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4 A Nobody in the Land of Narcos November 2011 Petén—the vast, mostly jungle state in Guatemala—is a gaping aperture where drugs passing through Central America cross the border into Mexico. All the major organized crime families have a presence in Petén. The state is also a stark example of how everything relating to organized crime is a tangle in which the word “narco” is often tied up with the word “politician.” The government here has decided not to get in the ring with the biggest players instead, they hunt the weakest prey in the jungle. “So this is where all you narcotraffickers live” “Yep, right here,” Venustiano says. “Follow me. I’ll introduce you to everyone.” He opens the gate and out peek two men, one tiny and wrinkled, the other leathery and gray. The latter is bathing himself with a bucket of water in the middle of the patio. The wrinkled man yells in the indigenous language of Q’eqchi’. A few older women, as well as about twenty children, appear from several shacks. This is Petén, the northern state of Guatemala, on the outskirts of a town called La Libertad, or Freedom. In order to get here we’ve left behind the ruckus of the market, we’ve retreated from all the tuktuks motorized bicycletaxis with tarpaulin roofs and we’ve wound our way down a dusty, cracked path. The hamlet is the size of half of a soccer field and consists of seven scattered shacks, all made of plastic, cardboard and sticks. In the middle of the hamlet is an oily puddle littered with bobbing food scraps. It smells like a dead animal. In one of the shacks, women are cooking lunch over an enormous comal. The meal tortillas with tortillas. Everyone gathers around Venustiano. They’re all dirty. The children are rail thin, with round, protruding bellies. They don’t say anything to me because very few of them speak Spanish. They just look at me and wait. 61 I say “You guys are the narcotraffickers from Centro Uno” “Yep. That’s us,” says Venustiano, stepping forward as the leader of these moribund people. “What do you think” “I don’t know what to tell you, Venustiano.” The Mexican authorities call the northern state of Sonora the Golden Gate to the United States. That’s where the old smuggling routes are, and that’s where people who are “in the business” live and prosper. Under that same logic, Petén could be called the Central American Golden Gate to Mexico. Petén is the biggest state in Guatemala. It spans more than 20,000 square miles and shares close to 400 miles of jungle and river with Mexico. The Guatemalan military is well aware that this is the country’s most problematic stretch of border. The formula they use is this the closer to the Pacific Ocean, the more migrants, criminal organizations, human trafficking, prostitution, machetes, guns and contraband of all kinds. Then, heading inland, the more transnational cartels, assault weapons and political ties. Petén and Sonora are not only similar in that they serve as the headquarters for the big leagues of organized crime they also share similar demographic characteristics. Much of the land in both states is only accessible by air or offroad vehicles and is thus largely uninhabited. While Guatemala has an average of 337 inhabitants per square mile, that number in Petén barely reaches forty. Here, land is measured by a unit called caballería, which is equivalent to about 110 acres. The region south of Petén is increasingly privatized, with multinational corporations buying caballería upon caballería to grow African palm. The small species of palm is used to extract vegetable oil, a commodity hardly touched in Central America, though in the rest of the world it is one of the most widely used cooking oils. Right in the middle of the state is a long urban stretch that runs north to south, petering out at its tips into a green and indomitable jungle forest only inhabited by the rare family, many of whom are accused of being involved in organized crime. Even Álvaro Colom, the president of Guatemala, has wagged his finger at them. In the northern ridge of Guatemala is a strip of land narrower than the farms of African palm but wider than the urban belt that is blanketed by forest reserves where no one can cut down a tree without a permit. Or so the law says. Petén remains unpopulated because most of it is either privately owned or reserved for agriculture and construction. This wellpreserved, privatized look of Petén has to do, according to a widely publicized report more on the report soon, not only with the 62 protected forest, but also with the many caballerías amassed by the big African palm companies and criminal organizations. The complex dynamic between state nature reserve and privately owned corporate farm has tacked the label of “narco” on Venustiano and his people. Meanwhile, they live in a circle of shacks huddled around a puddle that smells like dead animals. Those familiar with the inner workings of this jungle