Heading Back to Guatemala

I am heading back to Guatemala next week, so expect less sporadic posts in the weeks to come. But in the mean time, here is a link to an article on the recent violence in Guatemala from the The Guardian. Also, an interesting commentary (in Spanish) from a friend of mine who also works on the issue of violence in Central America. I'm including a quick translation of his comments into English below:

Why Petén and Not the Department of Guatemala?
by Carlos A. Mendoza
(my translation)

 The lamentable and horrible murder of migrant workers in Peten at the hands of suspected narco-terrorists raised national and international alarm over the power of organized crime in Guatemala and the violent strategies these groups use to fight their rivals. The reaction of the state, as usual, was timid, late, and inappropriate. Among other deficiencies, the security forces tried to respond with outdated legal instruments, like the Public Order Law (Decree No. 7 of the Constituent Assembly of 1965, later changed in 1970).

The Executive decreed a state of siege in the entire department of Petén, based on the above law and "[because] during the last few days there have been a series of grave acts that put the constitutional order, governability and the security of the State at risk, affecting people and families, putting life, liberty, justice, security, peace and human development at risk" (Government Decree 4-2011, May 16). 

Obviously, the massacre in Petén merits due attention from the State, but this is more a reaction to the media coverage of the macabre event rather than part of a strategic and well-planned response against organized crime, especially in zones where the presence of the State, both as law and as bureaucracy, is precarious. The criticism is founded in the fact that the authorities give the impression of not using the basic data on violent homicides to focus their efforts and effectively use their limited human resources, for as we know in Guatemala there are less than 2 policemen for every 1,000 people, or, in a territorial perspective, we have less than 19 police for every 100 square kilometers. 

The homicide rates for every 100,000 people reveals that in Petén, the violence is going down in respect to 2008, when it registered at 77 per 100,000. This fell to 71 in 2009 and made it to 60 in 2010. This explains why, with a total of 366 homicides last year, Petén rose in the departmental rankings of violent homicides, taking the 7th spot in a total of 22 departments. That is to say that in 2010 there were six departments more violent than Petén. The most violent of all was the department of Guatemala.   

According to the figures that the National Civil Police (PNC) reported, there were 2,423 homicides in the entire department of Guatemala. That is to say that 41 percent of the total homicides in the country occurred here, in the geographic, political and economic center. For a population estimated at 3.1 million (22 percent of the total population), the departmental rate was 78 homicides for every 100,000 people. That is 18 points higher than the homicide rate in Petén, and in absolute terms that is 2,057 extra deaths ( 90 percent of which were due to guns). Only 4 percent of the population lives in Petén, with a registered 6 percent of the homicides in the entire national territory. In the Department of Guatemala, the violence is totally disproportionate, practically double the expected for its population. 

The Department of Guatemala is the most densely populated in the country, almost 1,400 people per square kilometer (Petén is the least populated, with 17 people per square kilometer). At the Central American level, only El Salvador rises above this level in terms of population density, with 2,000 people per square kilometer (it also registered a homicide rate of 78 per 100,000 people in 2010). Guatemala is the department with the highest percentage of people living in urban areas (85 percent) and it has the highest score on the human development index in the country (practically at the highest level by international standards). All of these facts that let us locate the department in relation to Petén and other regions of the country and Central America make us question the validity of many hypotheses that propose to explain violence in the region. They suggest that we need a series of investigations into the causes of the problem so we can propose effective solutions.

However, the intention of my reflection is to ask why it did not occur to anyone to declare a state of siege in the Department of Guatemala? In Petén, they are trying to control more than 35,000 square kilometers of territory, [in the capital] it would be a little more than 2,000 square kilometers, but more than 3 million people (without counting those that come to Guatemala City from other parts of the country for business or to work). The state of siege seems to be an antiquated and not very applicable instrument, and the criteria the government uses to decide when to activate it or not is illogical. We are talking about human lives, but permit me to use an analogy to explain the possible cognitive bias that may be blinding the authorities in charge of citizen security. In our homes we can find two types of water leaks in the pipes and drains. On one hand, there are the scandalous leaks, when the water springs out on all sides and we shut off the water and call the plumber. On the other hand, there are the leaks that happen drop by drop, almost imperceptible until we get the water bill from the municipality and it is then that we react, if only to investigate where we can find evidence of moisture and locate the problem. This last type of leak is the most dangerous because we don't see it, because it erodes the floor slowly until it causes irreparable damage. Something like this happens to the State, it sees and reacts to a collective tragedy (highlighted by the morbid and sensational the media), but it ignores the every day victims, those that are only one number more in the official statistics. These deaths happen in the Department of Guatemala, but no one has raised the alarm. They are no longer news.   

