The narcotics trafficker is a real power

In this interview Sandino Asturias, conducted in April 2008 by Gabriel Herrera, analyzes the theme of the narcotics dealer, pointing out that the matter is like a turbulent river and the profit of fishermen. Sandino is the general coordinator of the Center for Studies of Guatemala (CEG), an institution dedicated to monitoring and following up on the peace accords. The interviewee is the grandson of Miguel Ángel Asturias, who won the Nobel Prize for literature in 1967.

First, the weakness of the state. Also the weakness of institutions that have not had the ability to confront the drug dealer. Second, the lack of political will. There is a lot of information but there is no will to act. And this is also related to the lack of political security.

No. No, and I believe that the drug dealer is simply a reflection of the process of social decomposition. In addition, they are phenomena that strengthen themselves in weak states and from security forces that do not fulfill their commissioned role. I think that one great weakness that is becoming evident is the lack of criminal investigation to confront these serious matters. This goes beyond the Presidents. The drug dealers have been a phenomena who integrate institutional corruption. They have financed political parties that govern us and those who govern us at various levels. They are now an economic power.

Certainly, there could be a difference in regards to this process in terms of specific actions that a minister can take. However, I believe that this is a problem that derives from the demand of drugs in the United States and that our countries are not capable of stopping phenomenon that has to do with the demands of the United States. On the other hand, the United States does nothing to stop the problem within its own country. If the drugs could not be sold there would be no reason to traffic the drugs through her. Moreover, that is another element that is very clear, that there is no political will in the United States to combat drugs. Their model of preventive war has failed. And It seems to me that things are worsening. As long as the consumption of drugs is not stopped, this will continue to be a huge phenomenon, the fact of sending United States forces out of their territory and make alliances with the armies. This has brought problems of governance and violations of human rights and the results are negative. That is to say there continues to be a permissiveness and we are simply the victims of a process between other powers, those who produce and those who consume the drugs.

No. I do not believe so and my opinion is that there is an analysis that was done about the military redeployment and that the government of UNE is doing, which has said that the Peace Accords are what allowed the drug runners, or rather the reduction of the army that was part of the agreements, allowed the opening of these corridors. And regarding that I want to say two things: one, the Peace Accords only proposed a military redeployment and elimination of redundancy. Those who reallocated military forces were various high commanders of the Army. That is to say, during the first stage there was a first military redeployment and a first reduction to the first high command during the time of Arzú; there was a second during the time of Portillo and a third reduction of the Army in the time of Berger. In effect, Otto Pérez Molina was the presidential commissioner of Berger who made a plan to reduce military personnel, but it has always been the top military commanders who have decided where to place the military detachments.

I believe first that it must be done and that this determination is not yet clearly seen. It is necessary to have the political will to combat it. The civil institutions of security must be strengthened to make the capable of combating the drug trafficking problem. There must be deep reforms in the Public Ministry. There is no criminal investigation that can adequately support either the murders nor the drug trafficking investigation. This country has a structural weakness and it needs to be strengthened. We must develop a policy aimed at developing strength, because it is not a matter, as we already know, of publishing a series of names if there is no evidence to maintain that those people are or are not, or are part of or not, organized crime or drug trafficking. There is a big gap and the great weakness of this government is not having the capacity for criminal investigation that could develop evidence needed to capture and arrest the drug traffickers.

Probably. The CICIG for me is the core mandate for combatting these parallel groups that above all threaten lives. It seems to me that we should be prioritizing the themes that have to do with the right to life. The groups of gummen and those who are dedicated to killing people, well, this has been converted somehow into the axis of impunity; if the Public Ministry and the criminal investigators of the police do not pursue every homicide — we have an indicator of impunity: out of every one hundred homicides only one is taken to justice — this means that murder has become just another method of conflict resolution. In some ways the lesson of Zacapa fully illustrates the idea that "the problem is solved by killing one anther." And what's more, with all security and with all guarantees we can say that the material executors of these deeds and of all the homicides that occur every day will not be brought to light. That is why it seems to me that the CICIG must play a central role in developing and improving the processes of criminal investigation. Where are the failures? How is it possible that the Public Ministry can have such low indication of successful investigation, above all in terms of the right to life. Everything that has to do with groups of gunmen, if any of these is linked to drug trafficking, would be a subject that CICIG would have to investigate because, where are these groups from and to whom do they belong? The gunmen of Guatemala, the death squads that have become a common practice; sometimes we discover that they are the police, but ultimately this demonstrates a permanent and systematic impunity in regards to homicide.

