Slayings Of 4 Guatemalan Prison Officials
Blamed On Drug Trade
By Arthur Brice
(CNN) -- To hear some Guatemalans tell it,
three coordinated attacks that killed four
prison officials in five hours Monday hardly
raised anyone's pulse.
They're used to this level of violence, said
Fernando Carrera Castro, director of the
Central American Institute for Fiscal
Studies in Guatemala City. Although what
happened is normal in Guatemala, Carrera
said, that's not to say that citizens are
not concerned.
"We're as scared as ever," he said Tuesday.
Heather Berkman, a Central America analyst
with the Eurasia Group consulting firm, also
has come to expect the violence.
"What else is new?" she said when asked
about the killings.
Samuel Logan, an expert on Latin American
gangs, said all of Central America is under
attack from organized crime cartels because
the region is pinched between Colombia and
Mexico, the two biggest sources of drugs in
the area. U.S. interdiction efforts that
have targeted the flow of drugs through the
Caribbean Sea also have forced cartels to
travel through the Central American isthmus,
Logan said.
Within Central America, he said, Guatemala,
Honduras and El Salvador have the worst
problems. Among those three nations,
Guatemala stands out.
"When you talk about a country being
hollowed out by organized crime, Guatemala
is at the top of the list," Logan said.
There are two main reasons, he said:
geography and an incompetent and corrupt
government.
"Guatemala bunches right up against Mexico,"
Logan said. "Any spillover effect is almost
certainly going south."
Said Berkman, "The narcos are coming down
from Mexico."
In addition, Logan said, the federal
government is not able to control large
segments of the country. For example, Peten
state in northern Guatemala, bordered on two
sides by Mexico, is lawless, he said.
Berkman made the same point.
"The narcos control about 40 percent of the
territory down there, which is pretty
amazing," she said.
Berkman also pointed out that the government
has reduced anti-crime spending in the 2010
budget because of the nation's dire economic
situation.
"If you don't have resources, you can't pay
for troops and supplies and intelligence,"
she said.
Logan, who just wrote a book on the Mara
Salvatrucha gang of Central America, said
there are two main criminal elements in
Guatemala: drug cartels that deal in
large-scale exportation and street gangs
that sell drugs at the retail level and are
involved in other crimes, such as robbery
and extortion. In some cases, they work
together.
When those criminals get arrested, they
continue their activities on the inside.
"The prisons, in general, are centers of
corruption," Carrera said. "From inside
prison, they direct kidnappings, extortion,
drug trafficking."
Monday's attacks on the prison officials
resulted from efforts to weed out corruption
in the nation's prisons, Carrera said.
Officials have been clamping down on what
goods inmates can receive and the use of
cell phones within prison walls. They also
are transferring some top-level criminals to
high-security prisons.
"What happened is a reaction from gangs who
want control of the prisons," Carrera said.
"They're trying to show strength through
force. To generate fear."
Interior Minister Raul Velasquez was quoted
in several newspapers Tuesday as saying the
attacks were in retaliation for the recent
transfer of several gang leaders to
high-security prisons.
Two arrests have been made in Monday's
shootings and the investigation continues,
said Rudy Esquivel, spokesman for the
Guatemalan prison system.
"This was a very structured job; very
well-defined," Esquivel said from Guatemala
City, the nation's capital.
Killed were a prison assistant director, a
warden and two guards. One guard and a
shooting suspect were wounded, as were three
citizens. One of the wounded was a woman in
the eighth month of pregnancy, news accounts
said.
According to published reports in the Prensa
Libre, La Hora, El Periodico de Guatemala
and Siglo 21 newspapers, this is what
happened:
The first attack occurred around 7 a.m.
Monday in Guatemala City when two gunmen on
a motorcycle fired an AK-47 assault rifle at
three guards who were transporting a
prisoner. One of the guards was killed and
another wounded. A national civil police
unit driving in front of the prison detail
gave chase and captured the suspects, one of
whom suffered a serious leg injury.
The second attack happened 10 minutes later,
when the warden at the prison in the city of
Guastatoya, in central Guatemala, was gunned
down while he ate in front of the Hospital
General San Juan de Dios. The warden, Felix
Gabriel Garcia Reyes, was at the hospital to
pick up the body of a prisoner who had died
after surgery. Two men and a pregnant
19-year-old woman were wounded in the
attack.
Witnesses told police four men in a green
vehicle fired and fled. Authorities found an
abandoned Mitsubishi nearby that matched the
description. Inside, they found a 9 mm
pistol and ammunition for other weapons.
The third attack occurred around noon on the
Inter-American Highway near the city of
Chimaltenango, where Javier Bac Tzul, 40,
was the prison's assistant director. He and
his 31-year-old driver were killed as they
returned to the prison after a trip to
Guatemala City. Authorities said they found
AK-47 shells at the scene.
Chimaltenango Gov. Hector Lopez said a
prison director and two assistant directors
already have been killed in the state,
Prensa Libre reported.
Analyst Berkman sees little hope.
"It's a lose-lose situation, no matter how
you look at it," she said.
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