There are many similarities between a small sovereign nation like Belize and Guinea Bissau in West Africa. A growing number of organized crime which operates largely with impunity, is breeding corruption,threatening the security across a region where the value of drugs present is higher than their national GDPs.
As observed by experts from the UNODC, drug trafficking is best facilitated by the involvement of state officials. No matter if active or passive in their actions, politicians, high-rank military authorities and civil servants can largely smooth the path for the traffickers to operate also blurring the line between the state and the organized crime. The U.S. government has estimated that up to 90% of the 700 metric tons of cocaine headed from South America to the U.S. wends its way through Belize.
On Tuesday, the U.S. Treasury Department's Office of Foreign Assets Control announced it was freezing the assets of three Belize residents alleged to be drug traffickers and “key associates” of a Mexican drug trafficking group lead by Joaquín Archivaldo Guzmán Loera ("El Chapo") ,Ismael Zambada García ("El Mayo") and Juan José Esparragoza Moreno ("El Azul").
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| John Zabaneh |
Belize, scarcely populated and often forgotten, is getting its fair share of drug action. The desolate western portion of the nation, which borders often lawless northern Guatemala, has become a breeding ground for growing drug trafficking organizations in the area. The tourist driven coastal area to the east has become a playground for dollar spending drug lords looking to launder money and relax for a few days. Belize City, the largest city, is seeing an urban struggle between street gangs for drug profits.
According to the Statistical Institute of Belize (SIB), 43 percent of youth aged 14-24 are unemployed, while 46 percent of the total labour force is illiterate. Moreover, only 12 percent of the total labour force has completed high school.
Poor education quality and lack of economic opportunity are variables that push youth into environments of crime. Initiation into a local gang could lead to contract work for Mexican cartels that promise anything a young man could ever want: money; drugs; status; and power. Aside from routine murders and robberies, these same gangs are also responsible for the 2011 raid of the Belize Defense Force (BDF) armoury in Ladyville, taking M-16 and M4 military issue riffles, 9 millimeter handguns, and grenades.
Within the last two years the Zetas have pushed into western Belize, while drug style murders have risen in Belize City from street gangs. The murders of at least 15 people in Belize in just over two weeks, that’s almost one per day, has fuelled concerns that criminal groups are embroiled in inter-gang feuds and/or where groups are competing over lucrative drug-trafficking routes into and out of the country.
There are also signs that police forces are involved with narcotraffickers—especially with Mexico’s Zetas cartel In 2010, police stopped traffic and lit a highway to allow a night landing for a twin-engine Beech craft crammed with $130 million worth of cocaine. The cargo was seized by national authorities with aid from the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) after the craft clipped a wing. All of this, unfortunately, presents a golden opportunity for narco traffickers. Belize’s institutions are weak, police corruptible and unemployed population aplenty.
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In the coastal town of Punta Gorda, a white, twin-engine airplane — larger than the planes usually used for domestic flights in Belize — landed right in the middle of Southern Highway. The plane had stopped in Belize to refuel, but since its wings were slightly damaged upon landing, the Beechcraft Super King Air wasn't able to take off and the crew abandoned it, police said. The crew left behind a cargo of 2,600 kilograms of Colombian cocaine. Local police said it was the biggest drug bust in Belize’s history.
Recent news reports have stated that the DEA has5 commando style squadsthat have been deployed to Latin American countries to help in fighting drug trafficking organizations. Belize is one of those countries.
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| Arthur Young |
Recently the two most prominent gang leaders in the country, Shelton Pinky Tillett and Arthur Young have been killed - after a weekend that rocked the nation to its core and caused widespread panic and public terror.
Shelton Pinky Tillett was not a menacing or aggressive character - but he was considered the boss of the George Street Gaza - the most powerful and dangerous gang in Belize.Around pm he parked his pick-up at the entrance of a petrol station and went inside the store.
When he got back into the vehicle a man described as wearing a dread hat and a mask over his face - came out of a silver pathfinder -armed with a gun- and began firing shots inside the vehicle. According to one eyewitness, at least 13 shots were fired. Both Tillett and his female companion Andrews died just moments after and their bodies were quickly transported to the hospital.
Immediately after that killing the word went out from Police and on the streets that Arthur Young was the masked man who pulled the trigger. Bar none, Young is the most feared man on the streets. At 38, Young had lived longer than anyone expected him to.despite his criminal history, and multitudes of enemies, Arthur young was a genius at re-invention and a master at survival.
On April 6, 2010 he made this statement
"I am in hiding because I heard the police have a charge for me for something I am not involved with."The way I see it right now, if I meet up to the police, if they meet me in a spot I think they are going to try to kill me. The police force is trying to kill me for ever so long. For what, I don't know."
Arthur Young, the leader of Taylor’s Alley Gang was allegedly shot and killed in the pan of a police truck around mid-night on Sunday. According to police, Young resisted arrested and a scuffle ensued, whereby Young was fatally shot by a police officer and according to sources was shot three times, in the chest and the mouth. Young was wanted in connection with the murders of thirty-one year old Shelton “Pinky” August, leader of George Street Gang and twenty-three year old Kamille Andrews.
