The Peten Massacre in Context

Today we are fortunate enough to have a guest post from Hal Brands.  Hal is an assistant professor of public policy at Duke University's Sanford School of Public Policy. As an historian, he writes on U.S. foreign policy, Latin American security issues, and international crime and gang violence.He is also the author of Latin America's Cold War, released by Harvard University Press in 2010  

He recently published "Crime, Irregular Warfare, and Institutional Failure in Latin America: Guatemala as a Case Study" in Studies in Conflict and Terrorism (March 2011) and therefore has some keen insights into the significance of the recent massacre at Los Cocos in Peten, Guatemala.

The Peten Massacre in Context

The massacre in Peten last Sunday stands out for its brutality—at least 27 civilians murdered in a most horrific way—but not, unfortunately, for its originality.  The basic outlines of the recent massacre must be depressingly familiar to those who count themselves Guatemala-watchers, because the attack underscores several of the underlying issues that have subjected the country to such rampant violence over the past several years.

The first of these is the fact that Guatemala’s turmoil is inextricably linked to that of its neighbors.  This is obviously true in a broad sense, in that Guatemala is only part of a regional (and increasingly global) system of drug flows; it just happens to have the misfortune of sitting halfway between Colombia and the United States. 

It’s also true in a narrower sense.  Current indications are that the attack in Los Cocos was carried out by Los Zetas, the Mexican enforcer-gang-turned-cartel.  The Zetas have been moving into Guatemala over the past five years in an effort to increase their earnings at a time when they are under heavy pressure from the Calderon government in Mexico.  As they have made that move, they have brought with them their trademark propensity for savage violence against their competitors, of whom Otto Salguero is rumored to be one.  In effect, Guatemala is getting caught up in something that more and more approximates a broader regional drug war.

The second issue that the massacre underscores is the problem—intangible but incredibly corrosive—of citizen insecurity.  It doesn’t appear that the victims of the massacre had much to do with the drug trade, although it is always possible that some did.  Rather, they were killed because Los Zetas wanted to send a message.

Killing innocent civilians to make a point is an increasingly common tactic in Guatemala these days, and it has created a widespread perception that no one is safe from the violence, that the state can neither capture the guilty nor protect the innocent.  This perception, in turn, has pernicious consequences of its own: it decreases faith in democracy, makes solutions like vigilante or paramilitary violence more attractive, and thereby undermines Guatemala’s already –weak institutions.

This brings me to a third issue, which is that the massacre underscores the essential reason why the violence continues to rage: the impotence of the Guatemalan state.  Colom has responded to the massacre by declaring a state of siege in Peten. But given the size of the region, and the weakness of the Guatemalan police and military, it’s not clear that this measure will have much of an effect.   This goes to the heart of Guatemala’s problems: the fact that state institutions are simply too weak, too underfunded, and too corrupt to do the things—protecting the people, providing education and basic services, and so on—that we expect democratic governments to do.

All of this is to say that there isn’t an easy solution, or even a moderately difficult solution, for the violence that has once again been dramatized by the massacre in Peten.  Dealing with this problem requires concerted action along a variety of fronts, from social policy, to strengthening the forces or order, to anti-corruption measures.  (I’m reminded of this last issue by the apparent presence of a current or former Kaibil at Los Cocos.)

As I wrote in a recent article, there has been limited progress on some of these issues since Colom took power, but the overall results have not been encouraging.  If the most recent atrocity serves as a catalyst for the political class to deal more earnestly and urgently with Guatemala’s entrenched problems, it could lead to more imaginative and effective efforts to cope. If not, we may well see more such massacres in the future.