Pubdate: Tue, 17 May 2011
Source: Wall Street Journal (US)
Copyright: 2011 Dow Jones & Company, Inc.
Contact:  http://www.wsj.com/
Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/487
Author: Jose De CorDoba

DRUG GANG BLAMED FOR GUATEMALA MASSACRE

MEXICO CITY-Guatemalan officials said Monday that Mexico's most brutal
drug cartel was responsible for the killing and decapitation of at
least 27 people, the country's worst massacre since the end of its
civil war.

Carlos Menocal, Guatemala's interior minister, blamed the Zetas, who
Mexican authorities say are also responsible for much of that
country's most heinous violence, including the August massacre of 72
migrants, and the deaths of at least 183 people kidnapped, killed and
buried in mass graves found in the state of Tamaulipas on Mexico's
gulf coast in April.

A 23-year-old man, stabbed in the stomach, and left for dead, had
survived the attack, playing dead for hours, said the Associated
Press, who spoke to him. Most of the victims worked as day laborers on
a dairy ranch that Guatemala news reports said belonged to a man named
Otto Salguero in the Peten area, by the Mexican border. The massacre's
perpetrators wrote messages in blood saying they were looking for Mr.
Salguero, Guatemalan news reports said. Mr. Menocal reportedly said
Mr. Salguero, whose whereabouts are unknown, was not known to be
involved in criminal activities.

The massacre recalls the worst days of Guatemala's 36-year-old civil
war, ended in 1996, in which tens of thousands died and massacres were
common, said Sandino Asturias, a security consultant at Guatemala's
Center of Guatemalan Studies.

"This is a throwback to our dark and nefarious past," Mr. Asturias
said. He urged to government to act promptly to solve the crime. "This
shows how the state has been weakened to the point where such a
massacre can occur in Peten, the department with the greatest military
presence in Guatemala."

Pressured by the Mexican government as well as competing drug cartels,
the Zetas, once the enforcers of Mexico's Gulf Cartel, have moved in
force to Guatemala in the last three years.

In January, Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom declared a state of
siege in Alta Veracruz province, which also borders Mexico and lies
directly south of the Peten, sending 600 soldiers to try to root out
the Zetas. On Monday, Mr. Colom said he would consider placing the
province of Peten under a state of emergency. The state of emergency
in neighboring Alta Veracruz was lifted in February.

As the Mexican government pressures the cartels they have moved into
Guatemala, which has become the source for 70% of the drugs which
enters Mexico en route to the U.S., said George Grayson, an expert on
Latin America at William and Mary College who has written a book on
the Zetas. Mr. Grayson said the Zetas have a long-standing
relationship with former Guatemalan special forces known as Kaibiles,
who developed a reputation for brutality during the civil war. Some
Kaibiles, who specialize in counter-insurgency operations and jungle
warfare, have been trainers for the Zetas, Mexican officials have said.

The increasing influence of the Zetas in Guatemala poses a difficult
challenge to the weak and corrupt Guatemalan state, Mr. Grayson said.
"They are overmatched," he said.

The Zetas, now believed to number more than 3,000, started as a group
of about three dozen Mexican army special forces deserters, most of
whom are now dead or in prison, who went to work for the Gulf drug
cartel more than a decade ago. But since last year, the Zetas, who
split with the Gulf Cartel, have been fighting a bloody turf war with
their former employers for control of drug routes along Mexico's
northeast border with the U.S. The war between the Zetas and the Gulf
Cartel has turned Mexican border cities like Matamoros, Reynosa and
Laredo into a no-man's land where the Mexican government exerts little
control. 
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