Smugglers, poachers thrive in Guatemala’s Peten
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Here in the Wild West of the Central American isthmus, tough hombres like ‘the Bald Guys’ make mahogany trees disappear in the middle of the night. Here, ‘cattle ranch’ cowboys wrangle cocaine that falls from the sky, writes the L.A. Times’ Héctor Tobar from Guatemala.
This is the Peten, for centuries a thinly populated frontier where jaguars ruled an unspoiled natural kingdom and the rainbow-colored scarlet macaw flew unmolested over towering Maya temples.
Now the jungle region is a lawless no-man’s land, prized by smugglers for its proximity to the lightly guarded border with Mexico and for the swamps and dense forest undergrowth that give them an advantage over the ragtag forces of law and order. It’s a place where the immigration police have no guns, the park rangers have neither radios nor automobiles, and the Guatemalan air force can’t see or chase the ‘kamikaze’ cocaine-smuggling pilots.
-- Deborah Bonello in Los Angeles