Guatemala: Heartbreak and Hope

The sign outside Juan Carlos Villacorta's office announces “zero tolerance” for corruption. His sad smile leaves little doubt how that’s working out.

As Guatemala’s vice minister for security, Villacorta helps oversee the 20,000-member national police force and Guatemala’s prisons.

Cocaine, for him, is a symptom of his nation’s illness. The biggest enemy, he said, is the greed and graft that distorts the legal system.

Corruption is such a problem that a former vice president marked the new year locked up in one of Villacorta’s jails, awaiting trial.

Corruption helps people in power live in air-conditioned villas with high-speed Internet access, and keeps others
in dirt-floor shacks, he explains.

Villacorta’s job, he admits, is impossible.

A lawyer by training, one day he’ll oversee the search of a ship believed to be carrying cocaine from Colombia.

The next he’ll be trying to head off a riot involving prisoners who don’t want to be locked up with people they say are Satan worshipers.

When a raid goes awry and police kill somebody — say nearly a dozen peasants, some armed with AK-47s — Villacorta gets calls from Guatemalan congressional leaders.

Not long ago, he picked up the phone and a judge from a mountain village was on the line, screaming “Get me out of here!”

The judge had locked himself inside his chambers. A mob outside wanted his head for refusing to jail a person they accused of witchcraft.

Villacorta is committed to his work by blood. Generations of his family have dedicated themselves to trying to lead Guatemala.

His father, Juan Vicente Villacorta, was a moderate politician at a time when the nation was divided into armed camps — government on the right, guerillas on the left.

Villacorta was only 25 when his father was assassinated en route to a 1993 political rally.

“We have a lot of wounds from the 40 years of war,” he said. “We are used to solving problems with violence.”

Crime in Guatemala is complex. There is the corruption. There is the history of bloodshed from the war. The weak economy makes organized crime — auto theft, robbery, extortion, fraud, money laundering — a profitable career path.

A new wrinkle is the country’s emergence as one of the most important stops for international drug trafficking.

Cocaine, sent from Colombia in tons, is repackaged into smaller loads that can be smuggled through Mexico and into the U.S. by land, sea and air.

Drugs are now like currency in Guatemala, Villacorta said. Politicians and police, businessmen and gang members — those who help Colombian smugglers — are paid with cocaine.

It is sold to Guatemalans at about $3 for a gram of crack. They kill each other for the drugs and control of the trade.

“It’s all connected: the social degradation; the lack of businesses; the corrupt politicians who weaken the institutions,” he said. “It all equals a lot of drugs on the street at reasonable prices.”