know that there are eyes and ears everywhere. Before setting foot in Petén, I spent a week securing trustworthy sources willing to put me up for a night. In Guatemala City I spoke with five people who had lived or were currently living in Petén. I even got a number for a religious group who told me that under no circumstances could I ever come visit them in Petén, though one of their members did agree to speak with me anonymously. We’re set to meet in Santa Elena, the biggest city in the urban belt of Petén, in an office where a powerful standing fan saves us from the heavy heat and whining mosquitoes. I find myself talking to a respected activist who works with dozens of community organizations. These days, the national media always finds one reason or another to showcase Petén in their frontpage headlines. In the Sierra del Lacandón National Park, on the border with Mexico, the eviction of an entire community of peasants gained national media attention. The minister of interior, Carlos Menocal, accused the peasants of drug trafficking, and TV media seemed to be celebrating the displacement of 300 families who were supposedly working for infamous narcos. “They’ve kicked out the narcos again” says the activist, and bursts into laughter. I ask him what’s so funny. “With all that’s brewing here, to have the indecency to say that they are ... Well, what can you do Now all the journalists report something about narcos, and they hardly mention that this was a group of peasants. People who have lost their land, who have been kicked off their land and are now wondering where in the fucking world they’re going to plant their corn, their beans, their seeds. And when they find a place in the middle of nowhere they’ll be accused of being narcos again, they’ll be kicked out and left to beg.” “But they’ve invaded protected forest land,” I say, playing devil’s advocate. “We’d do the same. Didn’t I tell you they have nowhere to grow their 63 food And that’s all they know how to do. If you didn’t have anything, and you knew that someone would soon take your land away, and some guy told you he’d pay you 1,500 quetzales some 190 to load and unload a small plane, would you do it” I don’t have to answer. “They have a lot of mouths to feed. Campesinos have a lot of kids.” Again the activist erupts into laughter. I tell him I want to speak with them, with the campesinos, the peasants, the supposed narcotraffickers. He laughs again. This time it’s weary laughter, as if he’s tired of having to explain things to me. He says I’d have to go deep into a land crawling with organized crime. “And anyway,” he says, “I don’t know if they even would talk to you. They’re sick of journalists looking for the same answer to the same question You guys work with narcos” He said it would be better to speak with communities who have already been kicked off their land. In 1959 the Guatemalan government, in order to exploit the region’s agricultural potential, created a plan to populate Petén and integrate it with the rest of the country. The government handed over huge swaths of property to big corporations, but also to the campesinos who knew how to work the land. “That’s true,” the activist says, “and for a while the campesinos grew their crops and ate them and lived off of them. They came from all over the country, but we’re talking fifty years ago. There were no good roads, and no one was really interested in hoarding big chunks of land. There were a lot of businessmen who had large properties but they were never on them.” “What changed” “Well, now there are two highways linking Petén to the rest of the country, and ever since 2000, the African palm has been all the rage, as well as timber trees like teak and melina, and suddenly everyone has their eyes set on the campesinos’ little parcels of land. And, of course, many narcotraffickers and smugglers and all kinds of dealers want to accumulate land on the border with Mexico. The easy access through Petén sparked their interest.” “So you’re telling me that the campesinos sold their land” “There are many ways to sell. Let me explain If the lawyer of a company visits you time and again and talks to you about fivefigure numbers, and you’re a Q’eqchi’ campesino, your eyes start glowing and then you sell without knowing a thing. If you’re a campesino, indigenous or otherwise, 64 and the narcos want your land, then you’re even more fucked, because they’ll simply tell you that you need to sell your land for such and such a price, and that’s it.” “And if you refuse” “There used to be a famous saying about a decade ago If you don’t sell now, your widow’s gonna sell herself for cheap later.” This activist knows what he’s talking about. Every month he meets with dozens of campesinos who have been pressured to sell their land and, if they haven’t been paid, or if they don’t understand their contract because they didn’t read the fine print, or if they simply don’t know how to read, he advises them. This