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Assessing Guatemalan Military Relationships

Juan Manuel Perez has served in the Guatemalan Army. He presently is retired. Throughout his military career, he took various military training courses as part of his professionalization including Strategic High Studies, War College, Command and Staff College, Human Rights, and Peacekeeping Operations. He can be found on Twitter @r_juanmanuel. 

Title:  Assessing Guatemalan Military Relationships 

Date Originally Written:  April 10, 2023. 

Date Originally Published:  April 24, 2023.  

Author and / or Article Point of View:  The author is a retired military member who believes trust builds strong international military relationships. This article includes the author’s great experiences working together with U.S. Southern Command leaders between 2016-2017.

Summary:  The Guatemalan Military is able to meet the challenges it faces through its various partnerships.  Its partnership with the U.S. Southern Command builds capacity and capabilities to counter threat networks and prepare for and respond to disasters and humanitarian crises.  Its partnerships with border sharing nations such as Salvador, Honduras, Mexico, and an adjacency zone with Belize enable all involved to address common threats.

Text:  The diplomatic relation between the U.S. Government and Guatemala has existed since 1849[1].  This partnership between the U.S. Government and Guatemala has improved Guatemalan Military capabilities and competencies to address trans-regional challenges.  

Guatemala is part of 31 countries that encompass the U.S. Southern Command (USSOUTHCOM) Area of Responsibility (AOR).  In this AOR, trans-regional and transnational threats affect security and governance. Drug trafficking is also a significant security challenge.  However, due to the close proximity of the U.S. and the USSOUTHCOM AOR, U.S. support can be provided and strong relationships built.

USSOUTHCOM provides different levels of support to countries in its AOR: strategic, operational, and tactical. This support assists host nation militaries and security forces with training, equipment, and planning as part of the U.S. Department of Defense contribution to regional strategy. 

USSOUTHCOM support to the Guatemalan Military has been critical to building capacity to counter regional threat networks and preparing for and responding to disasters and crises.  Organizations supporting the Guatemalan Military also include the greater U.S. Department of Defense, U.S. Army South, the Arkansas National Guard, and the U.S. Department of State’s Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs. 

Through the Interagency Task Force (IATF) in combating drug trafficking[2], USSOUTHCOM strengthened the Guatemalan Military and National Police through counter narcotics aid and technical assistance. The IATF consisted in three task forces which operate close to the Guatemala’s main porous borders.  

The first Task Force was called “Tecun Uman” which operated in western border with Mexico. The second Task Force was called “Chorti” which operated in the eastern region of the Guatemala adjacent to the border region with Honduras.  The third Task Force was called “Xinca”, which operated adjacent to the border region with El Salvador. In 2016-2017 the project of a fourth Task Force “Jaguar” was planned, which was going to be focused to work in the northern region of Guatemala bordering Mexico.  

The Guatemalan Military must also be prepared to handle natural disasters during the rainy season, the possibility of eruption of one of the chain of volcanos, and the latent hazard of earthquakes.  USSOUTHCOM has worked with the Guatemalan Military to enhance Humanitarian and Disaster Relief capabilities. The U.S. has share advanced technology which have help to predict, avert, or mitigate before natural threats happens. The exchange of experiences and lesson learned have created trust between partners nations, in real crisis responses. The U.S. capabilities also have aided to delivery quick humanitarian supplies for people in need, especially in time of hurricanes or tropical floods. These efforts have helped improved interoperability and institutionalize preparedness and responses measures.

Guatemala has developed a security strategy based on the competencies and capabilities that each government institution possesses. These competencies and capabilities generate synergy through partnerships with friendly countries which share a common border with Guatemala such as Salvador, Honduras, Mexico and an adjacency zone with Belize. 

Another source of assistance to the Guatemalan Military is both Surveillance and intelligence technology through the Cooperative Situational Information Integration (CSII) system[3] collecting threat data to counter illicit organizations. Guatemala’s strategic relationship with Mexico enables the high-level group for security (GANSEG) to hold meetings on Intelligence, International Security and Terrorism, Organized Crime and Legal cooperation, and Public and Border Security.  

Guatemala coordinates with the Belize Defense Forces to conduct patrols with the scope of the Confidence Building Measures[4] along the adjacency zone, with the purpose of fighting the threats towards both countries.  

Guatemala also enhanced border security efforts with Honduras through the high-level group for security and justice (GANSEJ).  Other Central America countries have developed protocols on different topics, including natural disasters and peace operations within dynamics of the Central America Armed Forces Conference (CFAC)[5]. 

Efforts by USSOUTHCOM through its entire AOR, and the Guatemalan Military with both USSOUTHCOM and its partners and neighbors, have enhanced security throughout the region, both from trans-regional threats and natural disasters. These efforts have built long-lasting relationships and interoperability that will enable Guatemala, and other countries in the USSOUTHCOM AOR to work together in the future to address any challenge that comes along.

