We are not talking about how many greenbacks are needed to purchase a gram of cocaine, but of the cost that the cocaine trade and other associated illicit activities have on the environment. According to a recent report by the online magazine Yale 360, in northern Guatemala’s Petén region, which is the country’s largest, illicit activities, particularly those related to the narcotics trade, are jeopardising Guatemala’s largest nature reserve and Central America’s largest tract of untouched tropical rainforest, the 2.1m hectare UN Educational Scientific and Cultural Organization (Unesco)-designated Maya Biosphere Reserve.
The reserve, which covers 19% of Guatemalan territory and contains roughly 60% of its productive lands, is home to a host of habitats, including many endangered species. Unlike most rainforests in the world, which face ‘traditional’ threats such as illegal logging in the northern Amazon region of Brazil, the Maya Biosphere Reserve is under threat from Mexican Drug Trafficking Organisations (DTOs), which carve out clandestine landing strips, and Salvadorean organised crime groups that clear out areas to set up cattle ranches used to launder proceeds from the drugs trade.
According to local park authorities cited by Yale 360, the reserve has effectively been split in two: the eastern side, which borders Belize and contains a Unesco world heritage site, the archaeological ruins of Tikal, remains intact; conversely, the western and northern sides, which border Mexico, are under siege from criminal groups.
This is because northern Guatemala provides an ideal location for the refuelling of small planes involved in narco trafficking, while at the same time the park’s proximity to Mexico enables DTOs to transfer the cargo to trucks across the highly porous border; the trucks then use Mexico’s road network to transport it onwards to the northern border with the US. Similarly, locals speak of the development of narcoganaderia (i.e. narco-ranching), whereby criminal groups clear land to establish illegal ranches in which they invest money obtained from the drugs trade; the cattle is later sold to the Mexican market just across the border, bringing the flow of illicitly-obtained cash into a neat full circle.
- Oldest burial in Central America found
In October a team of archaeologists reported the discovery of the oldest burial site in Central America at the complex of Takalik Abaj, some 45km south of the border with the Mexican state of Chiapas. According to the experts, the burial contained no human remains but many relics that point to the economic and political power of the individual it once contained, whom they have named K’utz Chaman. Chaman may have even been the ruler who served as transition between the Olmec (1500-100 BC) to the Maya (800-300 AD) cultures in Takalik Abaj.
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