Yes, certainly. The drug trafficker is a real power, a very strong economic power, and many of the powers and much of what is managed within the country has to do with these high capacities of financial management and moreover surely they are impinging on some of the country's power structures. Another thing revealed by the massacre of Zacapa is that surrounding the structure were military, police and fiscal people. We see this as evidence of the weakness of the state in giving and providing security. Many of the security personnel end up becoming part of the organized crime.

Nothing. The Colombia plan, the Mérida plan, and the wall are excuses used by the United States because it has repressive elements in those countries to get the army out on the streets, to show more violence, to utilize repression, to limit fundamental rights. It has been proven that in none of those three countries has drug trafficking diminished nor has the consumption of drugs from this means. I think that these are plans that have to do with justifying the intervention of the United States military in Colombia, in Central America, in Mexico. In Mexico it means the remilitarization of the functions of public security and the use of methods linked to the logic of Bush, to his fight against terrorism and against any ideology that presumes to become an axis of domination.

I believe that they have always operated. There is another Chinese tale that the pressures from Mexico and Colombia make them operate here. I believe they have always been here, that they have always operated here. This is always a required step for them. We are located in a geo-strategic position. This is a corridor that has always been used. The cartels in other countries may have changed but the drug trafficker in Central America has always been there. Perhaps the difference is that before the drug trafficker paid with money and now he pays with drugs and thus has developed consumers within the country. They have always operated here and have always had a relationship with certain sectors of power. They have used Guatemala as an obligatory bridge of transit.

Basically it is a bridge. I do not believe that it has become a major consumer. However, it seems that the indications of domestic consumption are increasing every day. We should have a domestic policy to begin confronting this problem. We already have some economic sectors that are concerned about the consumption of drugs by their children, at the more prestigious schools with greater purchasing power. I believe that yes, this should be a subject of public health and a internal debate to be discussed within the politics of the country.

That is a proposal that in my opinion could do a lot to heal the subject of the market. Ultimately, the market, because it is a forbidden market, makes the profits and costs enormous. However, while this would resolve one part of the question of opposition to sales it would also liberalize the consumption of poison. It would do more damage than good. It might resolve the issue in terms of taking it out of hiding so that people would not be killed for that reason, but it would also have the effect of allowing mass consumption of something that would be very damaging to society.

The policy of the United States is just that. In reality what Colombia and Mexico are doing, what Guatemala also does, and the countries that are within the orbit of the United States, what some government functionaries of Guatemala practice, is to repeat the politics and the agenda that the United States has imposed: that the drug trafficker, the immigrant, the terrorists and the gangs are the threats. This is in conformity with the domestic policy of the United States that they export and that these countries repeat as evidence of their own institutional weakness and inability to come up with their own definition of the threats. In Guatemala we have this weakness. We have not defined our threats. However, we have received four helicopters from the United States that will help us fight terrorism, and I want to ask, where are the terrorists apart from the fact that social conflicts are regarded as terrorism? It seems dangerous to me what we are seeing with this exportation of a new doctrine and the politics of the United States. We replicate this scheme instead of prioritizing our own threats and our own security problems in terms of the needs and the relationships of the country.

The drug trafficker is part of a certain culture in terms of the absence of the state. When the state has not provided education, health, and recreation in many villages of Central America and Mexico, the drug trafficker is sometimes the one who hires health care workers, builds a hospital and the stadium. As we have seen in many places they become social reference points, pillars of the community. This illustrates the concept of what society popularly things of the drug trafficker: a hero, traitor, betrayed, someone who is worth singing for. He is a reference point in some communities and that is why the drug traffickers have their people and they have their impact on some social circles in the country.

The traffickers, because through them everything is distributed. They traffic people, weapons, drugs. They have a lot of connections to the coyotes, with white slavery, with the sexual exploitation, child exploitation, and other things that go from the south to the north. This global phenomenon is often the trafficking of drugs in exchange for weapons or people. The global aspects of crime would be trafficking as a very serious subjects to be combated.

