Guatemalan Election Drowns in Blood

GUATEMALA CITY — Hector Montenegro is running for Congress, but he's having trouble thinking of anything except his 15-year-old daughter. Three weeks ago, her throat was slit before she was stuffed into a taxi trunk.

"I don't sleep, I don't eat, sometimes I can't go out," said Montenegro, a fiery leftist with a graying goatee and a suit that hangs loosely off his thin body. "They hoped I would get scared, would hide, leave the country. ... But instead they injected me with more strength."

Guatemalans go to the polls Sunday (Sept. 9) to elect a president, a new Congress and local mayors amidst a violence that some say recalls the nation's bloody 36-year civil war, which ended in 1996. Guatemala, a nation of 14 million, saw nearly 6,000 murders last year and has one of Latin America's highest murder rates.

Since campaigning began last year, 49 candidates, advisers and their relatives have been slain. Another 58 have been wounded, threatened or kidnapped, according to Election Watch 2007, a nonpartisan group of observers.

While some were killed as the result of purely political feuds (as Montenegro charges is the case with his daughter), most experts agree that the majority of the killings are fueled by Guatemala's drug cartels, which are aiming to infiltrate the political system.

"It's a symptom of the growing strength of the cartels and the capos," said Veronica Godoy Castillo, director of a Guatemalan nonprofit group that monitors police activity. "There are places in the country where there's no rule of law, just the rule of the capos. ... They are trying to impact the structures of the state."

The violence has already impacted the presidential race. Alvaro Colom, a centrist candidate and runner-up in the 2003 election, held a comfortable lead just a few months ago with a feel-good campaign centered on a platform of "hope."

But Otto Perez Medina, a former army general whose campaign symbol of a Superman-style clenched fist illustrates his promises of a "firm hand" against violence, has stormed into a dead heat thanks to the security concerns.

Polls show Colom and Perez headed to a Nov. 4 runoff.

Perez's past incarnation as a general during the Civil War has alarmed many on Guatemala's left, and Colom often warns in his stump speeches about returning to the dark days of military rule.

But in many ways, the presidential race is only the backdrop to the battle over Guatemala's institutions, especially in remote regions near the Mexican border, where authorities believe drug cartels finance local candidates.

"These are areas run almost like feudal kingdoms by local leaders, with very little control from the federal government," said Luis Fernandez Mack, an expert in local Guatemalan politics. "If the drug cartels can co-opt the local mayor, they can get things done."

Control of a far-flung municipality gives the cartels freedom to build landing strips for their cocaine-laden planes or to grow opium poppies and marijuana. The drive for such control has sparked much of the violence, experts say.

The rise of Guatemalan drug cartels has mirrored the nation's rise as a crucial transit point for South American cocaine. As it became more difficult to introduce drugs into Mexico and Florida, Colombian traffickers turned their attention to Guatemala and its lawless jungles and unprotected coastline, law enforcement officials say.

U.S. officials say traffickers fly a growing number of loads into the country's remote jungles, then unload and burn planes before authorities can arrive. The drugs are transferred to ships sitting off the country's coast, which in turn feed small fishing boats that easily avoid Guatemalan authorities, according to the U.S. State Department.

"The Guatemalan state wasn't prepared for this," Godoy said. "When the war ended Guatemala was left with weak institutions. When the peace was signed, we didn't fortify those institutions."

Although the election has been marred by violence, observers say there are signs of hope as Guatemala lurches toward democracy. This will be the nation's first election with laws governing campaign spending and financing, considered necessary in bringing transparency to Guatemala's troubled political system.

Political parties, however, regularly overspend campaign limits and refuse to reveal the identity of contributors, largely because of laughable fines of less than $100.

"Here, what's in question is whether democracy is going to work or not," said Jose Davila, director of Election Watch.

Logistically, the election poses an extreme challenge for authorities. Voting booths will be set up in rural villages for the first time (in past elections villagers had to make their way to the equivalent of county seats). The combination of remote voting booths, the ongoing rainy season and the threat of violence could create extensive delays in getting results, experts worry.

"We hope to get the results quickly, the same day, or it could generate a lot of doubt," Mack said. "People could believe fraud was committed."

For Montenegro, the congressional candidate whose teenage daughter was killed, the elections are a chance for a badly needed new beginning.

"This country needs a social and political cleansing," he said. "Hopefully we can stop this endless violence."