Guatemala: Heartbreak and Hope
Guatemala is a narcotrafficker's paradise, just 1,300 miles from Medellin, Colombia.
Thick rain forest jungles cover the lowlands bordering Mexico, a favorite landing spot for one-way cocaine
flights from Colombia.
The rest of the country is corrugated by the Sierra Madres, the Cuchamatantes and other high mountains, including active volcanoes.
This is where descendants of the Maya live in hamlets separated by dirt roads. Only 60 percent of Guatemala’s 14 million people are fluent in Spanish. There are nearly two dozen different indigenous languages.
Most people — seven in every 10 — survive on less than $2 a day. Some find work in the United States or elsewhere. One-quarter of Guatemalan adults are supported with cash from family and friends abroad.
Others crowd into Guatemala City for work. They live in a chaos of congestion and come-ons.
Along the Calle de Purgatorio— the Street of Purgatory — peddlers block the sidewalk, forcing pedestrians to step into the roadway. After dark, streetwalkers totter about on spiky heels.
Drivers specialize in stomping the gas pedal as hard as they lay on their horns. Speed limits, lane markers and traffic lights are treated like advice from dim relatives. Blood-red buses with bald tires prowl at the top of the traffic food chain.
Traffic devours lives. When that happens, the bodies are taken to the city morgue, where Dr. Otto Donny Leon Oliva oversees the autopsies.
Here is what Oliva knows: In 2004, more people were shot to death in Guatemala City than were killed in traffic accidents.
He knows there were eight to 10 murders a day, most of the dead in their teens and early 20s. Many were the victims of drug violence. How many, Oliva can’t say.
