece over time as local 

institutions grow stronger and proceed through different steps and with different 

resources, depending on specific community strengths and deficiencies. A positive 

first step could be the establishment of a clear system of municipal and departmental evaluation to determine the processes necessary for each local government to 

become capable of collecting and managing new resources effectively.

9

 This reform does not need to affect existing redistributive measures from federal revenues that aid underdeveloped municipalities. 
75

POSTSCRIPT

We initially conducted this research in 2011 and released the original report and its recommendations in Guatemala just before President Pérez 

Molina took office in 2012. Our case studies were updated, though not in 

the same depth, in December 2012. The manuscript was updated again in 2015 to 

prepare it for publication with Marine Corps University Press.

Since that time, there have been some remarkable developments in Guatemala. Several prominent leaders of drug-trafficking organizations—including such los 

señores members as individuals from the Lorenzana family—have been arrested and 

extradited to the United States. The Zetas, as the coherent network we described in 

2011–12, have been shattered through violent competition with rival cartels and by 

Mexican, U.S., and regional law enforcement cooperation. All of their previous top 

leaders are dead or in jail. More recently, even the world’s top trafficker, Joaquin “El 

Chapo” Guzman, the founder and CEO of the Sinaloa Federation, has been arrested 

and jailed (for the third time). None of these developments seems to have made any 

significant difference in the size of the regional drug trade, though rates of violence 

have lowered somewhat in Guatemala and Mexico (while rising in El Salvador and 

Honduras).

Of greater importance, it appears, has been the anticorruption work in Guatemala of the United Nations–backed International Commission against Impunity in 

Guatemala (CICIG). This independent investigative commission has successfully led 

several high-level investigations of corruption in Guatemala, including one that led 

to the impeachment and trial of former President Pérez Molina and several of his 

associates. Whether the CICIG is helping to fundamentally root out corruption at the 

top of Guatemala’s political system is open to question. The commission’s independence from Guatemala’s federal courts has allowed it to succeed, but its capabilities 

and resources must ultimately be integrated into Guatemala’s judicial system and 

institutions if it is to lead to sustained change. Nevertheless, currently there is prom-
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

76

ise of important improvement in Guatemalan politics that was not evident when we 

conducted this analysis.

Sadly, however, little appears to have changed since 2012 regarding the active 

presence of criminal organizations and trafficking in Guatemala’s border regions. 

Data on the volume of drugs, money, weapons, and/or humans crossing Guatemala’s borders illegally is unavailable, and official estimates vary widely depending on 

the source, whether Guatemalan, United States, or international. No one asserts, 

however, that illegal trafficking has been reduced significantly. In some areas, the 

flow of narcotics and other contraband appears to have been diverted—for example, 

at the city of Tecún Uman on the Guatemalan-Mexican border, where the Guatemalan government with the help of the United States has built new border control 

infrastructure. More narcotics are now believed to be shipped via the sea, or through 

other parts of Guatemala, from Honduras. But the overall levels of smuggling remain significant. 

Similarly, as we have noted, the arrests of a series of major national capos, 

including the leaders of networks in Malacatán and Gualán that are highlighted in 

our case studies, seem to have made little or no difference with regard to criminal 

activity and public security in those areas. Other criminal bosses have stepped in to 

manage routes, networks, and relationships. Further research on the ground would 

be necessary to explore what effects, if any, those arrests have had on communityor individual-level security in those communities. The success of the CICIG and Guatemala’s courts at addressing corruption and impunity at the top of the national 

political system also have not affected the day-to-day conditions and behaviors that 

Guatemalans face on the street or in the village. As the case studies highlight, events 

in the federal capital are irrelevant to the politics and economics in the border and 

rural regions where powerful local families and networks hold sway.

Efforts to reform and retrain the national police force continue, but so far with 

little observable progress. The U.S. government continues to assist Guatemala in efforts to improve community-level safety and security in several municipalities, with 

some measurable success, but these remain limited in scope and their sustainability uncertain. Guatemala’s government has not yet succeeded in raising taxes to 

increase its capabilities to provide public security. In January 2015, the government 

announced a new effort to do so, but few believe it will succeed in passing a new 

tax program—even if created—through a congress where higher-income elites and 
POSTSCRIPT

77

criminal networks all have powerful influence. This ongoing lack of state resources, reflecting a shortage of political and societal commitment, limits Guatemala’s 

possibilities for promoting social capital in its communities and strengthening the 

rule of law through improved police, judicial, and penal institutions. Little progress 

has been made in any of these areas since 2012. More profound measures, such as 

fiscal decentralization, which would require constitutional reforms, are no closer to 

