Pubdate: Tue, 12 Jun 2007 Source: Dallas Morning News (TX) Copyright: 2007 The Dallas Morning News Contact: http://www.dallasnews.com/ Details: http://www.mapinc.org/media/117 Author: Jim Landers Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/topics/Guatemala Bookmark: http://www.mapinc.org/coke.htm (Cocaine) U. S. DRIVES GUATEMALA'S BLACK MARKET GUATEMALA CITY - There is a mixed neighborhood of shacks and mansions here where the drug gangs barricade the streets to keep out police, rival criminals and strangers. Not too far away, a hotel lobby fills daily with American couples steering carriages carrying adopted babies. Both scenes speak to the large appetites of the United States, and how they bend the economy of a small hemispheric neighbor. The official, above-board economy of Guatemala depends heavily on American appetites for coffee, bananas and sugar. We are the leading market for Guatemala's exports and the leading source of Guatemala's imports. The unofficial, gray-to-black economy is all about the United States. Guatemalan immigrants living in the United States sent home $3.6 billion last year - 11 percent of Guatemala's $34 billion economy. That's a sevenfold increase in the estimated amount of remittances sent in 2001. Most of the cocaine feeding U.S. appetites now travels from labs in Colombia to landing strips in northern Guatemala. The gangs offload the drugs onto trucks and other vehicles that cross Mexico to the United States. One hundred tons a year, two hundred tons a year - no one knows for certain. In 2002, the State Department said the cocaine was transshipped through Guatemala "with almost complete impunity." That same year, Guatemalan police attacked a warehouse to get their hands on two tons of cocaine seized in raids by other police. This February, three Salvadoran members of the Central American parliament were found shot and burned in Guatemala. They were allegedly murdered by Guatemalan police acting on orders from drug gangs. The arrested officers, including the head of the law enforcement office assigned to investigate organized crime, had their throats slashed in a maximum-security prison. One-fourth of the immigrants deported from the United States after being arrested for serious crimes come from Guatemala. Many formed or joined gangs that manage the Guatemalan drug trade feeding crack cocaine into slums. One such neighborhood is El Gallito. It lies in the heart of the capital but has a tenuous connection to the Guatemalan state. After curious intruders into El Gallito were gunned down in the streets, President Oscar Berger took a heavily armed convoy into the neighborhood for what amounted to a photo opportunity expressing the power of the law. He left shortly after arriving. Perhaps the most heartbreaking expressions of American appetites are the babies of Guatemala. American parents adopt 1 percent of the 370,000 infants born every year in Guatemala. For $30,000, a U.S. couple can hire an agency to find an infant, bring the prospective parents together with the baby at the Marriott Hotel, navigate the court system and get the right paperwork together to convince the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the State Department that the birth mother has abandoned all claims to the child. Guatemalans involved with orphanages and anti-poverty programs say recruiters go into rural villages to find teenagers willing to have a baby and surrender the newborn to an adoption agency for cash. Prices range from $200 to $2,000. We have surrogate mothers in the United States, but at 3,788 adoptions a year, surrogate motherhood in Guatemala is industrial-strength. Guatemala's exports, by value, are coffee, bananas, sugar - and babies. Adoption groups point out that a child born in Guatemala, if it survives infancy, will face a terrible array of disease, dysfunctional families and poverty. Most Guatemalans are poor, 30 percent are illiterate and despair seems to wait around every other street corner of the capital. But consider the economics: Demand attracts supply. Our appetites, for everything from short-order cooks to cocaine and toddlers, put tremendous strains on Guatemala. - --- MAP posted-by: Richard Lake