Organized crime, illicit power structures and threatened peace processes: the case of Guatemala

• Published in: Peace Operations and Organized Crime pp. 99 - 114
• Main Author: Gavigan, Patrick
• Format: Book Chapter
• Language: English
• Published: United Kingdom Routledge 2011; Taylor & Francis Group
• Edition: 1
• Subjects: Armed conflict; International relations; Organized crime; Guatemalan Historical Clarification Commission; Revolutionary United Front; RUF; PNC; UNMIK; Kidnapping Industry; Organization Of American States; Organized Crime Cartels; Post-accords Period; UNMIT; DDR Programme; UNOCI; UNMIK Official; DDR; Young Men; Humanitarian Aid; UN; FRG; Organized Crime; Small Arms Control Activities; Guatemalan Military; NATO Peacekeeper; UNMIK Police
• ISBN: 9780415710411; 9780415601702; 0415710413; 0415601703
• DOI: 10.4324/9780203804735-7

The 1996 Guatemalan peace accords proposed to do much more than end a brutal 36-year conflict; they provided an ambitious framework for the transformation of an authoritarian, exclusionary state into a modern liberal democracy. That transformation depended upon the capacity of Guatemalan reformers to dismantle the systems of state dominance constructed by predatory economic and military elites. Those very systems had left national institutions with little capacity and limited geographical reach in a state whose poor and excluded majority lived in rural areas, subject to a culture of violence left by the war and the growing presence of organized crime cartels. Powerful elements of these same elites, however, resisted the implementation of crucial institutional and structural changes, while the political coalitions supporting the accords proved to be much weaker than anticipated. The projects to create a new national police force and effective judicial sector faltered as criminal and social violence surged. Fragmented political parties produced governments unable or unwilling to address growing security, economic and social crises, or to raise tax revenues for programmes to address poverty and deep socioeconomic inequalities.