by Dawn Paley
While Mexico has been a central focus for US anti-narcotics funds and media attention, its neighbors to the south have already seen their share of action. The deployment of US Marines to Guatemala came just three months after a massacre of civilians in Ahuas, Honduras, when a US-backed anti-drug effort there went awry. In an incident we’ll examine in the next chapter, human rights groups say DEA agents were present when Honduran police shot from State Department helicopters, killing four Indigenous people in the country’s northwest in May 2012. [12] “The aircraft that were used in that operation were at that time piloted by officials of the Guatemalan Army,” said Hernández. “Later, [Operation Martillo] appeared publicly in Guatemala, getting its official start midway through this year, but the operations had already begun.” According to official sources, between July and October 2012, members of the US Marine Corps Forces, South—the naval component of the US Southern Command—flew helicopters destined for trafficking interdiction efforts in Guatemala out of Santa Elena, Petén. They also flew aircraft out of La Aurora in Guatemala City, Retalhuleu, and Puerto San José, as well as coordinating with the Guatemalan Navy in Puerto Quetzal, on the Pacific coast.[13]
Beyond a handful of wire stories, news of the deployment of active-duty US combat troops in Guatemala made barely a blip in the media.[14] It also seemed to go largely unnoticed in the Central American nation itself. Few outside military and security research circles were aware of the details of the agreement between the US Embassy and Guatemala’s Foreign Relations Ministry. Nineth Montenegro, second vice president of Guatemala’s Congress, said she found out about the operations through reports in the newspaper. “I found out through the print media, here in Congress there was no request to permit the transit of troops, maybe because they were not troops, maybe because they’re unarmed, maybe because they’re coming, in effect, to help support [the fight] against organized crime, a scourge that is killing our country.… There was no discussion in Congress. It was an agreement [made by the executive] that the president approved.… Some here think there was a violation, because legislative power is independent and it is the only one which can authorize the arrival of troops or military or support, but it never went to Congress,” she said in an interview in Guatemala City.
Instead of moving through constitutional channels, on July 16, 2012, the US Embassy in Guatemala delivered a verbal note to the Minister of Foreign Relations, proposing the conditions for the regularization of US defense personnel in Guatemala. The note from the embassy, which was later transcribed and published in Guatemala’s congressional gazette, makes reference to military and aviation cooperation agreements signed between the two countries in 1949, 1954, and 1955.[15] Castillo Armas, the military dictator who took power after the coup against President Árbenz in 1954, signed one of the documents referenced in the agreement. Such references make it clear that the legal elements permitting present-day US military engagement in Guatemala were created in the wake of the coup in 1954, and have been maintained ever since.
The day after it received the request from the US embassy, the Guatemalan government responded in the affirmative. While researching in Guatemala City, I obtained the exchange of notes between the US and Guatemala that legalized the presence of US troops and private security contractors hired by the US Department of Defense in Guatemala for 120 days, beginning July 17, 2012.[16] The agreement allows US personnel to carry arms, to import and export goods without inspection or taxation by the Guatemalan government, to freely transit into, out of, and throughout the country without interference by the Guatemalan government, and to make free and unlimited use of radio frequencies.[17] US soldiers and contractors are granted immunity from prosecution in Guatemala should injury or death of civilians or military personnel result from the operation.
According to members of the US Navy, their mission in Guatemala, led by the Joint Interagency Task Force South out of Key West, Florida, represents a move back to what the organization has traditionally done in the region. “For decades, the Marine Corps has supported engagement in Central and South America with the intent of building partnership capacity and improving interoperability,” wrote Captain Greg Wolf on the Marine Corps official website. “In recent years, though, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan have curtailed some of that engagement. The Marines of Detachment Martillo relished the opportunity to partner with Guatemalan authorities and strengthen ties in the region.”[18] According to New York University professor Greg Grandin, whose book Empire’s Workshop: Latin America, the United States, and the Rise of the New Empire documents the US military’s shift from Vietnam and South Asia to Central America in the late 1970s, the discourse of the US military today masks a continued attempt to control local armies and police.
