It's a huge problem. With perhaps 50,000 migrants arriving each year, all seizing free stands of jungle, the rain forest is vanishing at a staggering rate. Even the 1.6 million hectares of ostensibly protected jungle is under threat. Most falls within the massive Maya Biosphere Reserve, home to national parks and the ruins of scores of ancient Mayan cities including Uaxactun, El Mirador, and the granddaddy of them all, Tikal. The government, which is under intense international scrutiny, avoids confrontations with squatters in the reserve for fear of upsetting the peace process or the sensibilities of donor nations.
Many settlers are armed.
The war gave families bullets, if not bread. Guatemala's civil war was the longest and bloodiest of Central America's recent conflicts. More than 140,000 were killed-twice as many as in the conflicts in Nicaragua and El Salvador combined. Here, as elsewhere, the United States was knee-deep in corpses, supplying ammunition to death squads. The war began in the 1960s, but its origins date back centuries.