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According to the UN Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), Belize had a murder rate of 39 per 100,000 in 2011, ranking alongside neighbouring Guatemala and Jamaica. The accelerating rate of gang-related murders taking place in 2012 indicates that this trend, far from abating, may be getting worse.The northern Guatemalan province of Petan, which borders Belize, was the home to the ranch massacre that left 27 workers murdered and decapitated. An estimated 200 gunmen, believed to be Zetas, arrived at the ranch in buses. The Zetas have attacked land owners and local drug lords in a recent power seize in the area. Guatemalan authorities reported that a four-wheel-drive vehicle with Belize license plates had been used by its members and found in the ranch. Police said the diplomatic vehicle had been stolen from a Guatemalan driver assigned to an outpost of the Organization of American States along Guatemala’s border with Belize.
Tons of South American cocaine are believed to be imported through the Belize coast into Mexico. Vessels have been recently given to the Belize coast guard from the United States to help detect and confiscate incoming shipments.
To the south-east of Belize lies Honduras which faces very similar and escalating problems. The coastline is being used to smuggle cocaine inland and towards the United States. Fisherman are known to fish for the "white lobster" (lost floating cocaine packages), as much as for fish.
Belize is facing similar US formed gang problems as other Central American Countries. In Belize the gangs are US Blood and Crip based. While Central American gangs like MS-13 and M-18 recruit a wide range of Latinos, often English speaking and African decent Belizeans are drawn into traditional African-American street gangs like the Bloods and Crips. Belize has had a large numbers of deported criminals from the US who now run the streets looking for criminal profits and way to live.
Back in the US, a Belize immigrant street gang known as the Belizean Bloods was recently cracked down on in the Salt Lake City area. The gang was in the middle of planning to rob a Mexican based DTO operation during the raids. Five men with loaded guns were arrested as part of a multi-city effort to bust the Belizean Bloods gang, which allegedly used fake U.S. passports while shipping cocaine and other narcotics from Belize to the Chicago area and several other cities. The Belizean Bloods narcotics distribution route allegedly included Illinois, Utah, Ohio, Indiana, New York and California.
Drug Trafficking Organization Profiles with Ties to Belize
Los Zetas-Created in 1999 by former special forces deserters who used their skills to work for The Gulf Cartel.
El Mendozas
Based in Guatemala's northern-most province of Peten,next to Belize, the Mendozas mainly ran contraband before becoming one of Central America's drug trafficking organizations (DTOs).
They have sought political alliances with powerful members of the government and strategic alliances with other DTOs in the country. This may have included a short-lived agreement that some called the "Pacto de Peten" between themselves and the Lorenzanas to split the country north from south and push out the rival Leones, who they believed were responsible for stealing much of their merchandise.
According to some Guatemalan sources, they used hired guns to attack the Leones, supposedly bringing in feared Mexican group the Zetas, who in March 2008, assassinated Juancho Leon in the Zacapa province. This strategy, however, backfired, and the Zetas co-opted territory in south-eastern and central Guatemala. Much of the Mendoza clan is thought to have fled, or to be regularly using Belize as a refuge. Nonetheless, they are also believed to have the best contacts in Guatemala’s government, something the Zetas may still lack.
El Lorenzanas
The Lorenzanas are a traditional contraband family, who, over time, became enmeshed in the lucrative drug trade. Despite the capture of the family's patriarch, Waldemar Lorenzana, in April 2011, they still command respect and support mainly in the western states of Izapal and Zacapa.
The Lorenzanas have become crucial players in the cocaine trade, acting as middlemen between Colombian producers to the south and Mexican distributors to the north. Once shipments of cocaine arrive in Guatemala, the Lorenzanas reportedly work with the Sinaloa Cartel to move the drugs into Mexico and, from there, to the United States.
Lorenzana’s criminal empire became so powerful, in fact, that it developed a kind of grassroots following. According to the Prensa Libre, when U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) officials raided La Reforma in July 2009 in an effort to locate Lorenzana, hundreds of protesters staged a massive rally in the city to support the family. The protests succeeded in partially interfering with the operation, allowing the kingpin and his family to escape.
In April 2010, the U.S. Treasury froze the assets of Waldemar and his three sons, citing connections with the Sinaloa cartel. A source affirms that some in the family may be using Belize as a respite, waiting for the numerous battles between local and international cartels play out.
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| Juancho Leon |
The Leones, who operate along the Eastern border with Honduras and El Salvador, were car thieves and cattle rustlers before entering the drug trade.
Much of their business was via robberies of many Mendoza and Lorenzana cargoes traveling through Zacapa. Once considered one of the most powerful and violent families in Guatemala, the Leones have since gone underground. On March 25, 2008, Zeta gunmen killed 11 members of the Leon clan in Zacapa, including Juancho Leon, one of the group’s leaders.
But the reasons for this battle are not altogether clear. One theory is that the Mendozas and the Lorenzanas schemed to get rid of the Leones using the Zetas, an agreement dubbed the “Pacto de Peten.”Alternatively the massacre could have resulted from a broken Leones-Zetas alliance. In either case, the Leones' power is on the decline, and the Zetas are now thought to control their old turf.Image may be NSFW.
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