Related Links

Dear Mr. President: Lessons on Justice from Guatemala
The Latest Release from the Archive's Mexico Project

Mexico's Southern Front
Guatemala and the Search for Security

The Guatemalan Military: What the U.S. Files Reveal
Archive releases comprehensive report and database on Guatemalan security forces

Guatemala: Colonel Byron Lima Estrada
Declassified documents on former intelligence chief and alleged mastermind behind the Gerardi murder

Guatemalan "Death Squad Dossier"
Army log reveals the fate of scores of Guatemalan citizens "disappeared" during the mid-1980s

U.S. Policy in Guatemala, 1963-1993

CIA and Assassinations
The Guatemala 1954 Documents

Jungle exercises for the Guatemalan Kaibiles. (photo by Jeremy Bigwood)

Smyth's article tells the devastating tale of ongoing, endemic corruption in Guatemala, made possible by the clandestine ties between smugglers and former senior military officers. Unlike other Latin American countries like Colombia and Mexico, Guatemala has not prosecuted or extradited any of its drug kingpins for a over decade. Today the country is a hub for drug smuggling into the United States - according to statistics cited in the article, up to 75% of all cocaine that reaches the United States passes through this Central American nation.

Records provided by the National Security Archive for the story describe a powerful and brutal military institution with intimate ties to the United States and a history of corruption. They include information on:

• Scorched-earth tactics used by the Guatemalan army during the 30-year civil conflict that resulted in hundreds of thousands of dead and missing;

• The existence during the war of a secret fraternity of senior intelligence officers, many of whom are suspected today of collaborating in criminal enterprises;

• The military's vast web of informants available to them during and after the conflict;

• The reluctance of the U.S. to alienate the Guatemalan military, even as the war ended and the Clinton administration was aware of military involvement in grave human rights abuses, corruption and drug trafficking;

• How one corrupt ex-officer, Lt. Col. Carlos Ochoa Ruiz, used his connections in the military to protect drug trafficking and car smuggling operations inside Guatemala.

Additional documents obtained by the Archive through the Freedom of Information Act include U.S. intelligence reports linking senior military and intelligence officials - such as retired Generals Francisco Ortega Menaldo and Manuel Antonio Callejas y Callejas, both mentioned in the Texas Observer article - to a web of corruption run by military, police and customs officials. These and other declassified records can be accessed through links in the text of Frank Smyth's article.