Central America

From target to enforcer: Honduras minister vows ‘surgical’ cartel fight

AFP

Forced into hiding after targeting a drug cartel with alleged ties to the then-government, Honduras’s hounded police chief-turned interior minister has vowed to extract criminal tentacles in the State with “surgical” precision.

Ramon Sabillon, minister in the new cabinet of leftist Xiomara Castro, told AFP he was fired from his former job as police chief after dismantling a drug cartel in 2014 without informing then-president Juan Orlando Hernandez.

Hernandez is today awaiting extradition to the United States on drug trafficking charges.

The cartel he had hit, named Valle Valle, “had penetrated the structures of State” under Hernandez, Sabillon told AFP in an interview.

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Hernandez had him fired, he said, and “threatened with death, I had to leave the country… I had to either save my life or continue in the police… I preferred life.”

Now Sabillon is back as Castro’s interior minister, and in a twist of irony one of his first tasks was to execute an arrest warrant for Hernandez.

Hernandez, who held office from 2014 to early this year, is accused of having facilitated the smuggling of some 500 tons of drugs — mainly from Colombia and Venezuela — to the United States via Honduras since 2004.

In return, he allegedly received millions of dollars in bribes as well as protection money from drug kingpins such as Mexico’s Joaquin “El Chapo” Guzman.

Hernandez’s brother, former Honduran congressman Tony Hernandez, is serving a life sentence in the United States for drug trafficking.

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– ‘A mafia’ –

“When organized crime gets embedded in the State, it becomes a mafia because it holds the power of the State. So it is a surgical job that we have to do, democratically, by enforcing the law,” Sabillon told AFP.

Extraditing a former president, he added, “sends a strong message to the entire population, to those seeking public office, that the State will not tolerate” such actions.

At least 40 Hondurans are sought by the United States on drug allegations.

The minister said a number of coca plantations and laboratories have been dismantled since the beginning of the year.

Cartels are seeking to become more autonomous, he explained, with production in Honduras itself, “so they need not depend on the point of origin” in South American countries such as Colombia and Peru.

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Hernandez, a right-wing lawyer, left office on January 27 when leftist Castro became president of the country with a poverty rate of at least 60 percent among its 10 million inhabitants.

The country’s first woman president faces an uphill struggle to reform a country with one of the highest murder rates in the world.

Tens of thousands of its citizens have tried to flee to the United States.

She has vowed to tackle deep-seated government corruption.

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Central America

Guatemala seizes over a ton of cocaine hidden in flour at Pacific port

Guatemalan security forces seized more than one metric ton of cocaine on Sunday after discovering the drug hidden inside containers filled with flour at a Pacific port, police said.

The cocaine was found inside two shipping containers at Puerto Quetzal, located about 85 kilometers south of Guatemala City in the southern department of Escuintla, according to a police statement.

Authorities reported that 1,039 rectangular packages of cocaine were concealed inside bags of flour, with a total weight of 1,240 kilograms. No arrests were reported in connection with the operation.

Police said the shipment’s country of origin was not disclosed, and the seized drugs were airlifted to secure storage facilities in the capital for safekeeping.

International drug cartels frequently use Central America as a transit route for cocaine shipments bound for the United States, the world’s largest consumer of the drug.

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Central America

Guatemala’s president rules out negotiations with inmates after prison riots

Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo stressed that his administration will not negotiate with inmates nor restore concessions granted under previous governments, insisting that the Executive’s priority is to maintain control of the prison system and restore order in detention centers.

Arévalo said one of the key measures implemented by authorities was the blocking of mobile phone signals inside prisons, an action he described as decisive in regaining control of the Renovación 1 penitentiary.

The riots reported at Renovación 1, Fraijanes 2, and the Preventive Detention Center for Men in Zone 18 of Guatemala City were aimed at pressuring the state to recover privileges that had been recently revoked, Arévalo said during a press conference held Wednesday at the National Palace of Culture.

The president explained that inmates were seeking to reinstate special detention conditions, including air conditioning, king-size beds, and internet access, benefits that he said were eliminated by the current administration.

“They attempted to extort the state in order to return to that system of privileges, but they failed,” Arévalo emphasized.

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Central America

Mazatenango Carnival cancelled amid State of Siege in Guatemala

The municipal government of Mazatenango, in the department of Suchitepéquez, Guatemala, has cancelled the city’s traditional Carnival as a security measure aimed at protecting visitors and residents.

The decision was announced on Tuesday through the municipality’s official Facebook page and comes as a preventive action amid the state of siege declared by the national government last Sunday.

The Mazatenango Carnival, one of the country’s most emblematic festivities, boasts more than 140 years of traditionand typically draws large crowds from across Guatemala and neighboring regions. Its program usually includes parades of floats, the traditional “Rabbit Race,” street dancing and live music, concerts, and cultural events in the Central Plaza.

According to the official statement, the cancellation responds to the current security context and the restrictions associated with the state of siege, prioritizing public safety.

Municipal authorities clarified that the scheduled concert by La Arrolladora Banda El Limón will still take place separately and will be the sole responsibility of the private production company, independent of the cancelled carnival activities.