Driving from the airport to my hotel, the roadside billboards alternated between adverts for fast food chains and adverts for weight loss products. It seemed odd, but in many ways it’s symptomatic of the way Guatemala works. Problems get papered over with well-intentioned solutions, while the underlying issues are barely acknowledged.
Before we left I read that in response to the bus shootings the government had banned people from taking passengers on motorbikes. Their reasoning was that often the killer would shoot from the back of a motorbike driven by an accomplice, and so banning pillion riders would make everyone safer. It didn’t work. Not only do people still ride pillion on motorbikes, but bus drivers are still being killed at a rate of one every two days.
Other proposed solutions to the problem include a brand new fleet of buses with pre-paid card readers and CCTV. The idea is that if the driver isn’t carrying cash, he won’t get shot. This ignores the fact that drivers aren’t usually robbed when they get shot. In some cases they have relatively large amounts of cash in their pockets when the CSI team turns up. Unsurprisingly, this was the solution championed by all the bus owners associations. It would result in billions of dollars of investment into their businesses.
The most ridiculous solution we came across was from a company called Blindados who wanted to sell every bus driver in Guatemala City a metal booth which they could install around their seat. The front panel of this booth even had a glass section so the driver could see what was going on from inside his metal box. A well-meaning rich Guatemalan landowner (who had never actually been on a bus) designed it.
The booth was only partially bullet-proof, the drivers arms and legs stuck out of it (so they could drive while ‘protected’), and it cost $3000 – when the average driver makes $250 a month.
These solutions seemed ridiculous until I met the President’s security adviser, Carlos Menocal. He had no solutions, but told me the president’s political opponents were orchestrating the violence to discredit him. It would be like Gordon Brown’s advisors telling me that David Cameron was behind the rise in gun crime. Obviously he had no proof of that, but he was willing to go on record and say it. In fact he had done so, a lot, and many Guatemalans believe him.
Almost everyone in Guatemala thinks there is a 'Mr Big' who is orchestrating the bus driver shootings. This mysterious figure is – they imagine – filthy rich from his exploits. He has whole government agencies, prosecutors, police and bus company owners on his payroll. Some think he is a gang leader, others think he is a successful legitimate business owner who moonlights as a gang leader.
The reality is that in Guatemala previous governments and their opposition have orchestrated violence for political purposes, and the memory of that still haunts people here. Just last month, the chief of police, a top judge, 12 prison guards and a prison governor were all arrested on charges ranging from murder to money laundering. In the end, all this ensures that nobody trusts anybody in a position of power.
I asked one shopkeeper why there was so much mistrust. He told me how a gang had shot his brother. He said he knows who did it, but prosecuting would mean going to court and letting the gang see his face. His lawyer told him this wouldn’t be safe as the judge may be in league with the gang, and the police might shoot him on the gang’s behalf. The lawyer said there was, however, another option. He knew of a man who could kill the gang member responsible - it would cost $10,000. The shopkeeper told me he is still considering his lawyer’s offer.
Guatemala has thousands of tourists a year, and very few see this side of the country. But then very few of them stay in the soulless capital city with its ring roads, slums and armed security guards. The city exists in an Americanized world of its own, completely detached from the rest of the country. Most of the people in Guatemala City appeared to be overweight, but in the newspapers I read there was drought and famine in the north- east of the country, and that thousands were starving to death.
Things here are not always as they seem, and, as a result, it seems people have stopped seeing the poverty, inequality and corruption around them. All they see are increasingly complex conspiracy theories, which blind them to the fact that it is individual greed, fear or complacency that drive this violence forward - no conspiracy required.
