Word: laing
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...village of La Reforma in eastern Guatemala doesn't seem like the kind of place that would have a first-rate hospital and a handful of mansions. There's no bank, no grocery store and more than 70% of the inhabitants of the municipality that includes La Reforma, called Huite, are poor. But officials tell TIME they suspect a few locals are making a handsome profit by assuring that Colombian cocaine makes it safely through Guatemala to Mexico and then...
Former villagers tell TIME that La Reforma's alleged narco-big shots have secured the town's love and loyalty by giving to the poor and throwing elaborate public parties. Perhaps most important, they've created jobs - both directly for their alleged drug-running enterprises and indirectly through businesses that federal officials say are possible fronts for laundering drug profits. "They're the source of employment," says a 30-year-old woman who grew up near La Reforma and now studies law in Guatemala City. "They're the principal investors." The woman has family in Huite and asked...
...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's office on narcotics activity...
...Obscure La Reforma, as a result, could become a more high-profile focus. Federal officials tell TIME they're investigating one of La Reforma's most prominent families, the Lorenzanas, who own a construction company, vast cattle-ranching tracts and an agricultural export firm that partners with U.S. companies to ship melons. One of the Lorenzana brothers, Waldemar, was arrested last December for alleged weapons possession but was released soon after without being charged. A Lorenzana representative did not respond to TIME's attempts to contact the family. But last year, Waldemar wrote a letter to a Guatemala newspaper denying...
...student, the majority of her childhood friends are now employed in some form by people she calls drug traffickers. In the past, she notes, most local youth had to migrate to the U.S. to look for work. It's also common, she adds, to see long lines of La Reforma's poor waiting for favors outside the homes of suspected narcofamilies, who also send food to remote villages and help pay for families' funeral costs. "People respect them a lot for that," she says...