Archive for Violence
Homicide Rate in Guate vs USA
Posted by: | CommentsCarlos Mendoza over at Black Box has posted about the homicide rate in Guatemala compared to some larger US cities. It appears that my observations last year about the relative risk still hold true.
What’s a Life Worth, Part 2
Posted by: | CommentsSome Interesting News
Posted by: | CommentsThis guy worked for Berger and my understanding is both the former President and his Prison Chief were popular and widely seen as ‘clean’. Word on the street is, “So he ran a death gang…but the dead were all bad guys, so who cares?”
Boombas or Guns?
Posted by: | CommentsOne thing I never imagined I would learn living here in Guatemala is the difference between a gunshot and the more frequent boombas, but we’ve definitely picked it up. About a week ago I heard what I was certain was several, small caliber gun shots in succession and asked the teenager. “What do you think, gun or boomba?” He agreed it was a gun.
Then last night the Wife and I heard three quick gun shots, and then an engine racing and tires squealing. If there was any doubt about the origin of the sound, about 20 minutes later (better late than never), we heard a siren. Related? Possibly; they run their red and blue lights all the time but rarely use the full-on siren.
Express Kidnapping
Posted by: | CommentsHaving twenty-one days of annual leave left before my completion of service (COS), I decided to do a bit of traveling around Central America. My first week was planned and spent on the island of Utila in Honduras with my two training buddies, Marisha and Robin, and then two weeks in Nicaragua to spend time with my dear friend and fellow Peace Corps volunteer, Carolyn.
I arrived in Managua after a three hour delay at 830pm, where Carolyn met me at the bus station and we promptly headed straight to the hotel, grabbed some dinner, did some catching up before we zonked out for the night. The next day Carolyn had some errands to run at the Peace Corps office, so it wasn’t until Wednesday, 14 July that we officially started our vacation.
That morning we left the Peace Corps office and headed to the bus stop on a busy street. Our plan was to visit and have lunch with Carolyn’s host family from training, and then go to the near-by town of Masaya, which is known for its artisan crafts (a chance for me to do some drooling and perhaps get some new ideas).
After waiting at the bus stop for about ten or fifteen minutes, a woman, who also appeared to be waiting, started chatting with us and asked us how we liked Nicaragua, how long we have been here for? She was very nice and seemed interested in what we had to say. We told her we are both volunteers and have been here for almost two years, Carolyn in Nicaragua, me in Guatemala. She then asked us where we were going, and said she was also going to Masaya. She then proceeded to offer to share a taxi with us.
Upon entering the taxi, Carolyn sat on the left, I sat in the middle, the woman sat up front, and a man sat next to me on the right rear. After about moving ten metres or so, another guy indicated that he was also heading to Masaya and tried to get in on Carolyn’s side, which would have sandwiched us in the car. At that point she told me she was getting a bad feeling, and we didn’t allow him to sit beside Carolyn; instead, the guy sat up front next to the woman. As we continued to move down the main road, the man sitting next to me started asking us how we liked Nicaragua. I wasn’t 100% comfortable at that point myself and didn’t engage in conversation.
About one minute later, the woman mentioned that we should lock our door. Carolyn and I looked at each other and ignored the suggestion. Carolyn asked that we be let off at the next bus station. The driver started turning into where the bus station was, started slowing down, and then slammed on the accelerator down a dirt road. As soon as Carolyn started screaming and everyone else was yelling, I knew this was a situation we could no longer get ourselves out of…… (continue reading)
Pummeled As If He Were a Piñata
Posted by: | CommentsThe other morning, I went brunch with a friend. As we were having breakfast by a window, there was a huge commotion in the restaurant. Turns out that right outside our window, a guy had been walking by when a van stopped abruptly in front of him, several men jumped out and grabbing the pedestrian, brutally pummeled him as if he were a piñata.
Then they dragged him into the van, where they continued to beat him and the van, screeching, sped away with them not even bothering to slam the door shut.