Endnotes:

 [1] U.S. Department of State. (2021, November 9). U.S. relations with Guatemala – United States Department of State. U.S. Department of State. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://www.state.gov/u-s-relations-with-guatemala/

[2] Oak, G. S. (2015, February 9). Building the guatemalan interagency task force Tecún Umán. RAND Corporation. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://www.rand.org/pubs/research_reports/RR885.html

[3] US, Latin American countries demonstrate, assess new information-sharing technology. DVIDS. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://www.dvidshub.net/news/122355/us-latin-american-countries-demonstrate-assess-new-information-sharing-technology

[4] OAS: Belize and Guatemala Sign Agreement on Negotiation Framework and Confidence Building Measures. (n.d.). Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://www.oas.org/en/media_center/press_release.asp?sCodigo=E-188/05

[5] Valle/Diálogo, K. (2022, August 2). CFAC strengthens alliances in Central America. Diálogo Américas. Retrieved April 23, 2023, from https://dialogo-americas.com/articles/cfac-strengthens-alliances-in-central-america/#.ZEUX8S_MIzw

Allies & Partners Assessment Papers Capacity / Capability Enhancement Guatemala Juan Manuel Perez
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Assessing Strategy and Organized Crime

Juan Manuel Perez has served in the Guatemalan Army. He presently is retired. Throughout his military career, he took various military training courses as part of his professionalization including Strategic High Studies, War College, Command and Staff College, Human Rights, and Peacekeeping Operations. He can be found on Twitter @r_juanmanuel. Divergent Options’ content does not contain information of an official nature nor does the content represent the official position of any government, any organization, or any group.

Title:  Assessing Strategy and Organized Crime

Date Originally Written:  September 15, 2021. 

Date Originally Published:  February 7, 2022.

Author and / or Article Point of View: The author is a retired military member. He believes the deep understanding of strategic theory helps people educate and discipline their thinking to align ends, ways, and means to protect national interests. 

Summary:  Organized crime organizations have stablished a global criminal system.  This influence and power wielded by this system has allowed them to damage the geopolitics, economic, social, and security situation in many countries. The deep understanding of both the threats posed by organized crime organizations, and the capabilities and limitations of strategy, will assure effectiveness when fighting these criminal organizations.

Text:  Illicit money is serious and appealing to criminals. Criminal activities pursuing illicit money progressively scale into criminal networks.  Drug trafficking also enables a criminal modality, establishing the core of organized groups where gangs, maras, and mafias play a starring role. 

The tracking and detection of illegal money into legal economies is a challenge.  Governments struggle to disrupt and cut off illicit capital flows.  This evil advances and progresses between a legal and illegal economy, resulting in a large-scale global network with geopolitical and geostrategic repercussions.  These criminal networks embedded into the financial system become practically undetectable, using technology, artificial intelligence, big data, social media, modern transportation, etc. to conceal and protect their activities[1].   

Criminal networks use geography to their advantage.  Robert D. Kaplan, in his book “The Revenge of Geography[2]” wrote about what the maps predict regarding coming conflicts and the battle against fate. In this sense, the mafia uses geography when it moves illicit shipments, controls multiple regions, zones, and places. The mafia’s global effect and quick process of replacement allow criminal partners to generate new routes and maps, and increase their criminal activity, including the movement and sale of illegal drugs.

The flow of illegal drugs is and will continue to be a critical social problem.  The use of drugs fuels the traffic of them leaving death and violence in its path.  American researchers Edwin Stier and Peter Richards write widely and rigorously about organized crime and point out its evolution in three fields of action.  Stier and Richards make an analogy of biological functions of living beings, where they describe the structural causes and reasons of gestation and development[3]. 

The first phase:  called the predatory phase, is the beginning and characterized by territorial reaffirmation of criminal groups that spread their power through violence, trying to defend their organizations, eliminate rivals, and gaining physical space and to hold their private monopoly on the use of force.  

The second phase:  called the parasitic phase, sees organized crime gain notable economic and political influence combined with a powerful capacity to corrupt public and private organizations.

The third phase:  called the symbiotic phase, is the final state and sees the political and economic system becoming so dependent on the parasite (the organized crime organization) that it expands its activity to satisfy the parasites needs.

Stier and Richards’ analogy symbolizes, in many ways, the features of Hydra, the fresh-water organisms, with many heads and the ability to regrow its tentacles when maimed. 

While Colin S. Gray, one of the great strategic thinkers of his age wrote: ‘’Strategy has a complex nature and a function that is unchanging over the centuries[4]’’, the development and execution of strategy in order to fight organized crime and the threats associated to it (i.e. illegal migration, drug trafficking, cybercrime, weapons trafficking, etc.) require constant reevaluation.  Harry R. Yarger’s book “Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The little book on big Strategy[5],” aligns well with the dynamic threat posed by organized crime organizations.  As resources or budgets (means) are always limited, it is important to invest enough time defining, designing, and developing appropriate strategic guidance to reach the desired outcome. 

Finally, organized crime has taken advantage of the pandemic, increasing their criminal activities by others means. Right now, the organized crime is an authentic threat that affects the societies, governments, states, the security of financial institutions even the functioning of democracy and the international geopolitical equilibrium.  The security, defense, and protection of the citizens will continue one of the top priorities for the states.  

Endnotes:

[1] Phil Williams, “Crime Illicit Markets, and Money Laundering”

[2] Robert D. Kaplan, “The Revenge of Geography”

[3] Edwin Stier and Peter Richards, “Strategic Decision Making in Organized Crime Control: The Need for a Broadened Perspective”

[4] Colin S. Gray, “Modern Strategy,” Oxford: Oxford University Press

[5] Harry R. Yarger, “Strategic Theory for the 21st Century: The little book on big Strategy,” https://www.files.ethz.ch/isn/20753/Strategic%20Theory%20for%20the%2021st%20Century.pdf

Assessment Papers Criminal Activities Drug Trade Juan Manuel Perez