The Pretense Of The Guatemalan “Narco-State”

The Central American country of Guatemala, the Cold War's bloodiest battleground in our hemisphere, continues to suffer due to its strategic location on the highway that brings South American cocaine to gringo consumers.

Last weekend's Texas Observer featured an article by journalist Frank Smyth entitled "The Untouchable Narco-State: Guatemala's military defies the DEA." It details the remarkable transformation of much of the Guatemalan military into essentially a drug trafficking organization, and the elite "Kaibiles'" collaboration with the "Zetas" mafia enforcers of Mexico.

Bill Conroy, who has published investigations on the Zetas in Narco News, examines this article now in The Narcosphere. While praising Smyth's work, Conroy writes that:

"Smyth's report, drawn in large part from documents often dating back 15 years or more, fails to explore some pertinent connections that might help explain why the most powerful nation on the planet, the USA, is unable to deal with the corruption in a tiny country like Guatemala.

"Among the first connections that needs to be pointed out is that the Zetas received their paramilitary training in the United States...

"Given that fact, is it unreasonable to question where the Kaibiles were trained - which is not addressed directly in Smyth's story? Given the United States' long history of intervention in Guatemala, would it be out of line to suspect that agents of the United States also trained the Kaibiles in paramilitary methods?"

Conroy continues:

"In a recent conversation I had with a U.S. intelligence operative, it was pointed out to me that highly classified intelligence operations don't show up on the public-record radar. Even tenacious reporters like Smyth are not likely to run across CIA cables revealing the existence of front companies set up to trade in the one black market commodity even more lucrative than drugs - namely weapons."

Read the full story, here:

http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/11/22/211746/45

From somewhere in a country called América,

Dan Feder
Managing Editor
The Narco News Bulletin
http://www.narconews.com

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