Just as Mexico lives in the shadow of the U.S., Guatemala lives in the shadow of Mexico. To its southern neighbor Mexico has exported its ranchera music, its soap operas, its tacos and now, its narco violence — as if Guatemala didn’t have enough of its own.
-Time magazine

Mexico’s powerful drug cartels killed some 6200 people in Mexico last year as an army crackdown sparked fresh turf wars. Drug gangs have decalared war not only against the government and rival Mexican cartels, but also against Guatemalan traffickers as they began setting up camp in Guatemala where the porous border is used as a key corridor to move Colombian cocaine north by land to the United States.

The number of narco-traffickers is adding up, particularly those from Mexico. The Sinaloa cartel and the Gulf cartel have an impressive presence in Guatemala. The problem is we have mobilized a tremendous amount of personnel but we don’t have enough resources, so sustaining an operation is difficult.
-Alvaro Colom, President of Guatemala

Links between Mexican cartels and Guatemala go back years.

The Gulf cartel’s armed wing of Zetas hitmen have been known to recruit elite Guatemalan soldiers called Kaibiles, a unit infamous for human rights abuses against the Mayan population during the country’s 1960-96 civil war.

Mexico’s most-wanted drug lord and Kingpin of the Sinaloa Cartel, Joaquin “Shorty” Guzman, is rumored to count safe houses in Guatemala among his hide-outs since escaping from jail in 2001.

It is estimated that over 400 metric tons of Colombian cocaine, with a wholesale street price of over $7 billion dollars, are moved through the Central American corridor, meaning most of it would go through Guatemala. This type of movement would mean Guatemala is no longer a mere drug corridor, but rather an essential and highly lucrative pit stop, essentially a privateering port, on the road north.

A shootout last in a recreational area in March of 2008, pitted Guatemalan trafficker, Juan Jose Juancho Leon Ardon, linked to the Gulf cartel, against members of the Sinaloa cartel, led by Mexican drug boss, Joaquin Guzman Loera. Local newspapers reported that Leon Ardon and his group had stolen a drug shipment from the Sinaloa cartel, which then allegedly sought vengeance by killing Leon Ardon and 10 of his men. The 12th victim was Arturo Damian Casanova, a Mexican national and suspected member of the Sinaloa cartel.

Last December, a shootout among drunken drug traffickers, some of them Mexican, who disagreed about the winner of a Guatemalan horse race near the shared border left at least 17 people dead in Agua Zarca, less than an hour from the Mexico-Guatemala border. Authorities found nearby what appeared to be an improvised hospital for the wounded, including an impromptu helicopter pad with evidence of use.

Like Mexico, corruption, impunity, and poverty create the perfect setting for narco trafficking in Guatemala. Again, Like Mexico, weak, infiltrated governments have been unable or unwilling to reverse the tide. The breakdown of authority, especially in highly drug trafficked areas, leaves the population little choice but to align itself with the traffickers, as they become the law in weakened States.

Currently both Mexico and Guatemala have initiated the process of decorrupting state and federal systems and increasing military presence along on the joint border as well as implementing new social programs aimed at reducing poverty.

Both governments have vowed to take cartels head on, both independently and jointly. Both of our countries have faced th true reality of waging a war against drugs. It’s all or nothing, make or break.