The Gangs of Tactic

Despite my sarcastic last post, death is not fun, especially when it is met at the blade of a machete. A 21-year-old woman and her 3-year-old daughter were recently found naked and decapitated outside by a water deposit not far their home in Tactic. The murders took place during the middle of the day near the Chi-ixim church, just up the hill from where my sitemate, Michelle, lives.

We had heard about the event through town gossip, so in order to get the facts, last Friday the two us went to the police station to inquire about the murders. The newly instated (as in less than a week before) 26-year-old Chief of Police seemed very suspicious of us at first. He took our Peace Corps issued IDs and wrote down our names, passport numbers, ages, nationalities, and cell phone numbers. For reasons unknown to me, he asked if we were able to read. This information he also noted. After we explained to him the workings of Peace Corps and our purpose for being in Tactic, he eventually opened up to talk about the case.

Apparently the husband of the murdered woman was rumored to be involved in a gang that had been stealing cattle and other livestock. As revenge members of another gang beheaded his wife and daughter. They also stole his 2-month-old son. The baby was discovered in the mountains on the other side of the valley the day before we went to the police station. Loggers found the still alive little boy infested with worms, and he was rushed to the hospital in Cobán. We asked the Police Chief why if the murders were an act of revenge did the perpetrators steal and later abandon the baby. He told us that since it was an ongoing investigation he could not share that information.

And unfortunately an unsolved “ongoing investigation” is probably the state in which this case will forever remain. Last year in Guatemala, only 100 cases were even brought to trial in a country that had over 6,000 murders. Criticizing the complete lack of justice in Guatemala, our former Peace Corps director once commented, “If you ever want to kill anybody, you should do it in Guatemala, because the odds are you’ll never get caught.” In fact, a special United Nations International Commission against Impunity in Guatemala (CICIG) was recently created to specifically address this issue.

So if it’s highly unlikely that you’ll ever go to jail, then why not kill a man’s wife and daughter for revenge? Or if odds are you’ll never be prosecuted, then why not make a living stealing livestock? And if the government and authorities aren’t going to enforce the law, then why not take matters into your own hands?

And that is what people do. They take matters into their own hands. It is “Mayan Justice.” Living with an ineffective and broken legal system, people administer their own justice, and the punishment for crimes—lynchings, stonings, burnings, beatings, beheadings—are usually much more severe than the original offense. It is a manner of imposing social control when the government fails to do so.

But a climate of impunity that necessitates “Mayan Justice,” also allows for the flourishing of gangs. The threat of punishment by your peers is greatly lessened if you are associated with a feared organization. When the authorities do nothing and society is paralyzed by fear, then gang members are free to do whatever they wish—rob, traffic drugs, and decapitate women and children.

When I told Lisa (the girl that works in the Nu’Kem store) that I was going to the police station to discuss the murders, she concernedly replied, “Don’t denounce the gangs!” But who are these gangs? Who are these gang members? These last two murders have brought the count up to twelve (that I have heard about) since I arrived in Tactic last July, but I have yet to meet an individual that I would even remotely consider being associated with a gang. Perhaps I have passed gang members in the street, or ate next to them in a comedor, or rode with them on a microbus. I don’t know. All I know is that I live by the old FRG (I in NO WAY support the FRG) mantra and, “No roba. No miente. No mata,” then I should stay out of harms way.