Arévalo Accuses 18th Street Gang of Assassination Plot during 2023 Campaign

El Faro English translates Central America. Subscribe to our newsletter.

At a press conference on Wednesday morning, Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo reported on the first results of the state of siege, declared last Sunday the 18th, which authorizes police and military to bypass court orders in a fight against the 18th Street and Mara Salvatrucha-13 gangs.

He said that 293 people have been arrested, including 23 gang members, and dozens of weapons and vehicles have been seized.

Guatemala has been under a state of siege since Monday night. Early Sunday morning, 18th Street launched riots in three of the country's prisons, taking their guards hostage and killing ten police officers in the street.

The government says it has regained “total control” of the facilities and has declared national mourning. Authorities maintain that no prisoners died when the Police Special Forces retook the prisons, but admit that one gang member was killed after constitutional guarantees were suspended.

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Arévalo has linked the security crisis to the political arena. In a national broadcast on Sunday, he accused “destabilizing political structures” of orchestrating the 18th Street attack and referred to the “torres [towers] of corruption and impunity (...) are falling” in Guatemala.

The following day, prominent congressman Samuel Pérez, of Raíces —a faction of Semilla, the canceled official party— accused the UNE caucus, led by opposition presidential candidate Sandra Torres, of being “the true leaders of this terrorist structure,” which the UNE denies.

A report in ePInvestiga points out that Torres’ niece, María Marta Castañeda Torres, is married to gang leader Aldo Dupié Ochoa Mejía, alias “El Lobo,” the most visible face of 18th Street in its confrontation with the Arévalo government.

On Wednesday, at his next press conference, Arévalo toned down his rhetoric. “I don’t have, at this time, evidence that allows me to name names,” he replied to a question from El Faro seeking clarification of his accusation.

He continued: “I’m not referring to anyone in particular, but to a phenomenon that characterizes this state co-opted by criminal structures.”

Two assassination plots

Arévalo also singled out 18th Street as having threatened him with death two and a half years ago.

“We have known about the collusion between these criminal groups, such as the maras, and actors with political interests since the second round [of the 2023 elections], when one of the offices of the Public Prosecutor’s Office informed us of a wiretap they had made,” he said. “In it, 18th Street discussed the order they had received to carry out an attack against me.”

On August 24, 2023, four days after the second round of the presidential election, the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights granted precautionary measures to require the Guatemalan state to protect the lives of Arévalo and Vice President-elect Karin Herrera.

The Commission cited two assassination plots against him: the first, from before the second round, called “Plan Colosio,” attributed to “state agents and private individuals.” The pair received the information from “highly reliable sources within state institutions.”

The second came on the night of the August 20 results. The Anti-Extortion Prosecutor’s Office informed them that the threat came from “criminal gang structures.”

Neither Arévalo nor the Commission said at the time whether, in this second case, “gangs” referred to 18th Street or MS-13. That night, from the Hotel Las Américas in Zone 14 of the capital, Arévalo and Herrera addressed hundreds of people outdoors.

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Following the precautionary measures, the Public Prosecutor’s Office in Guatemala confirmed the threat against the president- and vice president-elect.

On Monday, prosecutors filed charges of illegal possession of a firearm and promotion of drug addiction against one of the gang members arrested in recent days. Arévalo called it “shameful and highly suspicious” that prosecutors had not charged him with murder despite gathering evidence tying him to the attacks on police.

In an interview with CNN en Español after closing the press conference, Arévalo repeated that 18th Street had threatened him with death. “Since then [2023], of course, that complaint, that investigation, has not progressed,” he said.

Government points to old “negotiations”

According to Interior Minister Marco Antonio Villeda, the dozens of guards taken hostage at Renovación I, the Zone 18 Preventive Detention Center, and Fraijanes II had already been warned of the threat before it happened.

“We cannot develop a security strategy for the streets without control of the prisons,” he reiterated on Wednesday.

The minister accused “previous governments” of granting “privileges” to gangs in prisons, such as air conditioning, king-size beds, and uncontrolled visits. The president repeated his recent accusation that 18th Street launched the riots to “force a negotiation” on these concessions.

When asked by El Faro about the 23 gang members captured, Villeda refused to identify them or describe their level of leadership, but replied that they belong to both gangs.

The government says it has ruled out the extradition of El Lobo, the 18th Street leader captured during the retaking of prisons.

“We have not received any request from the U.S. government, nor have we had a formal offer from any country,” Villeda said. “This is our problem and we have to solve it,” he added. “That is why we are in the process of building new prisons.”

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According to the government, prisons are 340 percent overcrowded, so it plans to build two new prisons. In December, the Constitutional Court suspended the annual budget, halting the construction projects.

Villeda accused previous administrations of not having previously declared a state of emergency against gangs to protect their “political gain.”

Arévalo specified that he has not had “high-level contact” on the matter with the Trump administration, which has sent the Joint Task Force Vulcan to Guatemala. “They’re observing how we’re carrying out the operation,” the president explained.

This article first appeared in the January 21 dispatch of the El Faro English newsletter. Subscribe here.