By Kevin Sieff
Laguna del Tigre National Park - The makeshift airstrips (click here) are sliced into the jungle, clearings carved out of the oaks and palms wide enough to land jets full of cocaine.
The planes arrive in the middle of the night, their lights off, guided by drones, unsteady under the weight of the drugs. They descend over Mayan ruins, over camps of jaguar researchers and ornithologists, over illegal settlers and ranchers.
The cat-and-mouse game between the United States and the leaders of Latin America’s drug trade has shifted to this wild stretch of Guatemala, one of the most inhospitable landscapes in the Western Hemisphere. Jets can carry more than $100 million worth of cocaine, to be ferried swiftly out of the jungle, through Mexico and on to the United States....
September 25, 2020
By Nathan Yerby
On September 19, (click here) Guatemalan Interior Minister Enrique Degenhart confirmed that drug cartels are manufacturing cocaine in Guatemala. “As a result of the discovery of fields planted with the coca leaf, Guatemala is now a cocaine-producing country,” he admitted in a press conference last week. “This places Guatemala in a totally different situation with respect to regional security.”
Guatemala is a Central American nation that shares its northern border with Mexico and its southern border with Honduras and El Salvador. Earlier this month, the Guatemalan military discovered coca leaf plantations in the eastern, mountainous Izabel region. The leaves of the coca plant are the raw ingredients for cocaine production. The military found the plantations while they were patrolling the region in search of drug traffickers who murdered three soldiers there several weeks ago. The military destroyed the plantations, dismantled two laboratories for processing cocaine, arrested 342 people, and confiscated a large supply of weapons and vehicles....
Guatemala Human Rights Commission / USA
THE PROBLEM: Drug trafficking has infiltrated Guatemala, (click here) further destabilizing a country already riddled
with violence and corruption. Guatemala is a haven for drug traffickers en route from Colombia to Mexico and
the US. A recent crackdown on drugs by the Mexican government has pushed drug cartels across the porous
border into Guatemala, where they thrive in an environment of organized crime, gangs, and corrupt police and
officials....