“We’ve come a long way from the robust language of the cold war—which hailed Latin American death squads and dictators as ‘freedom fighters’ on the frontline of a global anticommunist crusade—to the anodyne babble of ‘building partnership capacity and improving inter-operability,’” wrote Grandin in an email interview. “But basically the goal has remained the same, to coordinate the work of national security forces on an international level subordinated, either directly or indirectly, to Washington’s directive.” That said, Grandin thinks the reach of the US in the hemisphere has shrunk, making the importance of what takes place in countries like Honduras and Guatemala even greater. “What is different is the degree that the US’s reach has been reduced, from all of Latin America to basically a corridor running from Colombia through Central America to Mexico. But even there, US’s hegemony is threatened by a degree of independence that would have been unthinkable just a few years earlier, whether it be in Juan Manuel Santos’ Colombia or Daniel Ortega’s Nicaragua.”
The steadfast allegiance displayed by the government of Guatemala toward Washington, as well as the presence of US troops in Guatemala—both overt and clandestine—has a strong historical precedent. In 1960, the CIA coordinated directly with Guatemala’s right-wing president José Miguel Ramón Ydígoras Fuentes, who offered support for the Bay of Pigs invasion against Fidel Castro in Cuba. According to declassified CIA documents, “Not only did Guatemala sever official relations with Cuba, but before the end of February 1960, President Ydígoras offered the use of his territory to support propaganda activities directed against Castro; and he also made a special offer through the CIA ‘to groups favorably regarded by us [of] training facilities in the Petén area of Guatemala.’”[19] The US continued to be openly involved in all manner of military operations in Guatemala through to 1978, when official military aid to Guatemala was cut off by US Congress after evidence of massacres, rapes, and disappearances by the army became insurmountable. US assistance to the Guatemalan army has come in the form of supports for anti-narcotics initiatives, including the Central America Regional Security Initiative (CARSI), a nearly $642 million program, which started in 2008 under the Mérida Initiative and continued to 2014, with assistance, equipment, and training going to Central American police and armies.
Mexico falls under the jurisdiction of the US Northern Command, but south of its borders, it is the US Southern Command, which operates from a $400 million headquarters just west of Miami, that is responsible for all US military activities in Central and Latin America.[20] The presence of US troops in Guatemala is ongoing. For example, the “US Southern Command-sponsored, joint foreign military interaction/humanitarian exercises” named Beyond the Horizon took place in Honduras and Guatemala, ending two days before US Marines were deployed to Guatemala for Operation Martillo in July 2012.[21] Two days after Operation Martillo troops left the country, members of the United States Navy construction battalions deployed to Cobán as part of a “theater security cooperation mission” with the Guatemalan army.[22] But there is a new twist to the engagement of US Marines in Guatemala for Operation Martillo. “This is the first Marine deployment that directly supports countering transnational crime in this area, and it’s certainly the largest footpr
int we’ve had in that area in quite some time,” Marine Staff Sgt. Earnest Barnes told AP shortly after news of the deployment broke in the US.[23]
In an October 2012 speech in Virginia, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta outlined his army’s plan in the face of budget constraints, explaining that rotational deployments and joint exercises with local militaries are to become an increasingly important element of US defense strategy. “We build new alliances, we build partnerships, we build their capacity and capability to be able to defend and provide their own security. So we’re gonna do that. We’re gonna do that in Latin America. We’re gonna do that in Africa. We’re gonna do that in Europe. We’re doing it in the Pacific. Just have a rotational deployment of Marines going into Darwin. We’re gonna develop the same capability in the Philippines. Gonna do the same thing in Vietnam. Gonna do the same thing elsewhere.”[24]
