The first time the U.S. tried to extradite a Guatemalan military officer for drug trafficking, it took the assassination of the nation’s chief justice, in 1994, to stop it. No officers and few civilians have been extradited since.
“With names like the “Brotherhood” (Cofradía) and the “Operators,” the intelligence cliques “developed their own vertical leader-subordinate network of recognition, relationships, and loyalties.”
The same Guatemalan military intelligence chiefs who were responsible for “engineering” what a U.N. Truth Commission later concluded were “acts of genocide,” were later accused by U.S. officials of trafficking cocaine.
Back in 1989, the CIA built its first counter-narcotics center in the basement of its Directorate of Operations headquarters in Langley, Virginia. Since then, the newly renamed “crime and narcotics center” has increased four-fold, says CIA spokeswoman Anya Guilsher…
Colombia has been reluctant to prosecute top leaders of the Cali cartel and dismantle their organization. The Clinton administration is pushing Colombia to do more, while the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, led by Jesse Helms (R., N.C.), threatens to impose trade…
The women wore white gúipils embroidered with pastel flowers and a thin brown trim. The men’s pants were of a matching design, cut off below the knee. The people of Santiago de Atitlán –more than 5,000 of them– marched the half mile out of town to the site of the former army garrison. “Here,” said one, “we are planting the peace.”
