Guatemalan Shopping Center Becomes Primetime Battleground in the Drug Wars

Gunfight at the OK Corral – Drug War version

Have we all gone crazy or is our Kool-Aid spiked?

On Guatemala’s Independence Day, 15 Sep, National Police (PNC) located a well-known drug capo, Mauro Salomón Ramírez,  in Tikal Futura, the largest and busiest shopping center here in the city. Ramirez is wanted on a U.S. extradition request issued in Tampa Florida Federal Court. PNC anti-narcotics officers discovered he was registered in the hotel annex to the Tikal Futura complex. At 5 minutes before noon, the PNC decided to move to arrest Ramirez amid hundreds of holiday shoppers and gawkers.

Shots were fired; hundreds of them by all accounts, as part of a gun battle that lasted at least half an hour and stretched from the lower level parking lots to the access ramp outside the shopping center. 

THE RESULT: 

Police arrested four of a dozen or more heavily-armed body guards accompanying the suspected drug capo and Ramirez wife; one antinarcotics officer and an evangelical preacher lost their lives; 8 additional bystanders were injured; Ramirez and the remainder of his security contingent escaped despite the participation of 400 additional police officer who cordoned off the neighborhood surrounding the shopping complex.

According to police statements, at least 12 body guards armed with UZIs and 9mm sidearms accompany Ramírez everywhere he goes and this day was no exception. There was apparently no hesitation on their part to open fire when challenged by PNC forces.

CURIOUS FACTS EMERGE:

• ·      One of the injured was an off-duty PNC plainclothes detective. He took a 9mm round in the shoulder. He was not part of the operation. In coming to his aid, his colleagues discovered he was wearing a kevlar vest, armed with non-police-issue weapons.  The police also found several hundred dollars and a like amount of euros on his person. (NOTE: Your average Guatemalan police officer draws down @$500/month so the cash did not represent his two-week paycheck.)
• ·      The suspects Police arrested were at first thought to be part of Ramírez's security contingent. Initial interrogations revealed that most were indeed associated with the drug capo and one, possibly two others belong to a gang connected to a rival drug cartel. The questioning led investigators to the initial conclusion that unbeknownst to the police, they were also following Ramírez and planned to kill him at the first opportunity. The PNC arrest operation appeared to provide the perfect opportunity.
• ·      As a normal part of the procedure in a high-profile operation such as this, the State’s Attorney General has personnel present to play their role in such an arrest. None were present for this operation.
• ·      For arrest operations such as this, especially since it involved Ramirez’s detention in response to a 25 June extradition request issued in Tampa, Florida, the U.S. Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) office in the local U.S. mission usually has representatives present in an advisory capacity. Representatives of National Prosecutor Carlos Menocal have thus far maintained that no DEA officers participated in this operation despite the clear U.S. interest in a successful apprehension.

STIR INTO TH MIX:

• ·      Guatemala is one of 20 countries, 13 of which are in Latin America, that the U.S. has classified as either producers or participants in the transport and commerce of illegal narcotics destined for the U.S. As such they are part of a special watch list.
• ·      The U.S. subjects these countries to enormous and persistent pressure with threats of political en economic sanctions to share in the responsibility of stanching the flow of drugs into the U.S.
• ·      As a result of this pressure most of these nations, considered “Emerging Economies” by our standards, have been force to implement administrative and procedural regulations designed to choke the flow of enormous amounts of hard currency cash through their banking systems. These time-consuming and expensive measures are of questionable value. They look good on paper but given that a culture of graft and corruption exists throughout the region, they cannot be effectively and consistently enforced. The target countries have difficulty shouldering the financial burden associated with maintaining the cost of these futile efforts.
• ·      The security forces in countries like Guatemala are ill-trained and insufficiently equipped to handle delicate operations such as this without the benefit of outside advisement and instruction. This added to the strong-arm sanctions threat from the U.S. undoubtedly led to the hasty and ill-advised decision to expose the innocent civilians present in the shopping center in order to detain Ramirez. The sorry result could easily have been worse. One actually begins to believe in miracles when observing video and photo coverage depicting the scene at Tikal Futura with hundreds of spent cartridges littering the floors, parking garage and environs. That scenario considered, it was truly astounding that the human and material cost was not higher.
• ·      The assistance of an additional 400 officers supporting the arresting contingent were to cordon off the area were unable to prevent Ramirez from escaping. He remains at large.

·      For some inexplicable reason the PNC operational leadership decided noontime on a national holiday in a crowded shopping center was the perfect opportunity to arrest the suspect accompanied at that moment by well-armed (and by all accounts, well-trained) watchers. This despite the fact it was quite evident that on this occasion Tikal Futura Shopping Center appeared as any other place of this type in the world at lunchtime on a National Holiday. It was full of hundreds of innocent bystanders.

IN DENIAL:

Incidents like this are a frequent if not daily occurrence throughout the region. Moreover, all too frequently as in this particular battle in the “war” they fail to accomplish the intended objective.

Added to the failure is the unreasonable and unpardonable risk to life and limb of innocent bystanders who have absolutely nothing to do with the escalating drug problem.

The real responsibility –and solution- is found far from Guatemala. It will come from the halls of Congress in Washington, D.C. when legislators wake up to the fact that this ridiculously expensive and futile approach to regulating personal, albeit self-destructive behavior by the criminalizing narcotics consumption is doomed to failure. It fact it already has failed and at a huge financial and human cost.

We have a history to prove this beyond a measure of doubt. The 18^th Amendment to the U.S. Constitution prohibiting production, sale and consumption of alcohol and its subsequent repeal by the 21^st Amendment 13 years later  represents the most glaring proof. It is one of the two or three times U.S. Lawmakers have fiddled with the already well-crafted Constitution. They didn’t manage to break it but did leave a big historical dent. "PROHIBITION" as these 13 years were known, wasn't prohibition at all. It was a market opportunity for organized crime. They took full advantage. Exactly the same thing has happened and is happening today as a result of the ill-conceived war on drugs.

It's hard to accept, but the harder the U.S. pushes and the more it spends on the anti-narcotics effort, the richer, more powerful and politically influential the drug cartels become. It's a clear testimony to a resounding policy failure that has exactly the reverse effect of that intended.

In its arrogance and denial, the United States has unfairly pressured foreign peoples and governments, all with a set of their own particular problems, to add to their list of responsibilities the task of preventing the flow of illegal drugs to the U.S. This allows the U.S. as a society can continue to close its eyes to the fundamental INTERNAL challenge that enactment of a rational and sane drug policy requires.

The U.S. has few friends as it is. We risk removal from the welcome list of several other nations if we persist in using them as the cannon fodder in a battle that must be waged within our geopolitical borders, or more precisely, within our own hearts as we contemplate how rude and uncaring our current selfish attitude on  drugs is towards our neighbors and allies.

After reaching the reasonable conclusion that our current attitude towards the domestic drug consumption issue is insane and unworkable, we must insist that our legislators deal with this correctly.

It wouldn’t hurt to beg pardon to those outside the U.S. who have been inconvenienced by our surly attitude and selfish actions to date once we have faced the music and taken the right road to a solution.