is what it breaks down to The government uses two different sticks for punishment. One stick is stiff, and they use it to punish the weak the other stick is soft, and they use it to make it seem that they are cracking down on their rivals, though they are ultimately leaving them unpunished. “International organizations have pumped Guatemala with money intended to protect forested areas and archeological sites. How does the state show the donors they’re tough By targeting the weakest, and accusing them of being narcotraffickers, which makes the state look even stronger.” The activist tends to laugh loudly and sarcastically. “Look, when we go to that area, when we talk to the campesinos, there’s no question that the infamous narco families, like the Mendozas, the Leóns and the Lorenzanas, have their hands in protected forest land like the national parks Sierra del Lacandón and Laguna del Tigre.” He isn’t the only one making the point that the narcos are treading on protected land. Even government informants have confirmed that, to quote the famous Salvadoran archbishop Óscar Romero, the laws of Petén are like snakes—they only bite those who walk barefoot. Nestled in Zone 18 of Guatemala City, the wind blows heavily through the café, and napkins are flying off the nearby empty tables. From the terrace you can see the rooftops of various houses in this lowermiddleclass neighborhood. Despite the cold, we opt for the seclusion of the outdoor terrace. Colonel Díaz Santos orders a black tea. We first met at the beginning of 2011, soon after he was picked as the military’s second in command in managing President Álvaro Colom’s state of emergency, which was meant to weaken the influx of Los Zetas in Alta Verapaz, the state just south of Petén. The colonel is now in charge of the Northern Task Force of Petén, including 65 Sayaxché, a town known for both its African palm and the drugs smuggled down the La Pasión River, which is flanked on all sides by land held by wealthy narco families. He also oversees southeast Petén, which includes part of La Libertad, where the stretch of civilization peters out as you near Mexico, finally disappearing into thick forest. That’s where you’ll find El Naranjo, a border town known, to lean on an outdated stereotype, as the Tijuana of Guatemala a place rife with drug smuggling, human smuggling, human trafficking and undocumented immigration. The first time the colonel and I met, we were at the military headquarters of Cobán, the capital of the state of Alta Verapaz. Santos was in uniform and spoke openly about Los Zetas and the local narco families. Now, in civilian clothing and on his day off, he’s more measured when speaking about Petén. I have to tease out his double meanings. The colonel is familiar with the area the 300 campesinos were displaced from. He was actually involved in that operation. Again and again he reminds me that they were following the orders of the Public Ministry, that they had to evict people living on protected land, and that, yes, what they found were humble people women, a lot of old women, and children. He said that he was never told anything about any narcotraffickers. I remind him that the Ministry of the Interior as well as the official government press release stated that the operation targeted people linked to drug trafficking. It was straightforward “Areas controlled by narcotraffickers” is how they defined the campesino settlement. The colonel bites his tongue. It doesn’t make sense to keep pushing him. The government’s position is absurd, continually contradicting itself. Evicting narcotraffickers because they’re living on protected land is like arresting a murderer because he also stole his victim’s cell phone. The colonel is quiet. He sips his tea, then reiterates that his opinion is his own and that in no way is he speaking for Security Advisor Menocal. I interrupt him and ask if he ever had reason to believe that he was working with drug dealers. “No,” he says. “Though I don’t think you can deny that more than one campesino is in the business. You just can’t generalize. Many are simply forced to live on protected land. They sell their land to people growing African palm ... And where can they go The only place left to grow food is protected land.” “You know the area, Colonel. People say that there are huge stretches of land belonging to the Mendoza family, or, by proxy, the Lorenzanas. What do you think Do you think there are powerful people working out of protected 66 areas” “I think so.” “Groups that smuggle drugs, wood and contraband” “I think so.” The report Power Brokers in Petén Territory, Politics and Business, published in July of 2011 and financed by the Open Society Foundations, reveals that some of these swaths of land are legally registered to known drug traffickers. Even highup military personnel like General Eduardo Morales, who orchestrated the state of emergency in Petén, believe that the northern part of the state, made up of