National Police: Mexican Cartels Recruit Guatemalan Police and Military

Mexican cartels recruit Guatemalans with military training and to do so they pretend to be private security companies, according to investigations carried out by the National Civil Police (PNC) of Guatemala, a country that in recent weeks has received hundreds of Chiapas residents fleeing the violence caused by drug trafficking in their communities of origin.

Belteton Helver Saia, who was head of the PNC’s general sub-directorate of anti-narcotics analysis and information during the government of President Alejandro Giammatei, indicated in an interview with El Sol de México that drug traffickers publish advertisements on social networks or drop flyers on public roads in communities where armed groups such as Los Zetas, dedicated to the production and trafficking of drugs to the United States, operated.

In these advertisements, according to the PNC, they request experienced personnel to work in security companies and make telephone numbers available. Of course, it is not said that it is to form a criminal group, but when they are already in the supposed hiring process, they are told what it’s really about, offering them between seven thousand and 10 thousand quetzales a month (16 thousand 500 and 25 thousand Mexican pesos).

“They publish advertisements on social networks or drop flyers in communities where armed groups such as Los Zetas operated.”

The criminal structures’ sights, according to the PNC, are set on ex-kaibiles and active kaibiles, as the elite soldiers of the Guatemalan Army are known who receive specialized training in combat against guerrillas, drug traffickers and terrorism, although they recruit “whoever knows how to use a weapon.”

Many, according to Saia, accept, seduced by the money because it is a difficult salary to earn as a police officer in Guatemala, and those who try to refuse the offer are forcibly recruited under threat of death or harm to their family.

The problem, according to the PNC, is that the majority of those recruited do not return to the country, as they die in confrontations or are intercepted by rival groups and “disappear”.

Last June 29, Chiapas police authorities reported the discovery of 19 dead people on a dirt road leading from Jaltenango de la Paz to the community of La Reforma, La Concordia. Three days later, during his morning press conference, President Andrés Manuel López Obrador confirmed that Guatemalans were among the dead. The bullet-riddled bodies were in a dump truck and in the surrounding area.

The president assured that it was a confrontation between drug trafficking groups because large-caliber firearms were found at the scene.

Months earlier, on April 3, López Obrador confirmed the arrest of 13 Guatemalans involved in another confrontation between two organized crime groups in the same community of La Concordia, which left 10 dead in addition to those arrested.

The presence of drug cartels along the Mexico-Guatemala border has been more evident this year, as the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) fight over the border for the reception of drugs coming from South America.

The Central American nation deployed special forces to try to shield the passage of Mexican cartels to the so-called Golden Poppy Triangle, an area comprising the municipalities of Tacana, Tajumulco and Inxchiguan, in the department of San Marcos, just 20 kilometers from Chiapas. The name was assigned by the U.S. government after the existence of immense poppy crops became known.

Information from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) indicates that the planting and harvesting of poppy in this area is the only economic option for dozens of families who process the plant to sell it to Mexican cartels as raw opium. A kilo of gum is sold for up to 70,000 dollars, according to DEA estimates.

According to Saia, the Guatemalan government has evidence of direct collaboration between members of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG) and the Sinaloa Cartel with local organized crime groups such as the Huiscas, one of the country’s oldest clans, for the production of opium in clandestine laboratories and trafficking of heroin sold in the United States.

Criminal alliances have also been strengthened by the increasing arrival in Guatemala of precursor chemicals from China used to produce fentanyl.

Source: Michelle Rivera