serious consideration than they were when we initially proposed them.
78

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83

INDEX

African palm, 23–24, 30, 33, 46, 48, 50

agriculture, 35, 42, 49

Arbenz, Jacobo, 8

Belize, vii, xii, 22

Castañeda, Oliverio, 35

Cerezo, Vinicio, 9

church, or narco-churches, 21, 27, 45, 48–49, 52, 56, 66

coca production, viii, ix, 7, 9, 53

coffee, 11, 35, 37–38, 43, 45–48, 57

Colombian cartels, viii, 8–9, 11–13, 16

community capital, 45, 47–49, 55, 56–60, 64–68

Community Development Council (COCODES), 6, 37, 48, 56, 64

contraband, xi, 1, 13, 21, 30–31, 38–41, 43–45, 50–51, 61, 76

Department of Defense, U.S. (DOD), 8

Departmental Development Councils (CODEDES), 6–7

Department of State, U.S. (DOS), v, 13, 61

Drug Enforcement Agency, U.S. (DEA), 8–9, 13, 16

El Salvador, vii, xii, 1–3, 22, 27, 75

El Trifinio (Tripoint), 1
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

84

Gualán, xi, 18, 34–44, 47, 49–51, 53, 55–58, 66, 73, 76

Guatemalan Army, ix, 1, 8–11, 23–25, 34, 69–71

Herrera, Otto, 14, 17

Honduras, vii–viii, xii, 1–3, 15, 34, 38, 43–44, 75–76

human trafficking, ix, 2, 13, 22, 32, 43, 49, 61, 76

institutional reform, 63, 68, 69–70

International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG), 75–76

laws, 60–73, 75–77

Decentralization Law, 4

Development Councils Law, 4, 6

Municipal Code, 4

León, Juan Juancho, 11, 15, 18, 26, 44

Lorenzana, Waldemar, 11, 15–17, 21, 37, 42–44, 75

Los señores, 18, 34, 37, 41–43, 44, 57–58, 64, 66–67, 73, 75

Malacatán, 45–56, 58–59, 66–67, 72–73, 76

Mano Blanco (White Hand) movement, 35

Marroquín, Otoniel “El Loco” Turcios, 33

Mexican cartels, 13, 15, 17, 34

Gulf Cartel, viii, ix, 13, 15–17

Sinaloa Federation, viii, ix, 13, 15–20, 53, 75

Zetas, viii, ix, 15–21, 33–34, 43, 67, 75

Mexico, viii, ix, xii, 1, 3, 9, 18–22, 30–31, 38, 49–50, 53, 74–75

Mi Familia Progresa (My Family Progresses), 26, 40–41

Molina, Pérez, 2, 71, 75

money laundering, 25, 29, 35–36, 40, 43, 49–50, 53

Municipal Development Councils (COMUDES), 6, 37, 56, 64
INDEX

85

Murder rates, ix, 3, 5, 43–44

National Civil Police (PNC), 5, 28, 40, 61, 63, 68–69

National Development Council (CONADE), 6

narcotics trafficking (narcotrafficking), viii–ixx, 1–20, 28, 44, 76

nongovernmental organization (NGO), 7, 21, 27, 37, 56, 66, 71

Asociación Guatemala (Guatemala Association), 37

Corazones en Movimiento (Hearts in Motion), 37

Siglo XXI (Twenty-First Century), 37

organized crime, xi, 1–2, 29–33, 51–53, 55, 59–60, 67–70, 72

Ortiz, Juan “Chamalé,” 11, 16, 45, 52–53, 58

Paredes, Jorge Mario, 14

Pérez, Héctor Rubén Chávez, 47

Petén, xi, 3, 5, 15, 18, 22–27, 29, 33, 43

Police reform, 68–70

Pop, Rodrigo, 23

public policy, 55, 60–74

Rebel Armed Forces, 34

Rodríguez, Juan José Mejía, 36–37

Sayaxché, xi, 21–33, 47, 50–51, 55–58, 67, 72

schools, xi, 7, 21, 30–31, 39–41, 60, 66

security reform, 63–64, 68

security zones, 68–71

smuggling routes, viii, ix, x, xi, 10, 14, 27

social capital, 21, 26–27, 34, 36–38, 56, 67, 72–73, 77

social cleansing, 32, 42
THE DILEMMA OF LAWLESSNESS

86

tax system, 6, 49, 65, 73–74, 76

tomatoes, 34–36, 38, 40–41, 49

trafficking networks, viii–xii, 9, 10, 13, 14–16, 18, 29, 33, 39, 53

violence, 3–4, 8–9, 11, 16–19, 42–44, 75

Zetas, viii, ix, 15–21, 33–34, 43, 67, 75

See also Mexican cartels
Front cover:

The Pacaya Volcano crater offers hidden paths for those 

wishing to move without a trace across Guatemala. 
T

he border zones of Central America are profoundly marginalized from the political 

and economic life of the nations to which they belong. Border communities tend 

to be poor, lacking of public services and infrastructure, and isolated. Borders themselves are permeable at best and mostly nonexistent. Local residents cross them 

regularly to shop or sell their goods, for jobs, to access services at the closest town, 

or to simply visit family members or friends. In the past, these regions, their sparse 

and often indigenous populations, and these constant flows of goods and people 

went overlooked. But during the last decade, a surge of drug trafficking and human 

smuggling has brought attention to them as “ungoverned” spaces that undermine 

the sovereignty and security of the countries of the region and of the United States.

The Dilemma of Lawlessness explores in-depth three towns typical of Guatemala’s 

border regions and examines the economic, political, and security effects of the amplification of the drug trade in their streets, across their rivers, and on their footpaths. 

The cases reveal that trade has brought prosperity, but also danger, as illegal profits 

penetrate local businesses, government offices, and churches as longstanding local smuggling networks must contend with or accommodate the interests of Mexican cartels. The authors argue persuasively for the importance of cultivating local 

community capital to strengthen these communities’ resiliency in the face of these 

threats.