Interview with José Eduardo Martí Guilló: X- Ray of a city sick with crime

From above, the massive concentration of inhabitants in the urban areas, and the organized crime and impunity, are the main factors to which criminologist-lawyer José Eduardo Martí Guilló credits the increase in the kidnappings, robberies and assaults, as well as the already high levels of fraud and financial crime.

THE CAUSES OF THE PROBLEM

More of the 80% of Guatemalan residents live in conditions of poverty, not only for lack of money to buy food, but also because of the high crime rate.

"If this is true, the problem would extend to the rural areas, far from the city", assures Martí Guilló, who has dedicated 35 years of professional career to financial and legal investigations .

The horizontal migration from the rural areas of the country to the capital city, already over populated, compounds the culturežs identity problems and increases demand for luxury goods. Although it doesn't justify the delinquency, population pressure, jointly with lack of employment and basic resources like food, shelter, housing, education, and health care, is fundamental to explaining the predisposition of part of the population to commit crime.

In our country, the lack of urban planning worsened after the 1976 earthquake and forced the rural population to find refuge in the city, adding to its disorganized growth.

Crime has also increased due to vertical migration. Approximately half a million foreign citizens have abandoned neighbor countries and come to Guatemala City fleeing their own socio-cultural problems, often waiting until they can return to their places of origin or reach the United States of America.

Common delinquency, robberies and bank heists, sporadic before, have been taken over by organized crime in a systematic form, now including fraud and the falsification or theft of valued documents from any firm. Nonetheless, drug dealing, car theft, trafficking contraband, and kidnapping are the main criminal activities.

"The lack of coordination between institutions produces not only impunity, but a recycling of criminals that constantly go in and out of the jails, without being registered in police files", says Guilló.

Reducing the crime rate means creating a national security plan that goes beyond increasing the number of police. "The majority of the governments have created ministerial policies to eradicate crime, but not a national policy of security, in which the government and citizens are involved".

FINANCIAL SECTOR: TARGET OF THE CRIMINALS

Organized crime has not yet become a topic of public debate, but it is the subject of conversation in economic circles, among families of victims, and in closed-door meetings between people afraid to speak out publicly for fear of reprisals. There are no exact figures, nor enough information to determine the precise effects of organized crime.

According to a specialist in the security area, the financial sector in particular is badly prepared to confront organized crime. Traditional plans of security, mainly to prevent bank robberies and detect the issuing and cashing of checks without funds or the fraudulent acquisition of checks, are not enough.

Companies must increase their internal control by modifying their operating systems and carefully selecting and investigating their staff.

Although these controls may somewhat reduce fraud against companies, the urban problem, organized crime and impunity must still be addressed. "This requires a coherent program of national security that involves coordination between the government and citizens. Financial crime affects a vulnerable part of the society, the economy, and it will be childish to think a country sick with crime could obtain economic resources through national or international investments," concludes Guilló.