On 9 July interior minister Adolfo Reyes announced that 400 troops would be ordered out into the streets to help the police contain a violent crime rate which, according to Reyes, had increased by 5% in the previous month. In the week prior to the decision, there had been 12 highly-publicised murders: four lynchings, six assumed gangland killings and two assassinations of opposition politicians. Also, several journalists and rights activists received death threats from the so-called 'clandestine security groups' widely believed to have links with the security services and the military.
Minister Reyes said the army had been called in - not for the first time - because the national police (PNC) lacked the manpower to cope with the situation. The PNC has 20,000 officers, or one for every 600 inhabitants. His decision was strongly criticised by the human rights prosecutor and Minugua, the UN verification mission in Guatemala. They were not assuaged by Reyes's assurances that all operations would be under the command of the police.
Poor results
Reyes's plan was to increase patrolling, with combined military-police units, in areas known to be frequented by criminals. Its effectiveness began to be questioned right away. The very day after the joint-patrolling began, five killings (twice the statistical average) were reported in the capital. Four bore the signs of gangland killings, the other took place in a residential district flagged by the police as a hotbed of drug trafficking. The emergency services reported calls from more than 80 people injured in violent incidents.
The political crime dimension
Those were just the 'common' crimes. Political killings continued as well. The day after Reyes's announcement, Ismael Donís, coordinator of the youth branch of the leftist Unidad Nacional de Esperanza (UNE), was killed by unknown gunmen. He was the second UNE leader to have been murdered in less than a week (the first was Margarita de Rosales, local leader in San Miguel Pochuta, gunned down on 3 July).
On 18 July, Ramiro García, congressional candidate of the conservative Partido de Avanzada Nacional (PAN) was shot dead in Escuintla, 65 kilometres southwest of the capital. He became the tenth politician to have been killed since the beginning of July. The toll also included six members of the Alianza Nueva Nación (ANN) ? one of them badly mutilated - and another member of the UNE. Death threats were far more numerous, aimed mostly at journalists, but also at human rights activists and members of the judiciary.
'Clandestine security groups'
Guatemala is still awaiting the establishment of a special commission of inquiry, with the participation of the UN and the Organization of American States (OAS), charged with looking into the 'clandestine security groups' considered to be behind most of the political violence. Some of the journalists who have received threats have openly claimed that high-ranking members of the military are responsible for these groups. They describe these military men as the real power behind the throne in Guatemala, and allege that they are involved in organised crime and drug trafficking.
There is little doubt about army collusion in the riots recently organised by the ruling Frente Republicano Guatemalteco (FRG) to intimidate the judiciary and the media as the candidacy of their leader, former dictator Efraín Ríos Montt, was being considered in the constitutional court. The chief of the defence staff is General Enrique Ríos, son of the former dictator.
This does not help make the military credible participants in the anticrime operation (quite independently from the organisational inadequacy of the military for police work). It is also fostering fears about the possibility that violence, or the threat of violence, will be a prominent feature of the run-up to Guatemala's 9 November general elections.
The political context: full report and analysis in WR-03-30.
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