Colom Declares a State of Siege in Peten

Purple arrows depict main drug trafficking routes.

On Monday night, President Alvaro Colom declared a state of siege in the Peten. The state of siege suspends eight constitutional rights and will last until next Tuesday. 

I don't have much confidence that a one week state of siege is going to do much good. I hope that I am wrong, but the recent history proves otherwise. The Peten is too large. Guatemala does not have enough police or military. What they do have lacks the necessary resources to take on the Zetas in the area. I'm not even convinced that the perpetrators are still in the country. (Has Mexico sent troops to the border?)

The site of the last state of siege, Alta Verapaz, was a much small department. It was closer to the capital. It also had a much smaller border with Mexico. And in that prolonged siege, authorities were successful in capturing no more than two dozen members of the Zetas and other drug cartels (that's being optimistic). And shortly after the siege ended, drug traffickers moved right back in.

We also still don't know much about Otto Salguero, supposedly the man that the Zetas were looking for. According to President Colom, Salguero owns several ranches and hundreds of cattle. The government seems to be working under the assumption that he was somehow being extorted by the Zetas and/or was involved in drug trafficking. However, they do not have any hard evidence that that is the case.

Authorities have also been unable to find a connection between the massacre at the ranch and the killing of Haroldo Leon on Saturday. Leon was the brother of Juan Jose "Juancho" Leon, a drug trafficker killed by the Zetas in 2008.

El Periodico also has proposals from three presidential candidates (Adela de Torrebiarte, Rigoberta Menchu, and Juan Gutiérrez) to improve security in the country.

See also AFP, AP, and Siglo XXI.