No. Definitely not. The experience of many countries indicates that they are not equipped or trained for that. There are painful experiences. In Mexico there were complete battalions that were infiltrated by drug trafficking. In Mexico there was a well-known case of a general who was a drug trafficker. It has been proven historically that they do not have the training or the formation. However, they could cooperate in specific areas. The army can collaborate in some areas where the civil capacity is not adequate, that is to say the aerial sector and also the maritime, but always subordinated to the civil institutions of public security so that everything is done within the framework of the institutionally and the functions of each one in Guatemala.

It is not that we do not know where they go, who they are. The territorial and technological deployment should be specialized. The entities of organized crime and the traffickers of all kinds must be fought with intelligence, with good investigative techniques and an accumulation of evidence; a professional work of prevention and of intervention. A system of national security must be established. We need to organize institutions commissioned to carry out these tasks, an adequate combination of intelligence systems so that each one can carry out his responsibilities in a specialized environment along with coordinated spaces. It seems to me that we are experiencing anarchy within the institutions. Each one does what seems right to him. There is no focus for coordinated effort. The aspect of the politics of prevention, of intelligence, of capacity for criminal investigation so as to go after those responsible seems fundamental to me because generally what is being done is to criminalize certain neighborhoods and zones. There is no virtue in saying that now everyone in the El Gallito neighborhood is a drug trafficker, or all the people in Izabal are drug traffickers or terrorists. This method does not allow for going after those responsible.

Drug traffickers take advantage of weak states. Corruption flourishes in institutions that have not been strengthened and equipped. Then all of these elements that are very clear in the security forces of Guatemala cause them to choose this country above other states like Nicaragua where the policy and the army have a more proactive policy in terms of combat against drug trafficking.

The procurement of raw materials. If a poor peasant does not have any opportunity or possibility of producing enough beans, rice, corn, or may not be able to produce enough to eat, the state will not help him. No one will help him but the drug trafficker may come and ask him to cultivate poppies and tell him that from that he will get tenfold profits and will take his entire family out of poverty. This is a structural weakness that the drug trafficker may use to gain the basic materials for the production of some type of drug. The relationship between the drug trafficker and poverty is that the drug trafficker takes advantage of poverty for the benefit of his illicit business.

It is hard to make a definitive study of that, to measure the impact. What is certain is that there are areas in the west of the country that have quite a lot of poppy cultivation, particularly by drug traffickers who only order the materials that are processed by the Mexicans. That is to say, they are peasants who, if they were given better options, perhaps of an alternative crop that is legal, surely could do something else. There also is where we see the absence of the state. In places where people are hard working and want to get ahead they often are not given the opportunity to grow crops. This poverty is the pressure that sometimes causes them to grow illicit crops.

The most significant such activity is construction. Money laundering is done through construction, on the benches, disguised in shipments. The most important illegal activity that goes along with the drug trafficker is the laundering of money.

I am concerned about the criminalization that is made of the invasions. It turns out that behind the invasions of the peasants there is always a drug trafficker and thus social problems are criminalized. There may be some cases where effectively there has been some manipulation by powerful groups, some land tenants or drug traffickers who may be using the invasion for their own ends, to privatize or take possession of certain sectors. There needs to be a differentiation of each case. Most of the cases may be a problem of need in reference to a human right or a right to the land. It seems to me a very dangerous and sensitive issue. Most of the seizures of ranches and of lands are due to need, a problem that neither this government nor past governments have been able to resolve and what is being done is to violently remove the peasants and not to provide an integrated solution to the need for land that exists in this country.

Many of these arguments are used to justify asking for assistance in the naval areas or the aerial areas, something that should be much more transparent. We are not inventing an enemy to justify improving our ability to intercept by sea or air. Rather we must say that clearly Guatemala has weaknesses in the area of interception, both naval and aerial, to then see how international cooperation can help us.

What we have seen, and also that scandal of the SAIA confirms, is that it entered through the port and through the rivers in middle of the port of San José. The extent of institutional corruption, and the fact that these institutions are more permeated by the phenomenon of the corruption, makes it easier for the drug trafficker to operate in many ways. The trafficking of any thing can be done by land, by sea, and through the airport.

We are not in a war of positions. This is not a war for control of territories, for aspiring to have the forces of an infantry. In any case, if some routes have disappeared with the military redeployment, we would need to hold responsible the military leaders who decided to move the military bases to certain locations to clear out these routes used by drug traffickers.

(Laughter). The alert is that Guatemala must develop its own sovereign capacity to provide security to its citizens, if it does not want to be eventually a country occupied by the United States on the pretext that we are not capable of securing ourselves. That would be death.