I believe you that Guatemala can be referred to as a “very bad place”. Although these post-revolution days things have improved considerably. I spent a couple months there, traveling about. Camped out near lake Atitlan on a little finca for a while. What a beautiful, untouched place it was. Surrounded by 3 volcanoes.
I met some, uh, “farmers” who were peeved by the U.S. “war on drugs” because they said one day agents would show up and bust them and make a big media spectacle about it, and the next day the same agents would show up to buy their product to supply the biggest customer, the US (who is also ironically leading the war on drugs). This was just me traveling around; I have no intel gathering or recon skills. If trained people came out they’d easily make major busts left and right. Anyhow my point is on one hand we are saying drugs are bad, on the other hand we are paying them more for drugs than they can ever make with food agriculture while not really investigating or making the “big” busts.
BTW Guatemala and Israel are the only 2 places anyone has ever pointed a gun at me (that I know of). In Guate it was cops (they mugged me) in Israel it was an undercover IDF who just didn’t like the look of me.