I think my friend has some good points here. For one, I agree that the murders that happen every day in Guatemala City have become common place. They often make the news, but not in the way that the massacre in Petén made the news. The newspapers are full of reports of dead bodies found at the side of the road, men and women murdered by unidentified strangers as they go about their every day lives, stories often stripped of descriptions of context or motive. Stories reminiscent of reports of death squad assassinations during the war. This violence is no longer shocking, no longer out-of-place, no longer notable.

I understand the rhetorical question my friend poses: if they're going to call a state of siege in Petén, why haven't they called one in Guatemala City? But we must also remember that he is not suggesting that the authorities should actually declare a state of siege there. I think the take away from this commentary is that we should worry about all of the murders in Guatemala, not just the flashy massacre linked to Mexican drug cartels in the north. What do you all think? Do you agree with his assessment?

Update on Drug Violence in Peten

Just thought I'd add a quick update on the last post. Guatemalan papers reported today that white sheets with messages written on them were found hanging in Quetzaltenango and Baja Verapaz signed by the Zeta cartel. The messages read:

La guerra no es contra la población civil, ni con el Gobierno, mucho menos con la prensa, así que llévenla tranquila, es contra aquellas personas que trabajan con el Golfo y la contra. Otto Salguero es uno de los más importantes surtidores de cocaína del Golfo y los que pagaron sus vidas son trabajadores que le mantienen su organización. Prensa bájenle tanta mamada antes de que la guerra sea contra ustedes, el que avisa no es traidor. Atte. Z. 200

In English:

The war is not against the civilian population, nor against the Government, even less against the press, so stay calm, the war is against those people that work for the Gulf Cartel and the other. Otto Salguero* is one of the most important cocaine suppliers for the Gulf Cartel and those that paid with their lives are workers who maintain his organization. News media, stop making such a fuss** before the war starts to be against you, you've been warned***. Attn: Z 200

The police caught three suspected Zetas as they were hanging one of these sheets.

From what I understand, there is a long history of the drug cartels intimidating journalists in Guatemala, particularly in the northern departments. I'm keeping my fingers crossed that things don't start to get even more out of hand.


*Otto Salguero is the owner of the ranch where the massacre took place.

**Not quite an exact translation, but you get the picture..."bajenle tanta mamada" is a phrase I'm not very familiar with. Literally translated it means something like "don't give so many blowjobs."

***This literally translates to "he who warns is not a traitor," but is better understood as a common saying that comes out in English something like "Forewarned is forearmed" or "Don't say I didn't warn you" or, as I've translated it here, simply "you've been warned."

Drug Violence in Guatemala

I'm not sure how many of you all who read this follow the news about Central America, so I thought I would share this news story with you. I'm a little behind the times on it, but I'll plead typing exhaustion due to a combination of dissertation writing and research assisting.

So here's what's going on. Last Sunday, May 15, 27 bodies were found decapitated on a ranch in the northern Guatemalan department of Peten.  The LA Times article about the massacre does a good job of covering the situation, and I recommend taking a look. It's one of the few articles I've found in English. The article says that witnesses report around 200 armed men arriving in buses at the ranch. Official estimates place the number around 40. The perpetrators wrote warnings to the owner of the ranch in blood on the walls of one building, threatening that they were coming after him next. From what I can gather, the victims were temporary ranch workers who had been recently hired. The sole survivor of the massacre, a woman who worked at the ranch, reported that the perpetrators told her that they were Mexican, that they did not like Guatemalans and that they were killing people because the worked at the ranch. Most reports suggest that the culprits are members of the Zetas, a Mexican drug cartel that has been moving into Guatemala over the last few years. I've written about the Zetas in Guatemala in a previous post. At the time the LA Times article was written, commentators were speculating that the murders were linked to the assassination of the brother of a suspected drug trafficker committed two days earlier. The ranch owner's drug-trafficking brother had been killed in 2008, allegedly by the Zetas.

