Belize has been spared the kind of broader mayhem raging across Mexico, Honduras and in next-door Guatemala, where Mexican cartels have laid siege to large swaths of territory and carried out terrifying attacks.
But escalating gang violence in Belize City has put the country’s homicide count on pace for an all-time high, with more than 100 killings so far in 2011. Belize’s per capita homicide rate was even higher than Guatemala’s last year, and the fifth-highest in the hemisphere, according to U.N. data. Police believe the bloodletting is driven partly by the abundance of cocaine on the streets, as foreign traffickers pay their local contacts in raw product, rather than cash.
Already there are signs the country’s security forces have been co-opted. Last November, Belizean officials working with DEA agents seized 2.6 metric tons of cocaine after a twin-engine Beechcraft Super King Air 200 clipped its wing while landing on the country’s southern highway. Crooked police had blocked traffic and laid out lanterns to mark a midnight runway, according to investigators. It was the largest drug seizure in the country’s history, worth $131 million — equal to nearly 10 percent of Belize’s annual GDP.
Formerly known as British Honduras, Belize is Central America’s youngest and only English-speaking nation. It has enjoyed peaceful, democratic rule since gaining independence in 1981, but U.S. officials worry those gains will erode if cartel operatives continue to burrow their way into the country by buying off political and business elites.
The country also faces an unemployment time bomb, with 50 percent of its population under the age of 20, according to Vinai Thummalapally, the U.S. ambassador to Belize. “Poverty and the lack of opportunities for young men here are a major concern,” he said.
U.S. officials say they do not believe the drug syndicates have established a significant physical presence in Belizean territory, but Singh, Belize’s top police official, said Mexican businessmen believed to be working for Mexico’s Gulf and Sinaloa cartels have recently been detected in the country.
The language difference is no obstacle to the Mexican traffickers, authorities say, because waves of Spanish-speaking migrants from El Salvador and Guatemala have settled in Belize’s northern and western districts — areas that are now trafficking hotspots.
In October 2010, Otoniel Turcios, a Guatemalan trafficker with ties to Mexico’s Zetas drug cartel, was arrested in the town of San Ignacio in western Belize, then put on a DEA flight to New York to face federal drug trafficking charges.
Elsewhere around Belize, there are signs of a booming narcotics trade.
In the northern Orange Walk district, an agricultural area known for sugar cane, citrus, and large farms run by prosperous German-speaking Mennonites, Belizean officials say drug flights have been landing under cover of darkness near the Mexican border. Belize’s deputy military commander, Col. Javier Castellanos, said rogue members of the otherwise-lawful Mennonite community appear to be working for the traffickers, smoothing out illegal airstrips that were destroyed by the army.
Farther north, in the port town of Corozal, just south of Mexico, a former dockworker said he has personally helped unload multiple boatloads of cocaine in the past year, including one shipment he estimated at $40 million.
And in Caye Caulker, an island resort famous for its sand streets and laid-back Caribbean lifestyle, residents say fast boats can be heard racing up the coast in the middle of the night several times a week. At dawn, beachcombers search the water’s edge for washed up treasure — shrink-wrapped packages of uncut cocaine.
It's been nearly 3 years since I read the books. Good times...
