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Breaking the wave: critical steps in the fight against crime in Guatemala

16/01/2012 - New report points to critical steps that must be taken for Guatemala to overcome its plague of criminal violence.
Impunity Watch and the Conflict Research Unit of the Clingendael Institute today jointly publish a major new report detailing the immense challenges faced by the Guatemalan criminal justice system as a new right-wing government takes power in the country.


Breaking the wave: critical steps in the fight against crime in Guatemala, which is based on extensive fieldwork in Guatemala, details the most important challenges on the route to reducing Guatemala’s crisis of criminal violence. A new president, retired general Otto Pérez Molina, is due to be sworn into office on Saturday 14 January 2012, amid increasing civil society concern that this veteran of the country’s counter-insurgency campaigns of the 1980s will embark on a hard-hitting campaign against organised crime.
 
The paper stresses that in spite of recent atrocities in the Central American country – such as the beheading of 27 farm-workers in May last year – and evidence of a campaign of territorial occupation and state infiltration by the ‘Zetas’ drug cartel, progress has been made in reforming criminal justice over the past four years. Through assistance and pressure from a special UN Commission, the prosecution service has achieved numerous successes, including arrests of “untouchable” druglords, record narcotic confiscations and action against those responsible for atrocities in the country’s civil war, which ended in 1996. Murder rates, while still among the world’s highest, have fallen for the past two years.
 
At the same time, recent years have seen emerging threats from drug cartels and powerful new protection rackets involving police, urban gangs and organised criminals. Guatemala has one of Latin America’s highest criminal victimisation rates: 23 percent of Guatemalans report being victims of crime over the past year. Campaigning for a tough response and trading on his reputation as a former chief of military intelligence, Pérez Molina is expected to bring a much more combative approach. He says he has been inspired by Colombia’s war against its rebel militia, and is likely to draw on close collaboration with Mexico and the United States.
 
However, on the basis of a review of the long history of Guatemalan and Central American security and justice reforms, the paper highlights the three outstanding issues that must be tackled if a lasting reduction in the crime rate is to be achieved: technical sophistication in criminal investigation, internal institutional oversight, and sustainability. Without an integral strategy focused on making progress in each of these areas, gains are likely to be short-term and prone to sudden reverses.
 
The paper also points to imminent challenges. Above all, the international community will have to keep careful watch that Pérez Molina preserves the achievements of recent years, particularly in the prosecution service, and resists the temptation to restore both the methods and the figureheads of the 1980s counter-insurgency.
 

Should you require any further information, please contact the authors of this paper, Ivan Briscoe (ibriscoe(at)clingendael.nl) and Marlies Stappers (marlies.stappers(at)impunitywatch.org).

 

 

You can download the paper here

 
 
 


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