In response to the massacre, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a state of siege in the department of Peten. This BBC report (in Spanish) describes how this is not the first notable action by the Zetas in Peten in the last year--in October of 2010, ten vehicles loaded with armed men on their way to pick up a cocaine shipment got caught up in a shoot-out with police on a ranch near the Mexican border. President Colom had declared a state of siege in the department of Alta Verapaz in December because of drug violence there.

As this Siglo 21 article reports (again, in Spanish), Guatemalan police and military personnel pursued three suspected Zetas in an operation that ended in a gunfight that left two suspects dead. The article stresses that the suspects have not yet been linked to the May 14th massacre, and I haven't looked for an update on this yet. Interestingly, the article also notes that the police have begun to investigate the owner of the ranch, on the assumption that since he is being targeted by the Zetas, he must be involved in drug trafficking. According to this source, the woman who survived was spared because she was pregnant.

An article from a Mexican newspaper links the massacre to an ex-Sergeant Major in the Guatemalan Army, citing a radio interview with Colom. In the interview, Colom draws a parallel between the May 14th massacre and massacres committed during the civil war. The one survivor of the gunfight between the police/army and the suspected Zetas was a member of the Guatemalan armed forces during the war. Apparently, many of the former members of death squads joined the Zetas after the signing of the 1996 Peace Accords.

This massacre has, of course, thrown things into an uproar, especially because this is an election year. I read an abridged transcript of a radio debate between the top two candidates for the presidency, and they dug into each other over public security issues. Sandra Torres, the UNE candidate who is married to the current president (but who is filing for divorce so she can legally run for president) called Oscar Pérez, the PP candidate, a coward, partially because he shrunk the size of the military while he was Security Commissioner during the Berger administration (a reduction of the military was part of the Peace Accords). Torres basically accuses him of creating the drug trafficking routes throughout the country by decommissioning military bases. Pérez, in return, accuses Torres of being responsible for the massacre because of her role in the Colom presidency. He flat out says that Torres has been "co-governing" the country and that she's the one that tells the president what to do. Therefore, she is responsible. Sounds like a rather brutal debate to me, and one that will probably be repeated as the September elections draw closer.

I'm sharing this all with you for a few reasons. First, I find it concerning that the drug violence so publicly committed in Mexico is again becoming visible in Guatemala. Drug violence has been around for some time, but with the exception of the decapitated heads found in Guatemala City last year (one was even found on the steps of the Congress building), this type of massacre hasn't been seen since the civil war ended. I wonder what it means if the dark forces that have stayed (somewhat) below the radar for the last decade or so are coming back out into the light again. Second, it's been interesting reading the reader's comments on the news articles posted online. Quite a few of them revolve around whether the readers thought the media coverage of the massacre was too sensational, a topic that I am obviously interested in. I wonder how this type of incident affects people's feelings of safety. This was an atrocity committed in a remote place, remote at least to those living in the capital city. It could be that people will not pay too much attention once some time has passed, given that this was something that happened so far away. Gang attacks on buses are a more pressing problem for those who have to take a city bus to work. But, on the other hand, the victims were innocent laborers, people who had done nothing wrong. These were not drug dealers taking out other drug dealers. Finally, I wonder if this will affect the election. About six months before the 2007 presidential elections, a number of Salvador politicians were murdered by Guatemalan policemen, and, in turn, the policemen who were captured were murdered in a prison riot, allegedly by members of a death squad. These incidents, unsurprisingly, led to a huge scandal. But the scandal did not have much political impact (from what I can tell) in terms of having an effect on the election. Will this most recent scandal push people to vote for heavy-handed policing and the promise of a stronger military presence in public security? Or will it be forgotten four months from now?

News Coverage of Mexican Drug War

If you are interested in following US news coverage of the Mexican drug war, the LA Times has an interesting section on their webpage that groups together all of their stories relating to drug trafficking and drug related violence in (or connected to) Mexico. It is all collated by date, but you can also get the stories listed by dateline, byline, or type of article (video, story, etc.). It would make a great resource for looking at US media coverage of the issue.

