Guatemala Straining To Cope With Mexico Drug Gangs

Mexico`s powerful drug gangs killed some 5,700 people in Mexico last year, as an army crackdown sparked fresh turf wars.

Guatemala is struggling to contain a surge in drug smugglers from Mexican cartels who are increasingly controlling chunks of the border area, President Alvaro Colom said on Tuesday.

Mexico's powerful drug gangs killed some 5,700 people in Mexico last year, as an army crackdown sparked fresh turf wars, and they are setting up camp in Guatemala where they use the porous border to move Colombian cocaine north by land.

"The number of narco-traffickers is adding up, particularly those from Mexico. The Sinaloa cartel and the Gulf cartel have an impressive presence in Guatemala," Colom said in an interview with local radio.

"The problem is we have mobilized a tremendous amount of personnel but we don't have enough resources, so sustaining an operation is difficult," Colom said.

As Mexican security forces have cracked down on the northwestern Sinaloa cartel and the rival east-coast Gulf cartel in recent months, Colom has sent hundreds of troops to the jungle-strewn border region.

Many drug gang suspects were arrested last year, but the Guatemalan government's resources are pitted against the massive amounts of cash the cartels have to bribe local politicians and police.

Links between Mexican cartels and Guatemala go back years.

The Gulf cartel's armed wing of "Zetas" hitmen have been known to recruit elite Guatemalan soldiers called "Kaibiles," a unit infamous for human rights abuses against the Mayan population during the country's 1960-96 civil war.

Mexico's most-wanted drug lord Joaquin "Shorty" Guzman is rumored to count safe houses in Guatemala among his hide-outs since escaping from jail in 2001.

In December, a shootout among inebriated drug traffickers, some of them Mexican, who disagreed about the winner of a Guatemalan horse race near the shared border left at least 17 people dead.

The U.S. government has pledged millions of dollars in drug-fighting equipment to Mexico and Central America and recently sent Guatemala three speedboats and night vision goggles for special forces patrolling the Pacific Ocean for drug cargoes.