Guatemala: New President Perez Molina deploys army against drug cartels
Guatemalan president Otto Perez Molina recently deployed his troops around the country. Some analysts say he is Guatemala’s best chance out of lawlessness. (Photo: Carlos Villalon, for Univision)
By MANUEL RUEDA
Channel: Latin American Affairs
He’s been in power for a little over a week. But Guatemalan President Otto Perez Molina has wasted no time in going after the drug traffickers and criminals who have turned Guatemala into one of the world’s most violent countries.
A retired general, who was elected on promises of tackling crime with mano dura, or an iron fist, Perez Molina deployed more than 700 soldiers across the country’s roads on Friday, setting up 32 permanent road blocks along routes which the government said are used by drug traffickers to move their merchandise.
In what some interpret as a pragmatic approach to the drug trade, however, Perez Molina also reached out to Mexico and the United States last week, calling, cautiously, for a regional strategy to decriminalize the drug trade.
“The legalization of drugs, would have to be a strategy that the whole region agrees with,” Perez Molina said on Mexico’s Televisa Network. “If we do not pursue that road we will have to find another one, but it will have to be a regional strategy where everyone is willing to put in the same amount of effort,” he added, after criticizing the United States for not helping Mexico out in its fight against the drug trade.
Security is a serious concern in Guatemala, where the 2011 murder rate of 41 homicides per every 100,000 inhabitants, was twice as high as Mexico’s and almost ten times higher than that of the United States.
In recent years, the Central American country has also become a base for the Mexican cartel Los Zetas and local gangs, which have set up drug labs in the country’s jungles, and corrupted government institutions in Guatemala, where 98 percent of violent crimes go unpunished.
As Otto Perez Molina begins his four-year term, analysts are contemplating whether his use of the army to fight drug traffickers and criminals will lift Guatemala out of lawlessness, or bring back a dark history of human rights abuses committed by the army against rural and indigenous communities.
“He will have to decide if he faces security challenges in a wholesome way, by strengthening the police and the judicial system, or if he will opt for strategies aimed at controlling territory that will give the army more power,” Adriana Beltrán, a Guatemala analyst at the Washington Office on Latin America told Univision News.
“Human rights groups around the world are sort of nervous about what he will do,” said Lauren Paverman from the Washington based Council on Hemispheric Affairs. “Although he never faced any charges, he led troops who allegedly committed human rights abuses and acts of genocide (during Guatemala’s civil war),“ she said.
More than 200,000 people, most of them indigenous Guatemalans, died in Guatemala’s 36 year-long civil war, which ended with internationally-brokered peace accords between the Guatemalan state and rebel groups in 1996.
During the war, the army became known around the world for scorched earth campaigns against indigenous communities and for implementing an iron fist policy against dissidents suspected of collaborating with leftist rebel groups.
In one notorious incident in 1980 for example, government troops raided the Spanish embassy in Guatemala, after protesters had occupied the building to denounce violence against the indigenous K’iche community, burning down the building and killing most of its occupants.
Yet, despite this history of military abuse, Guatemalans elected Perez Molina with 54 percent of the vote, in an election in which the two major candidates focused heavily on security issues.
Hector Rosada, a security analyst and key broker of the 1996 Peace Accords, warns against labeling Perez Molina as an authoritarian figure because of his military past. In fact, Rosada sees Perez Molina’s background as an asset for Guatemala’s democracy.
“I believe that his military profession, his character and his personality will enable him to face the challenge of reconstructing respect for the law in Guatemala” Rosada told Radio Netherlands.
Rosada backed up his support for Perez Molina, by explaining that in Guatemala, where the military has often been involved in politics, military men have sometimes paved the way for democratic reforms, citing as an example, the presidency of Jacobo Arbenz, a social democrat who was elected into office in 1951 a few years after he was part of a military junta himself.
Arbenz was ousted by a CIA backed coup, after he decided to implement land reforms that reeked of communist influence to the US State Department, and also went against the direct interests of the American-owned United Fruit Company.
U.S. interest in Guatemala has diminished since the Cold War ended and the pro-business Perez Molina is not expected to have major clashes with the American government.
However, Guatemala is facing a financial crisis and a budget deficit of its own, meaning that the former general will need outside support, as he attempts to pacify his country.