While all of this was going on, there was a chorus of anguished ¡Ay Dios Mio! going on inside and outside the restaurant, and people frantically dialing the police on their cellphones.
Truth be told, the police did arrive sort of fast and some police pick-up trucks fanned out to search for the mysterious white van. Other officers started to take statements from people on the streets, but since most witnesses on the street had scrammed, I don’t think they got much information.
They didn’t bother to come inside the restaurant to interview the patrons! Which seemed to me the most common sense thing to do; but what do I know about investigative police strategy?
Why So Many Guns?
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve touched on this topic before, but Michael shared some pictures of the local custom and I thought I would revisit it. He laments, as many liberals do, the presence of so many weapons. However, the guns in the hands of private citizens reflect the realization that police don’t stop crime (although in the US at least they do a great job taking reports from victims), and that laws forbidding crime don’t stop crime, and further, that criminals don’t obey laws anyway.
And so the locals arm themselves, recognizing that bad guys prey on the unarmed, a lesson it took the geniuses in the gun-free zone, and hence, the capital crime of the US, Washington DC, 30 years to realize.
Truth be told, none of these guys would stop a real criminal; you could walk up to any of these guys, pull your weapon and drop them before they would even realize the threat, but that touches on the other local phenomenon: perception. You see, perception of safety, wealth or importance is more relevant than reality here. It’s more important that people believe you overpaid for your TV than to actually have the money to be able to overpay, and similarly, it’s more important to look safe and secure than to be same.
So everyone has bars on their windows because a house without bars is, de facto, not secure. And when the neighbor puts a second row of concertina wire on his 10′ tall wall, everyone else, a la “Keeping Up With the Jones”, does as well. If one cell phone store has a guard, everyone has to lest they become the cell phone store that is not secure. I suspect they are guarding not just the inventory, but the cash that pours in on a daily basis for saldo payments, and maybe some consideration is given to the safety of the employees (although I suspect that is somewhat further down the list of assets worth protecting).
Based on anecdotal evidence, the strategy works. Of all the assaults and robberies I have heard about here in Antigua (about one per month), none have happened where there was an armed guard present (and most have signs of being an inside job). This is not scientific in the least, but it is, more importantly, my conclusion.
Que dios nos ayude
Posted by: | CommentsI’ve been following this American writer who lives in Mexico for some time and find his stuff immensely entertaining. Fred’s bio includes the following paragraph:
I went to high school in King George County, Virginia, while living on Dahlgren Naval Weapons Laboratory (my father was always a weapons-development sort of mathematician, although civilian by this time), where I was the kid other kids weren’t supposed to play with. My time was spent canoeing, shooting, drinking unwise but memorable amounts of beer with the local country boys, attempting to be a French rake with only indifferent success, and driving in a manner that, if you are a country boy, I don’t have to describe, and if you aren’t, you wouldn’t believe anyway. I remember trying to explain to my father why his station wagon was upside down at three in the morning after flipping it at seventy on a hairpin turn that would have intimidated an Alpine goat.
It gets even better. Apparently great minds think alike, because he’s written on both IQ and Darwin lately, like two Guatemalan-based blogs you are already familiar with. The most recent article, about the US-Mexico Drug War, has some real gems:
The Pentagon is working toward toward intervention, whether it know that it is or not. There is something called the Merida Initiative, in which the US supplies money and advice to transform Mexican society to combat the narcos. The colonels in the Five-Sided Squirrel Cage really believe they can reform the Mexican judiciary and infuse the police with virtuous fervor for American ideals. I spoke to a field-grade American officer about this. He had taken a six-month intensive course in Spanish at the Defense Language Institute and spoke less Spanish than my daughter did after two weeks here. The money would be used to reform the Mexican government, he said, which would then make short work of the narcos. He explained this with the earnest mission-orientedness that officers display when they are about to do something senseless.
I’m certain from first-hand knowledge that I’m smarter than the average Army officer and I don’t think they can pull it off. Anyway, go read the rest of the story.
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