Word: guatemalans
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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When Rodrigo Rosenberg turned up dead on Mother's Day in an upscale neighborhood in Guatemala City, his murder was seen as little more than another execution-style shooting in one of Latin America's most dangerous countries. Now, after a video emerged in which Rosenberg accused Guatemalan President Alvaro Colom of orchestrating the murder, the killing has sparked civic unrest that threatens to topple the President of this fledgling democracy...
...point between South and North America. But only in recent years have investigators begun to see how firmly a narco-economy is taking hold there, which is always bad news for small, poor and corrupt countries like Guatemala. Experts say it's hard to know just how much the Guatemalan economy depends on drug profits, but they agree that it's a significant source of employment and capital today. If trafficking and related businesses were shut down, unemployment would skyrocket in certain parts of the country, like La Reforma, says Leonel Ruiz, second in charge at the federal public prosecutor...
...thing, the flow of capital into the country's financial system is suspiciously high compared with the size of the economy, says Sigfrido Lee, former Vice Minister of Economy and an analyst at the Center for National Economic Investigations, a Guatemalan think tank. This indicates, he says, a likely inflow of illegal money. The U.S. government's recently released 2009 International Narcotics Control Strategy Report backs up those suspicions. Guatemala also has an unusually high number of luxury cars and high-end real estate purchases, Lee says, and buyers often pay in cash. Guatemala City has seen a boom...
...Guatemalan authorities have apprehended dozens of suspects in recent years leaving the country with large wads of cash, often hidden under clothing or stuffed into items like shampoo bottles, book covers and diapers. Last year, the Guatemalan government confiscated $3.4 million in suspicious funds at the Guatemala City airport and sent 20 people to jail, most of them from other Central and South American countries, says Leopoldo Liu, head of the public prosecutor's office on money laundering. (See pictures of South America on LIFE.com...
...shop owner Wu Cheng-hsueh, 85°C now has 325 stores in Taiwan and is expanding into China, Australia and the U.S. Wu first built the business by finding good beans: in 2004, he went to the source of Starbucks' most popular beans and persuaded the Guatemalan supplier to sell him virtually all its arabicas (sorry, megachain). Then he hired five-star hotel chefs to concoct fancy drinks and desserts that sell for about half the price of Starbucks'. (See the top 10 food trends...