<http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-guatemala-drugs4-2009jun04,0,6042185.story>http://www.latimes.com/news/nationworld/world/la-fg-guatemala-drugs4-2009jun04,0,6042185.story
From the Los Angeles Times
MEXICO UNDER SIEGE
Drug violence spilling into Guatemala
Mexican drug gangs under pressure at home are moving operations to Guatemala, whose proximity, weak law enforcement and deep-rooted corruption provide fertile ground, officials and analysts say. By Ken Ellingwood
June 4, 2009
Reporting from Amatitlan, Guatemala Twice before, the anti-drug agents had gotten a tip about a load of cocaine at the hulking industrial park on this dreary stretch of highway half an hour outside Guatemala City. Twice before, a U.S. official said, they had found nothing.
On their third visit, they found a firing squad.
Gunmen unleashed a furious barrage of bullets and at least one grenade, in some cases finishing the job point-blank. When the shooting stopped that day in April, five of the 10 Guatemalan agents lay dead and a sixth was wounded.
The fleeing killers, identified by authorities as members of the Mexican drug gang known as the Zetas, left behind a cargo truck packed with 700 pounds of cocaine. More stunning was the cache found in a brick warehouse: 11 M-60 machine guns, eight Claymore mines, a Chinese-made antitank rocket, more than 500 grenades, commando uniforms, bulletproof vests and thousands of rounds of ammunition.
"They were preparing for war," said the adjunct director of the National Civilian Police, Rember Larios.
As Mexican President Felipe Calderon presses a 2 1/2 -year-old offensive against narcotics traffickers in his country, the war has spilled south into Guatemala, where proximity, weak law enforcement and deeply rooted corruption provide fertile ground for Mexico's gangs, say officials and analysts in the region.
During the last year and a half, the Zetas have carved a bloody trail across Guatemala's northern and eastern provinces. More than 6,000 people were slain in Guatemala in 2008. Police say most of the killings were linked to the drug trade.
As the recent blood bath shows, the violence is now threatening the capital, deep in the interior.
Authorities say Mexican drug gangs, primarily the Zetas and rivals from the state of Sinaloa, are ramping up operations in Central America to evade increased marine patrols near Mexico as they relay drug shipments to the United States and Europe.
The gangs are also ferrying military-style weapons north into Mexico to fight Calderon's forces and opposing gangsters while also vying to take over street sales in Guatemala. Some of the weapons are left over from the wars that the United States helped fight in Central America -- including here in Guatemala, which is still recovering from its 36-year civil war.
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