protected land like Laguna del Tigre, is teeming with drug lords who organize shipments by planes that are later burned in order to get rid of all traces. A few days ago, Morales told me that some forested areas were deteriorating due the building of runways and plane graveyards. He told me about a hotel that can accommodate a hundred people in Sierra del Lacandón, and a recent landing site in Laguna del Tigre where an official and two soldiers confronted forty armed men who ultimately ran them off. “It’s sad to admit,” Morales said, “but that’s how it is.” I tell Colonel Díaz Santos that it seems very strange to me that the National Council of Protected Areas CONAP doesn’t know about any of this, and yet knows about the illegal campesino settlements or that the police who help with CONAP’s surveillance operation are still in the dark. I ask him if he trusts these authorities. “Oof I’d rather not answer that.” “Well, Colonel. What do you think about the report that’s been circulating all over Petén Do you think it’s credible” “I’ll tell you what a friend once told me ‘The report is only good for reminding you what you need to talk about and who you need to talk to.’” While the report garnered national attention in Guatemala, especially in Petén, not one local media source covered it. And yet there was not one person from Petén, be it an activist, an official or even a soldier with whom I spoke during my trip, who hadn’t read the report. It circulated from hand to hand, from mouth to mouth, from email to email. The authors—researchers of various nationalities and fields—wrote the report anonymously. None of them have spoken to the media. They fear for their lives and ask for no one to even guess at their nationality. After going through many intermediaries, I was able to get two of them to talk with me through Skype. The report was explicit, rich in official sources. All of its data on land ownership I found to be substantiated with publicly registered 67 cadastres the rest was based on other official data, international reports, already published testimonies, and interviews with key informants in Petén. During our Skype conversations the authors told me that they published the report anonymously because they knew well that the powerful people they referenced had strings to pull even on an international level. They assured me that they were prudent in publishing their findings. “We only published what we could prove, even though there are many unregistered properties in protected land that belong to organized crime groups in a de facto way.” Petén is depicted as a land fertile for political corruption, drug trafficking and the concentration of power in very few hands. Petén, as described in the report, is not a place for humble people. In the analysis of Petén’s local political parties, the findings are shocking One can only be mayor or a city council member by being directly a part of or having close ties with organized crime. The report lists the full names of people in all political parties, without exception, who benefit from such alliances. The accusations reach the highest level of government. Presidential candidate of the Renewed Democratic Liberty Party, Manuel Baldizón originally from Petén came from a family who achieved its economic prowess thanks to, in large part, the smuggling of archeological artifacts. The report cites anonymous testimonies of those who participated in the group raids of Mayan ruins, stealing pieces to sell them to foreign collectors. The report also explains how the powerful families of organized crime, like the Mendozas, who are originally from the strategically located state of Izabal, which borders both Honduras and Belize, have appropriated huge plantations in Petén. The Mendozas own twentythree plantations spread out over four municipalities. Many of the properties skirt the banks of the La Pasión River, and at least one of them boasts a mansion with a pool and a runway. Not one authority figure has publicly exposed these landowners. The report explains that the greater part of this land, like the 250 caballerías registered to the Mendozas or their proxies, are largely part of the protected forest of Sierra del Lacandón, the very national park from which the state displaced 300 campesinos, many of whom, with nowhere else to go, set up camp in the jungle on the Mexican side of the border. The colonel and the general both explained that the problem isn’t organized crime groups taking over land that isn’t theirs, but the illicit businesses they set up on those 68 lands. Even General Morales points out that Los Zetas have training camps and lodges in Laguna del Tigre. The drug traffickers aren’t very discreet. General Morales described finding an enormous stash house about three years ago. His men even found a boat in mid construction. “A big boat, one to ferry cars. A prosecutor likened it to Noah’s Ark.” Narco land reaches all the way to the Mexican border, to the