 One of the articles in the special section address the problem of drugs coming in through Central America. It looks at the case of El Salvador in particular, a country that, in the past, hasn't really seen the same type of drug trafficking as Guatemala has. The story also reports that the police have found a cocaine lab in Honduras, evidence that the Mexican cartels are making their own cocaine (an enterprise that has long been a Colombian monopoly), and even Costa Rica is complaining about an influx of Mexican drug traffickers. According to the article, more than 60 percent of the cocaine that reaches the US arrives via Central America, a number attributed to US State Department sources. El Salvador has become a more popular route for trafficking because of a new highway that bisects the northern region built in part with US funding and because the official currency is the US dollar, which makes it easier to launder money.

Two things in particular struck me about this article. First, the report describes a town in Chalatenango, where drugs coming in from Honduras are repackaged and shipped on to Guatemala. We just finished reading a book about guerrilla warfare in the political science class I am a TA for that describes the FMLN presence in a small town in Chalatenango, and it brings home some of the connections between the violence of the civil war and the violence that the drug trade brings with it. Second, the ads included at the side of the page when you read the article online are all for Mexican and Central American vacations, a somewhat ironic twist given the content of the article. I have seen some coverage of how/if the drug violence has been affecting tourism in Mexico, but not much coverage as to how it might be affecting Central America. Granted, El Salvador isn't exactly a tourist magnet like Costa Rica. But Guatemala, for example, earns about 2.2 percent of its GDP from tourism (in 2009, according to Prensa Libre). I have no idea if that is a big percentage or not, but I do know that Guatemala has made a huge effort in recent years to boost tourism.

Finally, to round out this post, I want to point you all to a photo gallery at boston.com that includes some striking images of the drug war in Mexico. The images are certainly arresting, but what stuck out the most for me about this photo gallery is that some of the more grisly images were censored. Ok, not censored in that they were altered, but some of the photos are left black with a warning notice that says:

Warning: This image contains graphic or objectionable content. Click here to view it.

The captions of the pictures are not blacked out, however, so you can get an idea of what the image is before you decide if you want to see it. Such a disclaimer/warning is an interesting way to get around the issue of being too sensational, too voyeuristic, too graphic when covering violence. It also reminds me of the news that came out a week or so ago about Mexican news agencies agreeing on guidelines on how to cover drug violence without glorifying drug bosses and putting their journalists at risk.

Nepotism Laws and Presidential Divorce

Just in case you haven't been following this story (see here, here and here, too), Guatemalan politics have once again taken a strange turn. As with all good political intrigues, this tale includes a woman some have called the power behind the throne, a high-powered divorce,  allegations of corruption, an opposition candidate with a shady military past, and lots of money.

The Guatemalan Constitution forbids the close relatives of the incumbent president and vice-president to run for president, a nepotism law put in place as a impediment to the establishment of presidential dynasties. Why is it important to know this small piece of Guatemalan law, you ask? Because the wife of the incumbent president, Sandra Torres de Colom,* has announced her intention to run for the highest office in the elections this September. Initially, Torres argued that her candidacy was legal because she is not a blood relative of President Colom, but rather a relative by marriage. After the courts ruled that her definition of "close relative" did not hold up, the couple announced that they would be filing for divorce. That's right, divorce. If she is no longer married to the president, then she can be a legitimate presidential candidate. At least that is, unless the current legal challenges to this political maneuvering hold up in court.

Sandra Torres is a controversial figure in Guatemala. She is the face of Colom's social programs, and has a strong following in rural areas, where the Mi Familia Progresa (My Progressive Family), a conditional cash transfer program, has raised living conditions for many indigenous women. The Mi Familia Progresa program, however, has been pinned with numerous allegations of corruption and embezzlement, and Torres herself has been accused of corruption, fraud, and misuse of public funds. She was also implicated in the murder of a lawyer in 2009, a bizarre case that I wrote about in previous posts (here and here). Both Torres and her husband were cleared by the CICIG of being involved in the Rosenberg murder, but accusations of corruption still hover around the presidential couple.

