The Guatemalan Jungle: Lush Jungle, Mayan Ruins and Narco Jets full of Cocaine

By Kevin Sieff

JULY 5, 2020

LAGUNA DEL TIGRE NATIONAL PARK, Guatemala — The makeshift airstrips are sliced into the jungle, clearings carved out of the oaks and palms wide enough to land jets full of cocaine.

The planes arrive in the middle of the night, their lights off, guided by drones, unsteady under the weight of the drugs. They descend over Mayan ruins, over camps of jaguar researchers and ornithologists, over illegal settlers and ranchers.

The cat-and-mouse game between the United States and the leaders of Latin America’s drug trade has shifted to this wild stretch of Guatemala, one of the most inhospitable landscapes in the Western Hemisphere. Jets can carry more than $100 million worth of cocaine, to be ferried swiftly out of the jungle, through Mexico and on to the United States.

Over the 50-year U.S. drug war, one truth has prevailed: When one trafficking route closes, another emerges to take its place.

Not long ago, cartels moved more drugs in submarines and fishing boats through the Pacific Ocean. U.S. Coast Guard vessels narrowed that route. Cocaine-filled jets once flew mainly to Mexico and Honduras, until those countries developed aerial interdiction teams.

But Guatemala’s northern border remains a no man’s land, a wildlife reserve that has become a criminal playground. This newest route runs through the largest rainforest in Central America, an expanse the size of Delaware that was once the cradle of the Mayan civilization.

Narcotraffickers are burning airstrips into the jungle at Laguna del Tigre National Park, Guatemala, to land planes from South America carrying cocaine bound for the United States.

Guatemalan security forces found 50 abandoned narco jets in the country last year. Dozens more landed and then flew away, authorities say. Ninety percent of the cocaine now consumed in the United States transits through Guatemala.

The coronavirus pandemic has had a mixed impact on drug trafficking in the Americas. The increased difficulty of moving the product across locked-down borders has crashed the price of coca leaf in South America. But cocaine seizures in the United States have been largely flat.

In this undefended stretch of Guatemala, authorities here say, the planes have kept coming. A slick twin turboprop was found in a clearing in the jungle on June 21. The burned remains of a jet, apparently set on fire by traffickers after the drugs were removed, were found June 19. Another crashed south of the Laguna del Tigre National Park in April, scattering thousands of pounds of cocaine in tightly wrapped bricks throughout the brush.

The coronavirus has gutted the price of coca. It could reshape the cocaine trade.

In recent months, the park has been ravaged by more than a dozen large-scale fires, many set by drug traffickers who are burning tracts of jungle to build “illicit landing strips for the transportation of drugs,” President Alejandro Giammattei said in an address to the nation this spring. A team of firefighters was captured in the park this month by a group of armed men.

But even as Guatemalan officials acknowledge the transformation of this protected land into a drug trafficking corridor, its security forces say they are outmatched by the far better resourced cartels. On a flight over Laguna del Tigre earlier this year, a Washington Post journalist counted more than a dozen landing strips across the park — and several jets sitting on them.

Guatemalan soldiers stand on an illegally claimed lot east of the park. The army patrols against illegal settlers and ranchers, who officials say are linked to narcotrafficking.

“We are talking about an industry that has enough money to abandon million-dollar planes in the jungle,” Guatemalan Army Col. Juan de la Paz said. “Their resources are infinite, and we are just trying to keep up.”

Many of the jets come from Venezuela. Between 2012 and 2017, cocaine flows through the country rose by 57 percent, according to the U.S. government’s consolidated counterdrug database; the Justice Department this year charged President Nicolás Maduro with narcoterrorism. Still more cocaine comes from Colombia and Ecuador.

Colombian and Venezuelan drug trafficking organizations often partner with Mexican cartels for significant cocaine shipments,” said Michael Miller, a spokesman for the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration. “The cocaine shipment is most often destined for Guatemala.” New Honduran law targets ‘narco jets’ carrying cocaine from Venezuela

The Pentagon sent Navy and Coast Guard ships to the Caribbean this year in its largest ever deployment to confront the drug trade there. But Attorney General William P. Barr has acknowledged: “Our pressure has led to an attempt for an air route out of Central America.”

Soldiers travel in the back of a pickup truck. (Photos by Daniele Volpe for The Washington Post)

Planes arrive in the middle of the night

A joint force of 30 soldiers, police and park rangers set out one morning in February to patrol the outskirts of a village called La Florida.

The Guatemalan military recovers a jet with 1,700 kilos of drugs in Laguna del Tigre National Park in January. (Guatemala Military)

1,700 kilos of cocaine confiscated from a narco jet in Laguna del Tigre National Park in January is catalogued by Guatemalan authorities. (Guatemalan Justice Department)

Guatemalan authorities say narcotraffickers launder drug profits through the sale of cattle raised in the park. (Photos by Daniele Volpe for The Washington Post)

In Flores, the capital of Petén, the United States helped start Guatemala’s first environmental court. It was meant to pursue ranchers destroying protected land to graze cattle and hunters who

Cattle graze on a makeshift airstrip in the park.

Design

Guatemalan soldiers play soccer during downtime in the Guayacan camp in Laguna del Tigre National Park. (Daniele Volpe for The Washington Post)

Photo editing by Chloe Coleman. Copy-edited by Ryan Romano.

and development by Tyler Remmel.