Usumacinta River. “Each property,” reads the report, “is equipped with armed guards.” Petén has become a sort of condominium for the big families of organized crime. The Mendozas aren’t the only ones in the limelight. The Leóns, originally from Zacapa, a state bordering Honduras, own 316 caballerías in Petén that are nestled, so the report explains, “in strategic places along the drug route.” The Lorenzanas, also from Zacapa, own four ranches within the nationally protected park of Laguna del Tigre. One of these ranches—proof of the broken system—was openly registered under the name of the family patriarch, Waldemar Lorenzana, who in 2011 was extradited to the United States for drugtrafficking charges. The report concludes that the property linked to organized crime groups reaches a fourdigit figure 1,179 caballerías. That’s equivalent to seven times the area of San Salvador, or about two and a half times the size of Boston. Meanwhile, the African palm plantations officially occupy 1,027 caballerías. According to the National Council of Protected Areas, by 2007, close to 8,000 people had been displaced from 902 caballerías in and around the municipality of Sayaxché. Twentyseven campesino communities ceded their land to African palm companies and other buyers. And yet officials refuse to acknowledge that the campesinos, who are often left with no other option but accepting the narcos’ offers, are also having to protect themselves from encroaching transnational companies who know how to get what they want more land. It’s six o’clock in the morning and there’s a faint, comforting sunshine. I’m on a bus headed out of the town of El Subín, near Sayaxché, to the Petén town of Santa Elena. The bus is nearly empty Only two other passengers are riding near the back. One of them, who I guess is a campesino, quietly speaks to the man next to him, who looks like a construction worker. The campesino asks if it’s easy to find construction work these days. The worker says yes, that there’s a lot of construction in Santa Elena. The campesino says he should consider himself lucky, that there’s no work on the land these days, that “if you have good land, they’ll just take it from 69 you.” Now all that’s left is all “dry, dead land.” He says that further south, by Sayaxché, the only work is in the African palm industry, because “the señores “Mister” or “Lord,” a common way to refer to a highlevel narco who own the good land don’t need anyone to farm it.” In Santa Elena, I’m greeted by Alfredo Che, a short and stout campesino, with the slow and clipped style of Spanish commonly spoken by the Q’eqchi’. He is a member of the Association of Indigenous Campesino Communities for the Integral Development of Petén, which is part of the National Coordination of Campesino Organizations. The organization’s central demand is the relocation of displaced campesinos. With no place left to go, they ask that campesinos be allowed to return to the protected forest land they once inhabited, under the condition that they would limit expansion of their settlements, and that they would farm under rules that respect the ecosystem. Che is angry—his face contorts when he speaks—though his voice never rises above a whisper. He complains that in Petén even the killing of campesinos is used as an argument against campesinos. In May of 2011, on a plantation called Los Cocos, in an unpopulated stretch of land across La Libertad, there was a massacre of twentyseven people. According to official reports, the perpetrators were Los Zetas. Their target was the plantation owner, but apparently they couldn’t find him and they took out their revenge on the campesinos instead. Some were decapitated with chainsaws. An investigator showed me a picture of the bodies still wearing their heavy work boots. Even the Ministry of the Interior identified the victims as campesinos hired to work the plantation, but Che says that the Petén authorities use massacres like this one as an argument that the campesinos are collaborating with “narco plantations,” and are thus caught redhanded in the cross fire. “They never displace the plantation owners,” argues Che. “It’s always the campesinos, the communities who farm what they eat. They might tell you that the land here is green, but the truth is that if you walk through Sierra del Lacandón, the Maya Biosphere, you’ll no longer see pristine mountains. CONAP has guards to protect themselves, but they can’t really do anything if they only carry tiny .38caliber pistols. And even with the Nature Protection Unit ... the fact is that two policemen plus three guards cannot confront a group armed with assault rifles. So they keep on attacking defenseless communities and leave all plantation owners alone.” The campesinos aren’t the only ones denouncing unequal treatment. Francisco Dall’Anesse, the lead prosecutor for the International Commission Against Impunity in Guatemala CICIG, in its Spanish 70 acronym that was founded by the UN in 