The Washington Post, 12/21/2010
Gangs roamed the streets with assault rifles and armored vehicles, attacking whomever they pleased and abducting women who caught their eye. Shootouts became so common, residents couldn’t tell gunfire from holiday fireworks.
Local leaders of the mountainous northern province of Alta Verapaz, which has become a prime corridor for smuggling drugs from Honduras to Mexico, say they have been asking state and federal authorities to intervene for two years now.
“The violence has increased. There are assaults, extortion, shootouts in the street caused by outsiders,” said Ariel Hasse, director of city projects in Coban, about 60 miles (100 kilometers) north of Guatemala City. “We don’t know who they are, but the rumor is that they’re Mexican drug cartels.”
The Guatemalan military declared a monthlong state of siege Sunday in Alta Verapaz in hopes of reclaiming cities that have been taken over by Mexico’s brutal Zetas drug gang.
The measure lets the army detain suspects without warrants, conduct warrantless searches, prohibit gun possession and public gatherings, and control the local news media. Guatemalan law allows a state of siege for acts of terrorism, sedition or “rebellion,” or when events “put the constitutional order or security of the state in danger.”
