My Tour to Tikal, and US Asylum Seekers
As a naive tourist, a long time ago (2005), in a country far away, Belize, I took a trip to see the famous and fabulous Mayan ruins at Tikal. I had forgotten about that. I vaguely remember that it was in Guatemala. But I vividly remember the flight there where my wife and I were two of the four passengers in a small plane. I vividly remember the tour ride there, in an SUV, where we were the only passengers. The guide told us that he was armed, but that we could be safe, since the gangs were not in that area. I hoped that the guides would have paid off the local gangsters for safety, but that was not the case. We stayed at an exciting jungle lodge, with monkeys around. Then we went on the tour. The park was mainly empty, but we did not really notice. After spending another night, we flew back.
Only now does it dawn on me that every tourist site I go to is packed with bus-loads of tourists, 50 to a bus. We take 200 passenger airplanes there. We stay in vast resorts, not small jungle huts. Boy, were we naive. We had no idea that Guatemala was overrun by gangs.
Yes, we were nervous about the gangs, but we saw no violence in our short three days in what is one of the most protected areas. But we felt the threat.
I just read the pamphlet that is the state department bureau of diplomatic security (OSAC) warning about crime in Guatemala in 2017. It is very scary. They also warn about some crime in Tikal, where there are many guards. They warn about carrying laptops anywhere. They point out that 12 year old boys are recruited to perform assassinations. They attribute part of the violence to the presence of so many guns.
Guatemala City is described as being a CRITICAL THREAT LOCATION (their caps) for crime directed at or affecting official US Government Interests. The report on the web is, I would estimate, at least 30 pages long. It is filled with crime statistics.
I was triggered to write this when I saw Trump make fun of refugees who were seeking asylum by claiming that their kids and they were subject to crime threats and gangs in Guatemala.
One statistic we can cite is the death rate from firearms, as total, and as homicides. We start with a few sane countries, and then the US. We finish with high-death-rate South American countries. These are deaths per 100,000. The first figure is the total death rate, and the second is the death rate by homocide.
UK. 0.23 0.06
Canada 2.1 0.61
US. 12 5
Guatemala 34 30
Honduras 60 67 (different years)
El Salvador 46 27
Columbia 19 18
Brazil 22 21
Jamaica 31 30
When you take the firearm death rate for an individual, per year, it looks small. But when you add your extended family size, you can maybe increase the rate by 50. When you add a standard social group size, it is 200. Then you multiply by a lifespan, of say 100 years, just to make the calculation easy. So taking a peak homocide rate at 50 per 100,000 per year, times 200, times 100 years per lifetime, is a million per 100,000 per lifetime, or 10 deaths in your social group of 200 in a lifetime. 2.5 deaths in your extended family in a lifetime. This is not anything to make fun of!