The presidential election in Guatemala this fall will be quite an interesting spectacle. The last presidential election in 2007 was one of the bloodiest on record, with over 50 politicians killed in the six months leading up to election day. Many of the deaths were attributed to "common crime," but it is most likely the case that most of these murders were politically motivated. Hiring assassins is apparently a relatively cheap and easy way to defeat your political rivals. This election season may or may not be as bloody as 2007, but it has certainly be fraught with controversy so far. The Economist article that I link to above puts the situation in easy to understand terms, so I'll quote it here:

Ms Torres is not the only candidate running on dubious constitutional grounds. Álvaro Arzú, a former president, is campaigning despite a ban on re-election. Zury Ríos, a congresswoman, may be blocked by a prohibition on the relatives of the organisers of coups, since her father, Efraín Ríos Montt, toppled a government in 1982 and installed himself as dictator. Eduardo Suger, another possible candidate, was born in Switzerland and may not meet the requirement to be “Guatemalan in origin”. “Ministers of religion” are forbidden from running too, which might spell problems for Harold Caballeros, the founder of a large evangelical church.

One of the few candidates free of constitutional entanglements is Otto Pérez Molina, a former general who narrowly lost a run-off vote to Mr Colom in 2007. Mr Pérez Molina is the strong favourite: a recent poll put his support at 43%, with Ms Torres next on only 11%. In 2007 he promised an “iron fist” against crime. Since then Guatemala has become far more dangerous, as Mexican cocaine smugglers have put down roots in the wild jungle areas near the northern border. After four years of the soft-spoken Mr Colom, some Guatemalans might fancy an ex-army man to drive the gunmen back across the frontier (The Economist March 24, 2011).

 When I was in Guatemala last summer, may people told me they thought that Otto Pérez would be the next president. Not because of his policies, or because of his popularity, but because he came in second in the 2007 elections. I heard from a number of sources that that is how politics work in Guatemala. The runner up of the previous election will win the current one. Berger can in second to Portillo in 1999 and won in 2003. Colom came in second to Berger in 2003 and won in 2007. The logic goes that people want to vote for whoever they think will win. So they say, anyway. I guess we'll find out in September. Or December, if it comes to a run-off. If no one gets 50 percent of the vote in the first round of elections (which is tough to do, especially if there are 14 presidential candidates like there were in 2007), then there will be a run-off election a few months later between the top two candidates.

* a note on Guatemala surnames: Most Guatemalans use two last names, one being their mother's name and the other being their father's name. The first last name is the father's family name, and the second last name is the mother's family name. When addressing someone, you would use the father's family name (the first last name). So, for example, Otto Pérez Molina is often called Otto Pérez, and if you were speaking to him in person you would call him Sr. Pérez (or perhaps General Pérez?). This is why President Colom, whose full name is Alvaro Colom Caballeros, is called Colom and not Caballeros. For married women, the name changes a bit. When a woman gets married, she drops her mother's family name and places her husband's first last name after her father's family name, with a "de" (of) in between. Hence, Sandra Torres de Colom. Make sense?

***Update: As pointed out to me by a friend currently living in Guatemala, Arzú's candidacy has been ruled unconstitutional and images of his wife have begun to appear on posters around the city. I seem to remember seeing something about this in the news recently. Since Arzú is not currently president, his wife is free to run. (Thanks, Sophie, for the heads up on this!)

Article on Rosenberg in the New Yorker

If any of you out there are interested in reading a New Yorker article about the Rosenberg murder I wrote about in this blog post, follow this link. I really recommend taking the time to read it. It says a lot about politics in Guatemala. Stranger than fiction...

Persona Management Software

This morning I followed a twisty path from my Facebook newsfeed to this blog post to, finally, this blog post.What magnetic force pulled me forward up this ladder of links, you ask? A concept that both my social science side and my science fiction side found fascinating (and not all that surprising, really): the government/political organizations/interest groups are developing/have developed/have implemented new software that creates a fictional persona with an online presence that is indistinguishable from a real person. Ok, so far, other than from a more metaphysical or philosophical standpoint, this doesn't sound that threatening. But, as Happy Rockefeller writes in his Daily Kos blog, the nefarious purpose of such fictional online personae is to manufacture opinions, Facebook statuses, tweets, and online commentary in an effort to influence public attitudes.

