Mexican cartel threatens Guatemala President
One of Mexico's most powerful drugs trafficking gangs has threatened to kill the President of Guatemala.


By Jeremy McDermott, Latin America Correspondent
Last Updated: 5:09PM GMT 02 Mar 2009
Alvaro Colom: Mexican cartel threatens Guatemala President
Alvaro Colom: The threats are being taken very seriously as the killing of policemen in Mexico now happen almost daily Photo: AFP

After receiving assassination threats to officials including the national head of police, the Guatemalan authorities warned President Alvaro Colom that he too was now the subject of "credible" threats - the latest sign that the cartels are seeking to extend their influence across Central America.

"We have received credible threats that the group 'The Zetas' are planning an attempt on the life of President Alvaro Colom," said Jesus Galeano of Guatemala's Secretariat of Strategic Intelligence.

The Zetas, who were founded in 1999 by 40 former soldiers who deserted from Mexican Special Forces, began as a death squad employed by the established Gulf Cartel. But they have since evolved into a cocaine trafficking cartel in their own right and their threat to President Alvaro Colom suggests that they have ambitions to consolidate their hold of narcotics trafficking in neighbouring Guatemala.

The threats are being taken very seriously as the killing of policemen in Mexico now happen almost daily.

Marlene Blanco, the Guatemalan police chief, said that she had received threats on her personal mobile phone. "You don't know who you are messing with and we can come for you whenever we want," said one caller.

The leader of the Zetas, Arturo Guzman, who took the radio call sign "Zeta 1", was killed in a shoot out in 2002. But by then the Zetas had become the most deadly and disciplined force in the Mexican underworld.

They announced their arrival in Guatemala a year ago with a massacre in which 11 suspected drugs traffickers were killed in Zacapa, east of the capital, Guatemala City.

They are believed to have established a local offshoot, the New Zetas, recruited from Guatemala's notorious Special Forces unit, the Kaibiles.

There are fears that as the US concentrates more attention on helping Mexico in its fight against the cartels, with the US defence secretary Robert Gates promising more aid, groups like the Zetas will increasingly shift operations to neighbouring Central America, were governments are weaker and security and justice officials more open to intimidation and corruption.

The Zetas are also the best armed of the Mexican drug cartels, running lucrative arms-smuggling operations from the US, where controls on the purchase of weapons, even assault rifles, are often lax.

Meanwhile a woman suspected by police of working for a drugs cartel was arrested on a bus in Mexico with two suitcases containing more $716,000 (£507,000) in cash.

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