A month after Pérez Molina took office, in February, 2012, I met him at a small conference organized in Guatemala City by the Washington, D.C. think tank Inter-American Dialogue. A former general, he was Guatemala’s first military president in three decades, and although he entered office with only the cautious support of the international community, he soon earned its respect. He appointed prominent members of civil society to his cabinet, embraced previously abandoned rural populations, and extended the mandate of CICIG. He promised to combat drug cartels, but also spoke about legalizing drugs in Guatemala.
At the conference, he was wearing an elegant blue suit—not your standard Central American military fashion—and told Guatemalan and other regional businesspeople that he believed they should be paying more taxes. He also described a plan to fight organized crime and corruption, with the support of Attorney General Claudia Paz y Paz and CICIG. Afterward, a Salvadoran businessman told me, “This is the kind of leader Central America needs—an honest, strong man, sensitive to social needs, but with a strong hand against organized crime. With a President like him, I would be glad to pay my taxes.”
Guatemala was at that time in the midst of undertaking a comprehensive reform of the security and judiciary institutions, overseen by CICIG. A few years earlier, the national-security system had collapsed under the weight of drug cartels and corruption. In February, 2007, three Salvadoran congressmen had been found murdered near Guatemala City, and four police officials had confessed to killing them on behalf of a drug-smuggling ring; they had received a message that the congressmen were transporting drugs for a rival cartel. A few days later, the arrested officers were killed inside Guatemala’s maximum-security prison.