Global Courant 2023-04-21 11:06:40
It was of little or no use that Sololá had district representative Allan Rodríguez as president of Congress, at least in terms of the search for a definitive solution to the centenary border conflict between the municipalities of Nahualá and Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán. Throughout the current government there have been skirmishes, with residents of both towns killed or wounded. Last week there were three days of road blockades in Nahualá, in protest at the lack of police agents required by a local Justice of the Peace to protect the inhabitants from armed attacks by their neighbors, who in turn have also been victims of shots.
In May 2020, the government of Alejandro Giammattei Falla tried the same formula as his predecessors, declaring a state of siege in both municipalities, due to constant shootings. Operations were carried out, weapons were confiscated, trenches were destroyed, there were captures, a “high-level table” headed by Vice President Guillermo Castillo was created, which even carried out alleged measurements and calculations with the participation of the National Geographic Institute and the Cadastral Information Registry. . The conclusions of this work remain invisible, as is the person responsible, even after the recent attacks, at the beginning of this month, that caused the death of a child.
The state of siege in 2020 was followed by another in 2021 and also a serious attack against soldiers and police in January 2022, who chose to leave the town, despite the fact that the emergency measure was still in force. On the one hand, it makes sense to avoid a confrontation, but on the other, it makes no sense to leave the area defenseless again, as it did four years ago.
After the discovery of 11 bodies in December 2021, President Giammattei Falla led a meeting between the two mayors, on January 11, 2022, during which he offered Q50 million in development projects and ended the meeting by tossing a coin to define where would be the next meeting, which corresponded to Santa Catarina Ixtahuacán. There was another meeting two weeks later and a third in 2022, without further progress.
Border disagreement is usually addressed, but other factors that literally add gunpowder and lead to the problem have never been addressed in depth: the operation of groups dedicated to arms and people trafficking, smuggling and money laundering. The president himself stated in August 2022 that there could be drug trafficking, although the Public Ministry said it had no investigation in that direction. What is striking, in any case, is that in other regions of high conflict, illegal groups incite violence as a distraction and at the same time as a blockade to the permanence of State security forces. The territories of Nahualá and Ixtahuacán connect the mouth of the coast with the highlands and have innumerable dirt roads with little or no control. If we add to this the indicators of poverty and ancestral rivalries, we have a latent Machiavellian conflict.
Nahualá and Ixtahuacán are part of the least developed municipalities in Sololá and in the country. Extreme poverty reaches 40%, the primary schooling rate remains below 40% and infant mortality and malnutrition are rampant. This contrasts with the natural wealth, the agricultural and ecotourism potential that could help both territories advance, but which remain unimplemented due to recurring violence that sometimes seems perversely induced.
Conflict is still latent and social lag too
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