Mexico's response this week to an extradition request for Alfonso Portillo has been to afirm that the former Guatemalan president is in their country legally. Strange, because prior to his victory in the 1999 general election much was made of the fact that Portillo was a fugitive from Mexican justice, following his involvement in a double homicide outside a bar in Chilpancingo 23 years ago. (He was studying there at the time.) He admitted to killing the two Mexicans, said to be rivals in a student election, but claimed that it was done in self-defence and that he only fled the country because he feared he wouldn't be treated fairly.
Another, less-publicised example of recent Mexican-Guatemala collaboration has been the teaming up of the zetas with a group of paratroopers from the kaibiles. The zetas were part of Mexico's special forces' mobile air group until they vanished from their barracks in the northern state of Tamaulipas and joined the drug cartel they were supposed to be fighting. The kaibiles are an elite Israeli-trained Guatemalan counterinsurgency unit founded in the 70s and named after Maya rebel prince Kaibil Balam. They style themselves as the "messengers of death".
It seems that the zetas invited some kaibiles to join them in the turf wars up north, and together they have been training the armed goons and hitmen of the Gulf Cartel, one of seven major drug trafficking organisations in Mexico. Amazingly, it's still not clear whether the five or so kaibiles that have now fallen into the hands of the 'authorities' are renegades or actual serving Guatemalan commandos.
A poll in the Prensa Libre has revealed that 84.6 per cent of Guatemalans believe that their politicians are better known for abuses and corruption scandals than for their ideas and proposals to help the country. What planet do the other 15.4% live on?
