Word: mcfarland
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...spoils are huge. "We estimate about 400 metric tons of cocaine are moving through the Central American corridor, meaning most of it would go through Guatemala," says U.S. Ambassador to Guatemala, Stephen McFarland. That makes for a business worth over $7 billion, based on the National Drug Intelligence Center's estimated average wholesale price of cocaine in Los Angeles...
...privateering port." Julio Godoy, former vice-minister of security in Guatemala's interior department, called Guatemala "one big warehouse" for drugs. More and more Mexicans with suspected drug links are turning up in Guatemala. "They're clearly here essentially to establish themselves and to take on rivals," says ambassador McFarland...
...1960s into the '90s and a well-entrenched organized crime network make Guatemala fertile ground for the narcotics business. A series of weak, infiltrated governments have been unable or unwilling to reverse the tide. "People perceive a breakdown of authority and really the authorities are the traffickers," says ambassador McFarland. In areas of high drug activity, the population has little choice but to align itself with the traffickers, says Godoy, the former Guatemalan Interior Ministry official. Plus, in a country where some 80% of citizens live below the poverty line, traffickers pay well for cooperation. "If [a trafficker] asks...
...McFarland is the author of The Breakthrough Company: How Everyday Companies Become Extraordinary Performers
...scant evidence of that in Colombia. Since 1986 2,515 trade unionists have been murdered there - about 120 a year, making it the world's most lethal country for labor - but there have been only 37 successful prosecutions, leaving a staggering "impunity rate" of 98%, according to Maria McFarland, Human Rights Watch's Colombia expert. This past March, Chiquita Brands International, Inc., pled guilty to one count of "engaging in transactions" with a terrorist organization for paying $1.7 million to a right-wing paramilitary organization seeking to wrest control of the Uraba banana-growing area from leftist guerrillas...