Cocaine central

Latin America: Corruption makes tiny Guatemala an enormous source of illicit drugs and a big headache for the Bush administration | Clint Rainey

Anti-drug policemen prepare cocaine for incineration in Guatemala City

GUATEMALA CITY—In February the head of Guatemala's elite anti-crime unit and three of his officers seized three Salvadoran legislators who were in Guatemala as delegates to the Central American Parliament. They drove the legislators to a country road. Using assault rifles, they shot and killed them.

The four Guatemalans, arrested, claimed unconvincingly that they thought the Salvadorans were drug dealers. Then, three days after the arrest, someone slit the throats of the four in their jail cells. Guatemalan drug dealers, authorities now maintain, masterminded the whole affair.

This murder—a grisly display of drug cartelism's power in a land where government officials are for hire—has become a national scandal, yet Guatemalans admit it's more out of revulsion than surprise. "We were shocked by the brutality of the killings," said Guatemala's vice president, Eduard Stein, "but it was really no surprise to us that organized crime has infiltrated the government."