Well, the plan had been to return to Guatemala on Jan 11th, stay in Guate City with a friend for a few days and then head North to Coban. I had been here for a few days before and the owner of a hostel there asked me to come back and work for him. I had room/board covered, too. He was also going to look into helping me with spanish school. Truly, it sounded ideal. Maybe it was too good to be true because
THIS hit the news while I have been home for the holidays.
http://articles.cnn.com/2010-12-20/world/guatemala.siege_1_drug-gang-guatemalan-government-carlos-castresana?_s=PM:WORLD
http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-12056388
http://latino.foxnews.com/latino/news/2010/12/28/mexican-cartel-threatens-kill-civilians-guatemala/
Basically, there is a extremely violent drug cartel known as Los Zetas that runs the Mexican drug trade. In the last year or so they have taken control of the Guatemalan border and have set up areas of control in Guatemalan cities. The government apparently called a state of seige in efforts to expel the Zetas from the region. Unfortunately, this state of seige is focused in Alta Verapaz, mainly Coban...the city I was headed to.
The most recent article I read stated that Zetas overtook 3 radio stations in Coban and threated war on civilians if the government did not stop its counterattacks. Unbelievable.
SOOO with that knowledge, there went my plan. At this point I AM headed to Guatemala city with intentions of staying in southern guatemala for a few weeks. At that point, I hopefully will have secured a volunteer placement near there or in Honduras. I have been spending the majority of my time the last few days researching my options. The problem is I have pretty much blown my savings the last time around and whatever I do needs to be kept amazingly cheap. But most importantly, I need to be safe.
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