All eyes were on Cuba this week at the Organization of American States gathering in Honduras. The island nation, whose membership in the regional body was suspended in 1962, was welcomed back into the institutional fold after intense negotiations between the thirty-four member-states over whether human rights and other conditions would accompany Cuba’s readmission.

The organization’s decision to revoke the ban on Cuba’s participation is certainly significant.   “The cold war has ended today here in San Pedro Sula,” Honduran president Manuel Zelaya triumphantly announced. “We have made a wise and honorable decision.”   Argentine foreign minister Jorge Taiana went further, proclaiming that “We have finished with an injustice with discrimination and everything that came from the past, from the Cold War.”   Even the United States, which did not win its fight to impose human rights conditions on Cuba’s reentry, found a silver lining to the move.  Thomas A. Shannon, assistant US secretary of state for western hemisphere affairs, told reporters that “we have eliminated one obstacle to Cuba's reintegration to the OAS, and we have established a compromise with Cuba, a path toward the future based on OAS principles, values and practices.”

Yet despite this progressive step forward in regional affairs, perhaps the most important issue facing the Americas this past week— Guatemala’s descent into state collapse—received scarcely any attention from OAS representatives, and none from the popular media covering the annual gathering.  

Guatemala has made headlines recently, as its president stands publicly accused of ordering the murder of a prominent lawyer.   In mid-May, Rodrigo Rosenberg, representing a client who had been gunned down with his daughter in the capital, himself was shot dead in broad daylight while bicycling to work.   Soon after, a posthumously released video of Rosenberg surfaced, with the dead man pointing his finger directly at the president.   “If you are watching this message,” Rosenberg stated, “it is because I have been murdered by President Álvaro Colom.”   The video scandalized the country, and sparked the most serious public uproar questioning government legitimacy in decades.    

But the country’s troubles extend far beyond the Colom crisis.   After emerging from its nearly forty-year civil war—a conflict that claimed hundreds of thousands of lives—Guatemala has struggled under rampant violence, weak state structures, and the growing influence of organized crime.   The country is currently one of the most violent in the world, registering over 6000 murders in 2008, and an increased rate in the first months of 2009.   State capacity to prevent violent crime, and prosecute those responsible for it, is nearly nonexistent.   Last year, only 2 percent of all murders were successfully prosecuted, due largely to meager state funds and the corruption they engender.

Of all the threats to the Guatemalan state, however, the emerging power of organized crime networks is by far the most serious. Ever since Mexican authorities ramped-up their efforts against the expanding activity of drug cartels within their own borders, heavily armed traffickers have spread their operations south into Guatemala, murdering thousands of people, corrupting the military and courts, and seizing control of significant territory where the state has effectively vanished.

An eye-opening report in the Los Angeles Times this week illustrates the seriousness of the situation.   After an intense shoot-out with a small group of cartel gunmen—which left 5 federal agents dead—the Times reported that

"The fleeing killers, identified by authorities as members of the Mexican drug gang known as the Zetas, left behind a cargo truck packed with 700 pounds of cocaine. More stunning was the cache found in a brick warehouse: 11 M-60 machine guns, eight Claymore mines, a Chinese-made antitank rocket, more than 500 grenades, commando uniforms, bulletproof vests and thousands of rounds of ammunition."

 "They were preparing for war," noted one high-ranking federal police officer.   Underscoring this sentiment, a presidential representative warned of more fighting to come:

“One of the objectives of the government is to reclaim [Guatemalan] territory from the Mexican cartels. This is a war, and to fight these criminals, we need to have a military presence in these areas…We've dismantled bases from Los Zetas in which we came across anti-aircraft guns, military uniforms, anti-personnel mines," Menocal says. "We suspect that these guys are preparing to defend their territories inside Guatemala."

Still, the OAS seemed content to pretend that nothing is wrong.   The body’s secretary-general announced last Tuesday that after having visited the country in the wake of controversy surrounding Rosenberg’s murder, he had concluded that “there is no real risk against democratic institutions in Guatemala...[and] there is widespread conviction that the government will continue functioning normally.”

While the OAS might not have issues with the institutional integrity of Guatemalan politics, Guatemalans certainly do.   In a recent Iberobarómetro2008survey, pollsters discovered that only a quarter of citizens have faith any confidence in the police, while fewer still—15 percent of those asked—hold faith in the country’s courts. At the same time, some of the country’s leading intellectuals now openly speak of Guatemala’s collapse, and speculate about how soon the gangs will overrun the capital.

The organization’s unwillingness to address Guatemala’s worrying deterioration represents a signal failure of regional multilateralism.   Instead of exploring avenues for strategic cooperation to halt the rising power of gangs, and bolster the Guatemalan state, OAS member-states seem content to leave the country’s problems in the hands of US foreign aid.   Washington doled out roughly $11 million to Guatemala last year with similar amounts expected this year under the Merida umbrella.   Unfortunately, much of this money will likely fund militarized options for combating organized crime, an approach which has failed miserably in other countries, and will only inject more weapons and violence into a state already awash in guns and blood.