The US-Guatemala military partnership includes a law enforcement role. “The military’s role is not to act as a law enforcement force, but the unfortunate reality is that it has been called upon to deal with this problem on an interim basis in several countries,” said US Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs Frank Mora in June of 2012. “When asked to do a job that many of them do not want to do—which is to do law enforcement, like in El Salvador and Guatemala—they have tried to do it the best that they can.”[25] In 2012, using CARSI funds, the US trained 900 Central Americans at the International Law Enforcement Academy in San Salvador—El Salvador’s capital.[26] The connections with Colombia are strong, and have been reinforced by CARSI. In 2013, Brownfield, the US drug war czar in the Western Hemisphere, stated that “right now the Colombian national police is training more police and law enforcement in Central America than all of US law enforcement put together. Now, we support some of it. So in essence it is CARSI funding, Plan Colombia funding, or in some cases, even Mérida funding that does this. And it does it because it is cheaper for us to have the Colombian national police provide this training than us doing it ourselves. Sometimes it is the Colombians themselves providing that training. They are at this point training in four of the seven countries in Central America. They are providing training and support in the Dominican Republic in the Caribbean. They are open to further engagement. I actually believe we get excellent value either by Colombians training in third countries or by us bringing law enforcement personnel from those third countries to train in many of the Colombian training institutions that we helped support and set up during Plan Colombia from the year 2000 to 2010.”[27]
One of the least acknowledged difficulties of increasing US support for the Guatemalan armed forces is the role the army has played and continues to play in drug trafficking. The Guatemalan army is widely documented to have been involved in drug trafficking, but that hasn’t stopped the United States from partnering with it and providing it with technology and training aimed at controlling the flow of narcotics. “Evidence from various sources, including information from DEA reports, indicates that beginning in the 1980s, Colombian traffickers gained access to trafficking networks along key routes throughout the south and west of Guatemala,” according to a publicly available research paper prepared by Navy-linked CNA Analysis and Solutions. “These networks were composed of military intelligence officials, their subordinates and former colleagues, and informants and partners—including military commissioners.”[28]
By the mid-1990s, Guatemala’s top drug lord was Byron Berganza, a former soldier whose “profile had risen and his security detail was comprised exclusively of military officials.”[29] At that time, Berganza was also a DEA informant and the local Guatemalan go-between with Colombian and Guatemalan drug trafficking groups. Berganza was extradited to the United States in 2003, opening up new space in the country’s drug transshipment market, which would eventually be filled by members of a handful of powerful Guatemalan families. In 2011, activist and writer Jennifer Harbury said the rising drug violence in Guatemala “is being carried out by military leaders who took their uniforms off after the war, created large mafias to run drugs, and hired and trained gangs such as the Zetas—that’s very well documented—to help them run the drugs.”[30] Little has changed in the three years since. In addition, weapons including rockets and grenade launchers belonging to the Guatemalan military have been found in the hands of Los Zetas members.[31]
It was a former Kaibil (member of Guatemala’s elite special forces) who was accused of directing the single most violent act in Guatemala yet linked to drug trafficking. Hugo Gómez Vásquez was accused of supervising the massacre in Los Cocos, Petén in May 2011.[32] Some Kaibiles trained in the United States, as did some of the original members of the Zetas, who defected from the GAFEs, an airborne unit of Mexico’s elite special forces, in the late 1990s. The Kaibiles also trained the GAFEs, and have been involved in training with US Marines.[33] “It has become normal that when they find an official on active duty among Zetas, or a Kaibil who is still in active service, two or three days go by and the army claims ‘it’s that they deserted,’ but the internal process regarding what discipline was applied, and what disciplinary procedures there are aren’t documented,” said Hernández of SEDEM. Regardless of evidence of collaboration with the Zetas and other drug trafficking groups and a history of participation in massacres, Guatemala’s Kaibiles maintain a privileged relationship with the US military.
Then there is the role of US troops in Guatemala. “These guys, the marines, they aren’t just here to control narcotrafficking, but to train the Guatemalan military for what I call the continuation of the Cold War,” said Ba Tiul. “A cold war that’s more refined, more academic, more intellectualized, if you’d like. But one that will be just as brutal and damaging for all of us here in Guatemala, and which I don’t think … I don’t think is destined only for Guatemala.” Beyond his connections with an influential elite connected to the extractive industries and the energy sector, there are also important links between Pérez Molina’s government and a powerful sector of organized crime.