2006, has also pointed out this disparity. At a journalism conference in Argentina, he said that “there are indigenous groups being kicked off their land and pushed onto the streets,” while no one is doing anything about the real narcos. He told the story of a UN high commissioner going to Los Cocos Plantation to bear witness to the massacre of campesinos. Narcos, armed to the teeth, stopped him and interrogated him about his intentions, forcing him to identify himself before letting him pass. Che says that with all the narco threats and corporate pressures, campesinos are only getting some 50,000 quetzales for a piece of land that is worth around 200,000 quetzales around 25,500. I ask him why they don’t sue. He says that they’ve already done so many times, but that, in the best of cases, lawsuits only result in stacks of bureaucratic papers that end up getting shelved in some office of the Public Ministry. He says that African palm companies often employ “coyotes,” typically other campesinos, sent to repeatedly pressure their neighbors until they finally cave in and sign a contract they don’t understand. He tells me that if I want to know more about these practices, I should speak to another member of his organization, Domingo Choc, who works in the municipality of Sayaxché, known for being the area most coveted by African palm transnationals. Choc shows up later that evening. “Companies are smart,” he says. “They know how to suffuse a community with fear.” Their strategy is to pressure and divide. He explains that “if a coyote isn’t able to do the job, they’ll send someone better, until they get what they want.” They insist, again and again, until they’re able to divide the community and are left with only a few campesinos who they threaten to squeeze out between plantations of African palm. Private guards bar any leftover campesinos from going through lands owned by African palm plantations they don’t let cars pass that are transporting sacks of corn and beans to the market. The corporations only let the campesinos grow enough to eat, nothing more. That’s how they’re able to pressure those most hesitant to sell and become plantation day laborers with no contract, meaning they’re paid less than the 63.70 quetzales a day about 8, which is the minimum salary. This goes on until the campesinos grow tired of sweating and fighting over a sliver a land that once belonged to them and they leave, just as Venustiano did, to carve out a new piece of land in a protected forest zone, hoping not to be displaced or accused of being narcos. 71 This happened to José Cacxoj, a campesino I met from Sayaxché. At sixtythree years old, he grew tired of the daily visit he got from a supposed engineer named Gustavo who continuously threatened that he’d end up landlocked between plantations of African palm if he didn’t sell his parcel of land in the hamlet of Las Camelias. He finally sold his parcel, which was barely half a caballería, for 100,000 quetzales. He’s spent the last two years looking for land in a state that holds no interest for either the narcos or the palm companies, and yet, even with the prices at least twice what he was paid for his own land, he hasn’t been able to find anything. So Cacxoj is wasting away his money by renting land under the agreement that he give half of his crop yield to the landowner. If something goes wrong with one of his two annual harvests, as happened last year, due to lack of rain, Cacxoj is ruined. He’s thinking of spending the rest of his years on protected land and turning himself into an “invader,” as campesinos are called by the state, or maybe turning into “a narco,” as Venustiano and his community were called. I ask Choc how many people have been displaced. He says he doesn’t know the figure in people, but in communities and families. “In the El Progreso community in Sayaxché, twentythree families were finished. In the El Cubil community, thirtytwo families were finished they no longer exist. In El Canaleño, fortysix families. La Torre, seventysix families. Santa Rosa, eightysix families. Arroyo Santa María, fortythree families ... And the community that everyone remembers as the first community, the community known as Centro Uno, 164 families were finished they no longer exist.” A day has passed since I met with Che and Choc. They helped me contact campesinos in Centro Uno. I’m now riding a bus on a sweltering, humid day, heading toward La Libertad. The windows are open and waves of dust waft in and stick to my sweaty skin, seeming to attract the tiny clouds of mosquitoes circling my face. At the center of the town is an outdoor market. It’s a marvel that the many tuktuks zigzagging around pedestrians aren’t also running them over. Seemingly every small shop has a set of speakers blaring norteña music or a megaphone shouting its sales. I walk into a chicken rotisserie, and from the back room where an employee is scrubbing dishes, I call Venustiano, who says he knows the place and