BBC reporter Zeinab Badawi meets a prostitute – a common murder target for the gangs of Guatemala City. 6000 women have been murdered since the late 1990.

NEXT ON BBC WORLD NEWS: ONE SQUARE MILE

On the surface the capital of Guatemala – the small central American republic bordering Mexico – is a bustling, well-ordered city: neatly dressed schoolchildren spill out of schools, markets are full of produce, fast-food chains are thriving and the city efficiently supplies water, power and rubbish collection. But when I visited with a TV crew and BBC reporter Zeinab Badawi we found another, darker side: security guards with automatic weapons guarding shops (there are 8 private security guards for each policemen), walls festooned with razor wire and, reportedly, highly organised narco-trafficking gangs – some deportees from the USA – with their tentacles in every level of government – from the police to the judiciary.  There’s an average murder rate of 17 a day, making Guatemala City the third most dangerous place in the world. Women, particularly prostitutes, are most at risk from the macho culture of the gangs with an estimated 6000 raped and murdered since the official ending of the civil war in 1996.  A curfew is imposed at 1 am each day, making daylight hours as dangerous as the night. Over 200 bus drivers have been murdered for not paying protection money.

Guatemala City is a parallel society – the narco gangs are not insurgents seeking to overthrow the state, but their malign presence is everywhere. For instance we went on a bus ride and accidentally trespassed into a gang’s territory – motor bikers appeared with walkie-talkies; fortunately we had the protection of reformed gang members and were immediately alerted to the possible danger. Keeping to our Square Mile, Badawi and the crew were allowed into a maximum-security gaol where the tiny minority of criminals who are convicted end up. Zeinab Badawi also went out with a heavily armed 10 vehicle night-time police patrol where she experienced first hand the apparent determination of the authorities to wrest back control of the streets. Before, a dusk detour had taken us to a gang controlled-municipal rubbish tip where bodies are often dumped. Glue-sniffing kids followed our team as we found even here a community of extraordinary resilience – mothers cooking the evening meal and kids watching TV and playing marbles. But again Badawi quickly discovered a parallel world, with scarcely a mother not having a story of a brother or a father or close relative murdered by a gang.

The 3rd most dangerous city in the world – Zeinab Badawi puts on her flak jacket to go with a heavily armed police convoy patrolling the mean streets of Guatemala City.

Is Guatemala at risk of becoming a ‘failed state’? That was the question Badawi put to the minister responsible for security (the fifth incumbent of the current administration) and to the Spanish ambassador (Spain in 2009 was the country’s single biggest donor) and both unequivocally denied it was even a remote possibility. Everywhere, through schemes to beef up security, to support civil society and root out corruption in the judiciary, police and in local and central government they painted a picture of a society on the rebound, determined not to give in to the lawless elements. According to them, the forces that had turned countries such as Somalia or Afghanistan or the DRC into failed states – religious extremism, broken government, absolute poverty, politically-inspired insurgents – were absent in this Central American Republic.

Three former gang members, who were all being supported by the authorities to find a way back into society, guided us through Guatemala City’s mean streets. One of the first steps is to remove the tattoos that give away their membership of one gang or another.  All were scarred with bullet or knife wounds, heavily concealed as, unsurprisingly, no-one wants to employ a gang member who has been in and out of gaol all their lives. As in any society the daunting challenge for the forces of law and order is to eliminate the drug-fuelled culture that gives the poor little or no alternative to membership of the gangs. Surrounding them is the majority living apparently normal, peaceful lives. A population to be subverted and terrorised or to join.

In a country with a long tradition of unstable, corrupt government and that has only recently emerged from a 30 year-long civil war in which 200,000 perished and that has now been dragged into the narco-trafficking from Colombia, via Mexico to the USA, building what we would describe as a ‘civil society’ is the tallest of tall orders. It’s a vicious cycle because the biggest brake on development in the region is crime and violence, sapping confidence in the organs of the state to deliver security and depriving the authorities of the tax revenues they need to step up the work of civil society building.”