Why Narcos Are Destroying Guatemala’s Rainforests
Laundering drug money through cattle
Last year horrific Amazon Rainforest fires visible from space sparked outcry, making international headlines and garnering responses from big-name celebrities like Leonardo DiCapro and Madonna. This year, while our attention has been preoccupied with the many unfortunate events of 2020 — our planet and rainforests still burn in the background.
For perspective, last month the number of fires in the Amazon Rainforest more than tripled compared with the same month last year. Swaths of forest are intentionally lit to pave the way for agriculture or mining, which is a huge problem in both Central and South America. Rainforest destruction in the name of agricultural pursuits like cattle ranching is condemned by many, including mainstream environmental groups like Greenpeace and Rainforest Alliance. After all, the loss of precious ecological diversity and vital carbon sinks pose a global problem that exacerbates climate change.
Complicating matters — cattle ranching is linked to drug smuggling, money laundering, and narcotrafficking. Though less openly discussed, they are a crucial piece of the complex narrative and have prompted calls for a need to tackle drug trafficking and forest conservation together, rather than as separate problems.
Narco-deforestation
Over the past decade, it has been estimated that cocaine trafficking is responsible for 15–30% of annual forest loss in Honduras, Guatemala, and Nicaragua.
Cocaine is derived from the coca plant, which is grown predominantly in Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. In order to reach the United States — the largest cocaine market in the world — the drug moves northward, passing through key areas in Central America. These areas have been called “peripheral transit spaces”, and their forests and communities suffer from the violence, disruption, and destabilization that narcos are notorious for.
Prior to the infamous United States-led War on Drugs, cocaine was mainly smuggled across the Pacific Ocean in submarines and fishing boats. Interdiction policies — policies of drug seizure and disruption — shifted the smuggling route to land trafficking through Mexico. As a result, narco-traffickers seeking to avoid detection are establishing new transit sites and pursuing “evermore remote ‘frontier’ landscapes” which include the isolated dense tropical rainforests of Central America.
Guatemala, a small country that borders Mexico and whose name means ‘place of many trees’, is one of those spaces. Today, of the cocaine consumed in the United States, around 90 percent of it transits through here. The Maya Biosphere Reserve in particular, a 2.1 million hectare area in the department of Petén, attracts narcos for its vast, untouched, and unregulated territory. In spaces like these, forests are set ablaze to make way for clandestine airstrips. These airstrips accommodate jets flying in from the south, which are filled with cocaine to be later smuggled across the Mexican border.
In May this year, Guatemalan President Alejandro Giammattei attributed the majority of the active fires in the Mayan Biosphere Reserve on land invasions and the clearing of forest cover precisely for these clandestine airstrips.
Since the Reserve is geostrategically placed — making up 50% of Guatemala’s border with Mexico — it is perfect for trafficking. In the forests, blind passes or unregulated border crossings help the flow of drugs, which are smuggled among other illicit products like wildlife and timber.
The clearing of forests however, is not just to build airstrips for cocaine smuggling. A study published in June 2020 estimated that “up to 87% of the deforestation in the Maya Biosphere Reserve is the result of illegal cattle ranching.”
Narco-cattle ranching
When we think of narco criminals and the ways in which they launder their illicit proceeds, many of us conjure an image of luxury: fine art, expensive vehicles, outlandish real estate, and high-end jewelry.
Cows and livestock invoke a less glamorous image, but they serve as an efficient and practical vehicle for money laundering all the same.
In Guatemala, drug trafficking organizations began using cattle ranches as a means to launder money in the 2000s. By purchasing cattle and ranching equipment in cash, they later sell the cattle to licit buyers — effectively cleaning their proceeds. In the department of Petèn, where the Maya Biosphere Reserve is located, these narco-ranchers are known as narco-ganaderos.
Narco-cattle ranchers are drawn to the industry because of its profitability and lack of regulation.
With a rising global demand for beef, narcos are also able to take advantage of higher beef prices in Mexico. Cattle are sold to Mexican meat producers who pay via wire transfer. Then, Mexican meat producers supply their meat to big-box brands like Walmart and McDonald’s in the United States. Like any good capitalist, narco-ranchers exploit the conditions of a favorable market.
The cattle industry also uniquely lacks regulation in Central America. Itemised receipts are not mandatory for the purchase or sale of cattle, though foreign companies provide legitimate receipts once sold — adding validity to the proceeds.
One prominent example of this is in action is the Mendoza cartel. The Mendozas held “nearly 30,000 hectares in over 28 illegal cattle ranching properties in the region.” In addition to illicit business activities, the major cartel also held legitimate business interests and benefited from important political connections.
These nefarious activities ultimately lead to environmental destruction and violence towards local communities, making illegal cattle ranching’s entanglement with drugs and money laundering a complicated and multifaceted problem to tackle.
Environmental issues have cemented and secured their place in the political and social rhetoric. In the financial crime space specifically, the FATF has prioritized environmental crimes, making it a key objective under the new German Presidency until 2022. With specific attention to illegal logging, wildlife trade, and waste management — this other type of narco-fueled environmental crime certainly deserves attention.
Do you think that forest conservationists and anti-drug trafficking bodies should be working more closely together? How can we help save forests in these unstable spaces?
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