asks me to wait, that he’ll be there soon with Santos, another exresident of Centro Uno. Venustiano, at fiftysix years old, looks the typical campesino rope muscled, with a mustache and wearing a white threadbare shirt, jeans and black work boots. His skin is cracked like dried mud. He shows up with 72 Santos, a sturdy, hairless Q’eqchi’ man. They speak in a tone somewhere between shame and gratitude. It doesn’t seem like they’re used to telling their story. When his community was kicked off Centro Uno in 2009, the media only reported the official version. Venustiano says that no one ever asked him anything. Venustiano speaks of an infertile land, a land of plastics, lumber and shacks, of a miserable economy, of eighthour workdays spent tilling someone else’s dirt far from his makeshift home, of earning only thirty quetzales a day. He says that when you’re “farming someone else’s land, seeds don’t sprout the same.” I interrupt him and ask that he start at the beginning and tell me what Centro Uno was like in Sierra del Lacandón. “What was it like” he asks. He puts down the roasted chicken he’s eating, wipes the grease off his mustache and slowly bats away the cloud of mosquitoes hovering in front of his face. He pauses and looks into the middle distance. “Where we lived we had water. A stream and land. The stream was clear, you could see your feet through it. There was a dairy farm where you’d get pretty muddy, but it was beautiful. There was corn, beans, and we were happy. There were coconut trees, avocado trees, all of them bore fruit. There were oranges, lime, mango, and they grew like this,” he stretches his arms out to symbolize the abundance. “We knew our land. There was cane, yucca, bananas, cocoyam. We couldn’t be happier.” At ten in the morning on June 16, 2009, a caravan of 600 military personnel, policemen, forest guards, Public Ministry agents and Ombudsmen for the Defense of Human Rights PDH began a massive eviction of campesinos in the Centro Uno community of Petén. One hundred and sixtyfour families were removed from the land that, albeit without permission, they had started settling before the 1996 Peace Accords, which put an end to the country’s thirtysixyearold Civil War. Some had moved there even earlier, around 1992. Most of them, however, apart from those first pioneers, trickled in within the next five years. Almost all were originally from Ixcán, Izabal, Quiché and Cobán and had been looking for a place to farm far from what had been a particularly deadly war zone. In these interior tracts of mostly indigenousheld land, only the words “massacre” and “genocide” can describe what went on during a war in which it is estimated that 200,000 Guatemalans were killed. Centro Uno had never been a secret. The campesinos built two schools where 180 kids took classes from five community teachers who had actually been hired by the government. They have copies of old letters dated from 1990, in which community members pleaded with national and state 73 authorities to legalize the settlement of Centro Uno, just as other communities had been able to do after proving that they had settled there before the forest was established as a protected area. The Centro Uno community gathered official letters of support from five deputy mayors of farming villages who testified that the founders of Centro Uno had been living there long before the community even had a name, since at least 1988. “In the end,” Venustiano continues, “on that day in 2009, they only gave us a half hour to pack our things. I was only able to gather my four kids. I left behind a field of corn. I also left behind ten fields of squash ready to be harvested. Everyone lost everything.” Estuardo Puga, head of the PDH in Petén, confirmed that they only allotted them a half hour to leave their land. He said the PDH left at 130 in the afternoon, but that the military and personnel of CONAP stayed behind. He also said that there were reports of looting. Venustiano says they took everything from them, that he saw vans ahead of them, hauling away their cattle, their sacks of produce, their power generators. “Because they called us narcos, they were able to kick us out so easily. I think it was just an excuse used by the authorities, a coverup,” says Venustiano. I ask him if someone in the community participated in drugrelated activities. “Narcotraffickers live in mansions. Narcotraffickers don’t live in tiny palmthatch houses like the ones we lived in, and even less so in tarp shacks like the ones we live in now ... Do you want to see how we, the narcotraffickers of Centro Uno, live” We take a tuktuk out of the clamor of the market. It leaves us at the beginning of a dirt path. We walk for fifteen minutes until we get to his parcel of land. “So this is where all you narcotraffickers live” “Yep, right here,” Venustiano says. “Follow me. Let me introduce you to everyone.” He pulls open the stickandwire entrance gate and lets it fall to the ground.