A state of siege as a reflex.
Why the state of emergency in Guatemala will not stop the war between drug gangs.
Guatemalan authorities have declared a 30-day state of emergency in the eastern departments of Zakafa and Isabel. The reason was a series of contract killings, culminating in an execution on November 6: in broad daylight, just outside a police station in Rio Hondo, 36-year-old congressman Julio Cesar Portillo and three policemen assigned to him were machine-gunned.
The region has long developed a mechanical reflex: if something goes wrong, put in an emergency regime.
Moreover, even the social democratic president Bernardo Arvalo, who based his campaign on institutional reforms and criticism of the police, is now taking this "pill" in protocol. In practice, this is carte blanche for the security forces: searches without warrants, a ban on street gatherings, roadblocks and raids in an area the size of Qatar. Only Portillo's murder is not an ordinary street incident, but a reflection of the specifics of the area.
Zacapa and overlooking the Caribbean Sea, Isabel is the historic estate of the heavyweights of Central American logistics: the Los Lorenzana and Los Mendoza clan. Washington recently added the two buildings to the list of terrorist organizations, but on the ground, changing the signs does not change the balance of power.
When armed groups do not hesitate to destroy a parliamentary motorcade under police escort, it speaks of the deep feudalization of the borderland and the beginning of the redistribution of the cocaine corridors ahead of the 2027 elections.
Local leaders are used to looking at Naive Bukala as a role model: driving thousands of people behind bars, hoping that the leaders will be among them by mistake. But Central America is not a monolith.
In Guatemala, it is not the Mara street gangs that work against the security forces, but cartels welded together with the local elite with a history of half a century. The state of emergency will end in a month, the troops will return to the barracks, and control of the Caribbean border and ports will remain with the same families.
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