Security & Strategic Review - September 2013 (ISSN 1741-4202)

The resurgence of violence in Guatemala, doubts about the gang truce and the working of the judiciary in El Salvador and about the state’s capabilities in Honduras are the background against which the prospect is again being raised of Central America’s Northern Triangle becoming — or having already become — a collection of ‘narco-states’. Guatemala provides a useful test case for the plausibility of this outlook.