The Evolution of Organized Crime in Guatemala

                                     Daniel E PerezVertti, ERIC BALOGH,

                                 RICHARD EATON, ROSALYN TOWNES

                                                         11/15/2016

                                            Instructor: PATRICK COTE  

The evolution of organized crime in Guatemala must be put in the context of three overarching characteristics of the country. Guatemala is one of the smallest countries on the continent (109,000 square kilometers). It has had a long, difficult history: a prolonged and violent 200-year experience with colonization; a permanent regime of dispossession and expropriation of indigenous communities; structural violence organized as political violence and civil war between 1954 and 1996, which has continued as rampant criminal violence in the democratic and post-conflict period; and one of the most unequal societies in the hemisphere with extremely high rates of child malnutrition and poverty. The 20th was a lost century for Guatemala, in that the country failed to build state institutions. During this period, a strong military power inhibited the development of the state. There was also more than a decade during which the end of the civil war was not formalized. This led to idle security apparatuses that obeyed certain clandestine interests and diverted into criminal activities. As a result, competent and trained individuals with significant official status were able to weave together criminal organizations and partner with transnational crime.

 Under these conditions, reforms to Guatemala’s security and judicial system included in the 1996 Peace Accords that followed the country’s civil conflict failed. The country’s traditional military power was ultimately weakened, and the National Civil Police and other investigative bodies were taken over by private networks, both legal and illegal, which sabotaged their ability to impose the rule of law. An estimated 80 percent of police are now considered unreliable. The homicide rate in Guatemala City hovers close to 90 per 100,000, one of the highest in the world, and impunity for violent crimes stands at 98 percent.7 Two-thirds of Guatemala’s adult male population carry firearms, and applications for gun licenses from women are growing. In short, the country is overwhelmed by criminal violence and citizen self-defense, which includes routine instances of vigilantism in vulnerable neighborhoods, the lynching of suspected criminals, and the widespread use of hired killers. The principal failure with respect to reforms is found within the security and justice institutions, since physical and legal insecurity characterize the general fragility of the state. During the period of transition from authoritarian rule to democracy and political peace (1985 – 1996), clandestine operations of remnant security structures infiltrated civil institutions and contaminated the system. This period coincided with the growth and formation of the regional drug trade, which transformed Guatemala into a strategic link for access to the major drug markets of North America.