With persona management software, an employee can control multiple automated personae, building each virtual person from false accounts on a plethora of interconnect social networking sites. False accounts, that is, in the sense that these people do not exist outside of the internet. Instead, they exist on thumb drives or on servers, made up of a series of RSS feeds, retweeted tweets, and made-up social networking profiles. Much of this has come out in leaked emails taken from a defense contracting firm, HB Gary, by the hacker group Anonymous. Rockefeller quotes from the email, and I'll repost it here:

Using the assigned social media accounts we can automate the posting of content that is relevant to the persona.  In this case there are specific social media strategy website RSS feeds we can subscribe to and then repost content on twitter with the appropriate hashtags.  In fact using hashtags and gaming some location based check-in services we can make it appear as if a persona was actually at a conference and introduce himself/herself to key individuals as part of the exercise, as one example.  There are a variety of social media tricks we can use to add a level of realness to all fictitious personas.

Both bloggers linked above point out that the purpose of these false personae is to plant fake opinions out there in cyberspace. These fictitious personae can post comments on blogs, retweet opinions for or against controversial topics, or bring up arguments or counterarguments no yet in the public consciousness. An attitude, opinion, or stance that may have only a small following in "real" life can seem overwhelmingly large when fake people are loudly supporting it.

But what does this creation of false virtual personae really mean, beyond the ability to flood the market (so to speak) with opinions that are not necessarily held by that many people in the "real" world. First, cyberspace is already a skewed space. I don't know if anyone can argue that the opinions we see on Facebook, Twitter, etc., is representative of the population. For now, I'm thinking of the smaller world of US politics, but this could certainly be widened to include other parts of the world. There is a certain type of person that gets online and posts, and not just in terms of money (you have to have at least some money to own a computer and have internet access...although that is debated in terms of facebook and tweeting, given the more wide availability of cellphones, etc.). Not everyone who has a cell phone or a computer posts their political opinions online. And we should already be aware (although I think some people forget this) that just because a group has a loud presence online doesn't mean it is actually powerful, cohesive, or large. People who are talking about politics online are already a self-selected group.

I wonder, too, what these false personae represent on a more philosophical level? Perhaps my literary friends who are well versed in the tropes of science fiction in general and cyberpunk in particular can address this question better than I.

Finally, this begs the question if shooting "false" opinions out into cyberspace really changes "real" people's opinions. I think this has something to do, first, with new research that shows that given the fragmentation of news media in the digital age, consumers seek out media outlets that are closest to their own political ideology. That is, lefties tend to watch John Stewart, conservatives are more likely to watch Glenn Beck. Your political leanings tend to determine which media you are exposed to. So does this argument extend to virtual personae? Would opinions expressed by false accounts only reach those who already share that opinion? Is this like preaching to the choir? A mechanism of reinforcement rather than change?

Second, the theory that these false personae can change people's opinions depends on the theory that people are easily lead. Josh Clark, in his How Stuff Works blog, explains:

...[U]nder the bandwagon technique a tweet that shows support for union labor is trumped by 50 replies that suggest unions are bad for America. We like to be on the winning team, generally, so we may be swayed by the 50:1 ratio against the concept of unions, which germinates into personal opinion, which may be disseminated in to others throughout one’s lifetime. All this without any real information.

I understand the logic here, but I'm not sure if I agree that public opinion works this way. Which I guess is a bit funny, coming from me, since I'm writing about how news media coverage of crime in Latin America influences public opinion. But the more research I do on the topic, the more it seems that people's opinions can be sharpened or a topic can be made more salient, but it is very hard to actually change someone's opinion. And I am very skeptical of the idea that the weight of numbers is all it takes.

This is not to say that I think that the use of persona management programs is benign. I'd like to see some research on this "bandwagoning" of opinion. I'll have to do a bit more digging on the subject (I'll report back if I find anything). Is this really how things work?

But even if this isn't how you change people's opinions, it is still nothing to sneeze at to be able to more firmly confirm already held opinions. These false personae could easily help to cement already held views once people see evidence that more people think like them. Again, reinforcement rather than change.