“Fernández Ligorría, a military man from Cobán, was one of the most important figures in the Patriot Party, and was very close to the current president, Otto Pérez Molina,” according to a Guatemalan analyst who requested anonymity out of fear for his safety. Ligorría was an instructor to the Kaibles, a former chief of national defense, and later the head of the national police (PNC).[34] Sylvia Gereda Valenzuela, who is closely linked to one of Guatemala’s most powerful families (the Novella family, owner of Cementos Progreso, which has a monopoly on cement in Guatemala), links Ligorría to various organized crime activities, as well as drugs and arms trafficking beginning in the mid-1990s. By the time of his death in January 2011, various media outlets described Ligorría as the head of Los Zetas in Guatemala. “One of his sons, José Fernández Chanel, is currently a sitting congressperson with the [Patriot Party]. It’s complicated, because a direct fight [against drug trafficking] on the part of the government would implicate their own colleagues, ex-colleagues, and high ranking military officials,” said the Guatemalan analyst. “This could unleash wars of another kind, power disputes that could put at risk not only the stability of the government of Pérez Molina, but also the stability of the state itself.”
Military personnel from Cobán make up an important part of Pérez Molina’s support base. Cobán is in the department of Alta Verapaz, where former president Colom also declared a state of emergency in 2010, allegedly because of the presence of Zetas there. For all the talk of a new strategy in the drug war, on March 30, 2012, the Guatemalan defense minister announced the creation of a new, anti-narcotics military task force called “Tecun Uman,” which will benefit from technical and financial assistance from the United States.[35] Four days later, on April 3rd, US officials and Guatemalan authorities captured Horst Walter Overdick Mejía, a drug trafficker affiliated with the Zetas who was active in Alta Verapaz and Petén, in Guatemala.[36] “After Overdick’s arrest, the narcos began to repositi
on, and the Zetas as well, under the careful and close watch of the military,” said Ba Tiul. “It’s not about controlling the narcos, but ensuring the business stays in their hands … as well as controlling social mobilization, which is very powerful.”
As explored previously, after more than a decade as a testing ground for a US drug policy that has victimized millions, Colombia has the fastest growing economy in Latin America. The hard lesson from Colombia is that, unfortunately, drugs and oil do mix. “We need to keep in mind that Colombian president Santos, like Pérez Molina, wants to expand Plan Colombia, which doesn’t just mean strengthening the fight against narcotrafficking but actually means converting it into a form of paramilitarism in order to generate a new kind of counterinsurgency—not against social movements but against Indigenous communities,” said Ba Tiul. “It’s the remilitarization of Guatemala as a patriotic project.”
Chapter 8:
Drug War Capitalism In Honduras
Honduras is a place where the gap between the tiny elite and the poor majority is so great that it is almost invisible on the street level. The rich simply do not walk around or go out in the same neighborhoods as the poor. I traveled to Honduras from Guatemala to cover the 2013 elections, and kept a diary of what I saw on my first day in the country. After a long process of passport stamping, the bus I was on crossed the border, and immediately there was a banana truck that had burst a tire; green bananas were spilled all over the road. As soon as I arrived at San Pedro Sula, I spied four military police, toting modern automatic weapons and looking at cell phone cases in the bus station. From there, I caught a shared cab downtown for about $4, made my way to a hotel with a window out onto the street and a whirring fan to fight the intense humidity. Down the street, the Despensa Familiar (Walmart) featured a little corner with slim pickings of fruit and vegetables. Most of the store was junk food and processed food wrapped in plastic. It struck me that the baby formula is kept under lock and key at the front of the store, so that parents who worry about feeding their babies enough protein won’t steal. There were at least eight people in the four-block walk back to the hotel looking through garbage, sorting, carrying garbage bags. By nightfall, most places downtown were closed and few people were out on the streets. At dawn, from my hotel window, I noticed a man cooking over a garbage fire. All of this was taking place downtown in San Pedro Sula, Honduras’s second largest city, at the heart of the region considered the industrial belt of the country.