Bad News for Guatemala’s Narco-Politicians: Former US Ambassador McFarland Says Both US Parties Back the Crackdown

On November 13, Washington branded three of Guatemala's oldest drug trafficking clans as terrorists: Los Lorenzana, Los Mendoza and Los Huistas. The State Department designated Los Lorenzana a Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO) and a Specially Designated Global Terrorist (SDGT). The Treasury Department sanctioned Los Mendoza and Los Huistas as SDGTs for providing material support to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG). Hours later, República spoke on the record with Stephen McFarland, US ambassador to Guatemala from 2008 to 2011.

• Designations like these are rarely the end of the story. They are usually the first step toward dismantling the full web that keeps a criminal organization alive: the money launderers, the judges, the police officers, and the politicians.
• In Guatemala, that web runs straight to the ballot box. Less than a year before general elections, Los Lorenzana, Los Mendoza and Los Huistas hold sway over political parties and candidates, and some of those ties are already documented in US court files and sanctions lists.

Why his voice matters. McFarland is no spokesman for the current administration. He is a career Foreign Service officer, nominated by George W. Bush, who served most of his tenure under Barack Obama. He stressed that he is retired and does not speak for the US government.

• He has been a public critic of Trump-era policy in Central America. In 2019 he called the president's threats against Guatemala over an asylum deal wrong and counterproductive, and he told the House Foreign Affairs Committee that cutting aid to the region was “very counterproductive.”
• On Friday's action he did not hedge. “The United States' declaration on these drug trafficking groups is very significant,” he said.

The bipartisan core. A new Congress takes office in Washington in January after the November 3 midterms. República asked McFarland whether partisan friction in the United States could slow the campaign against narco-politics. He does not think so.

• The traditional pillars of US drug policy, which he listed as reducing consumption, disrupting flows and prosecuting “traffickers and money launderers and the politicians who protect them,” have “had bipartisan support for decades,” he said. “Those elements will continue to receive support from the Democratic Party.”
• The one real point of disagreement, in his view, is the use of lethal force against suspected drug boats in the Pacific and the Atlantic. “I don't think that is a fundamental part of the fight against drug trafficking.”

What comes next. McFarland expects the designations to produce three things.

• More resources. They will raise “the level of judicial resources the United States devotes to investigating these groups and to seeking the identification, capture and extradition of their leaders to the United States.”
• More cooperation. Closer attention from the Justice Department will bring “even greater cooperation with the appropriate entities of the Guatemalan state,” from the executive branch and the Public Ministry to, eventually, the courts.
• Possibly more. “I'm not confirming it, it's only speculation,” he said of potential US operations against members of these groups, “but the way the United States has acted against drug trafficking groups in other countries, Colombia, Mexico, indicates that this is an option.”

The money trail may lead further than the clans. Traffickers use laundering mechanisms shared with other criminal groups and with large-scale corruption networks, McFarland noted. “Those instruments could be revealed in the course of larger investigations of these groups.”

The election. McFarland read the designations as “a sign of the concern the United States maintains” about a narco role in Guatemalan politics that “has undoubtedly grown in recent decades.” Washington, he said, “does have a great interest in drug trafficking not having a greater role in political processes.”

• He drew a line between law enforcement and electoral engineering. “Traditionally the United States has not promoted candidates or tried to favor or bar candidates,” he said, adding that “we will see now what exactly the US position will be.”
• Precision is what makes the strategy credible. Both sides of the aisle in Congress, and the executive, need to identify “who really runs the cartels in each country and who their partners are in political and economic sectors.” But “accusations must have some basis,” which is why judicial investigations matter “both from the United States and within Guatemala.”
• The task ultimately falls to Guatemalans. Prosecuting these groups “is in the interest of both countries,” he said, but “it is something that really corresponds to the Guatemalan state.”

The political web. Narco-politics in Guatemala has no ideology. The ties run through conservative, centrist and left-wing parties alike.

• The scale. Dozens of sitting members of Congress are tied to drug trafficking, according to República Intelligence, this outlet's research unit. So are roughly a third of the country's mayors and several presidential hopefuls.
• The record. US courts have convicted a former presidential candidate who sought Sinaloa Cartel money for his campaign, a party founder who admitted taking illicit contributions, and a former congressman now serving 18 years for cocaine trafficking. Former mayors have been extradited and sentenced.
• The pattern. When a party is cancelled or a leader falls, the operators move to new parties and keep their seats.

Flashback. McFarland saw it coming. He was ambassador during the UNE government of Álvaro Colom, as Mexico's Zetas pushed into Guatemala. In a February 2009 cable later published by WikiLeaks, he warned that without outside help the city of Cobán would “join the growing list of areas lost to narcotraffickers.” Embassy cables from his tenure labeled the UCN party's affiliation simply as “narco.” A decade later, the UCN's presidential candidate was convicted in the United States after seeking Sinaloa Cartel money for his campaign.

• Recalling conversations from two decades ago, he said Guatemala's elites, “even when they had good intentions, sometimes couldn't see what was right in front of them, which was the threat of the narcos.”

Why it matters. The FTO label changes the risk for anyone who deals with Los Lorenzana. Under US law, knowingly providing material support to a designated terrorist organization is a federal crime. The US Embassy in Guatemala warned that the consequences could reach officials, politicians, businesspeople and private citizens.

The bottom line. A retired ambassador with no loyalty to this White House says the campaign against Guatemala's narco-politicians rests on ground both parties share. On consumption, trafficking and prosecution, McFarland concluded, the effort “has received, and will continue to receive, support from the Democrats.”

• Guatemala's narco-politicians should not count on Washington's partisan divide to protect them.

McFarland's remarks were made in Spanish and translated by República.