Lawyer Murdered in Guatemala

I read this story just after reading one in New York magazine about Alex Jones. Jones was disparaged as the leader of conspiracists. But the story about reality in Guatemala makes Jones seem like a normal human being. Reality is more bizarre than fiction. I see many parallels with groups in the US, operating as they do in Guatemala.

[From article]
"Criminal networks have infiltrated virtually every government and law-enforcement agency, and more than half the country is no longer believed to be under the control of any government at all.
[. . .]
Incredibly, the death rate in Guatemala is now higher than it was for much of the civil war. And there is almost absolute impunity: ninety-seven per cent of homicides remain unsolved, the killers free to kill again. In 2007, a U.N. official declared, “Guatemala is a good place to commit a murder, because you will almost certainly get away with it.”
[. . .]
In 2007, Colom, representing a social-democratic coalition, won the Presidency—the first time in five decades that a left-of-center leader had ruled Guatemala. The election was one of the bloodiest in the country’s history: more than fifty local candidates and party activists were murdered, and Colom’s campaign manager was nearly killed by three grenades thrown at his motorcade.
[. . .]
Since Colom took power, two of his interior ministers have been indicted for corruption (a third died in a mysterious helicopter crash), and four consecutive heads of the national police have been dismissed, indicted, or jailed for alleged malfeasance.
[. . .]
In the nineteen-fifties, the C.I.A. had contemplated an assassination campaign against left-wing Guatemalan targets and disseminated a treatise on the art of political murder: “The subject may be stunned or drugged and then placed in the car, but this is only reliable when the car can be run off a high cliff or into deep water without observation.”
[. . .]
Castresana realized that he could not bring criminals to justice before he had removed at least some of the most corrupt officials.
[. . .]
Castresana seized upon a rule in CICIG’S charter that permitted the organization to petition local officials to punish unethical officials. Through this process, his team began to remove more than fifteen hundred corrupt police officers, including fifty police commissioners and the deputy director of the national police. CICIG also “invited” nearly a dozen prominent prosecutors to leave their posts,
[. . .]
Anita Isaacs, a political scientist and an expert on Guatemala, who knows Castresana, told me that the networks traditionally relied on three ways to remove an enemy: “The first is to bribe you—but they could not bribe Castresana. The second is to kill you—but they could not kill Castresana. Finally, if all else fails, they destroy your reputation. And that is what they did to Castresana.”
[. . .]
At a press conference announcing his decision, Castresana, in a final salvo, denounced Colom’s new Attorney General for alleged ties to “parallel powers,” including organized crime.
[. . .]
He said of the attacks on his reputation, “They have hurt my image forever.”
[. . .]
The proliferation of counterfeit realities underscored the difficulty of ascertaining the truth in a country where there are so few arbiters of it.

http://www.newyorker.com/reporting/2011/04/04/110404fa_fact_grann?currentPage=1

A Murder Foretold
Unravelling the ultimate political conspiracy.
by David Grann
New Yorker
April 4, 2011