A Brave Guatemalan Judge Challenges Corrupt Brass Hats
Something new and promising happened in Guatemala last month when Judge Marco Tulio Molina Lara sentenced ex-Army Lt. Col. Carlos Ochoa Ruiz to 14 years in prison for trafficking in cocaine.
Posts
San Jorge’s Struggle: Guatemalan Village Blocks Resort
/in Cultural Survival Quarterly/by Frank SmythWhen Jorge found me, I was having coffee with a friend in the lakeside town of Panajachel, Guatemala. Jorge was panting, having peddled a fast mile on his bike from the nearby village of San Jorge de la Laguna or “Saint George by the Lake.”
The Nun Who Knew Too Much: Dianna Ortiz Links This North American Man to Her Rape and Torture in Guatemala
/in The Washington Post/by Frank SmythThey met on the set of NBC’s “Today” show. Jeanne Boylan, the forensic artist who drew the Unabomber…
My Enemy’s Friends: In Guatemala, the DEA fights the CIA
/in The New Republic/by Frank SmythWhy did the Guatemalan military kill American innkeeper Michael DeVine? In April of this year, acting CIA Director William 0. Studeman and other U.S. officials implicated Colonel Julio Roberto Alpírez, who was on the CIA payroll at the time of the crime, in the June 1990 killing…
Has Guatemala Become the Cali Cartel’s Bodega?
/in The Wall Street Journal/by Frank SmythColombia 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…
Justify My War: Why Clinton Eyes Haiti’s Drug Trade and Ignores Guatemala’s
/in The Village Voice/by Frank SmythWhile Bill Clinton’s White House invokes Haitian drug trafficking as a key rationale for invasion, it is continuing the Bush administration policy of virtually ignoring…
A New Kingdom Of Cocaine: For Colombia’s Powerful Cali Cartel, the Crucial Connection Is Guatemala
/in The Washington Post/by Frank SmythThe ignominious end of cocaine baron Pablo Escobar obscured the fact that his Medellin cartel had long since been eclipsed by another network of cocaine traffickers based in the Colombian city of Cali. The Cali cartel, led by the Rodriguez Orejuela family, is now said to control up to 85 percent of the world trade […]