Guatemala is the number one country in Latin America to get semiautomatic guns from the United States. Every day more semiautomatic guns are sold to Guatemala. This has been at its highest now as compared to the past three years. The increase in the sale of guns seems to be another feather of trouble in the cap of the Guatemalan economy. There have already been problems with an increase in political violence ahead of a very significant election.
Most countries have seen an increase in gun sales around the period building up to important elections.
Bloomberg has arranged for the report stating Guatemala to be the biggest buyer of semiautomatic guns from the United States. A sharp increase in political violence and gun sales comes along with a frightening increase in the number of murders in the country. The numbers of political murders are only going up since 2019. Before 1019, murders were quite a rare occurrence.
The population of the country has been worried about personal safety, making more people leave Guatemala to seek safe refuge in countries like Mexico and the US.
When Did It All Begin?
People have suspected that all events combined it is too good to be a coincidence. The timing of all these troublesome events has coincided. It was way back in 2019 that the US started bringing semiautomatic guns into Guatemala from the United States. Many have held this responsible for the increase in violence and murders in the country.
A Problem Across Borders
The US government has been making constant efforts to fix the situation. The Vice President, Kamala Harris, has been busy making sure that large parts of the population do not end up leaving Guatemala because of all the violence. However, this did not stop the US Commerce Department from using the lack of law and order in Guatemala to use it for more gun exports into the struggling nation, many have stated.
Guatemala is also facing a lot of ups and downs right now in terms of democracy. In June, a well-known journalist named José Rubén Zamora was given a prison sentence of six years for moving money illegally. Nationals fighting for freedom of the press and human rights saw it as an attack on them.
Mr. Zamora’s newspaper, called El Periódico, was apparently known to conduct deep investigations into discrepancies in the government to bring it all to the public eye. Because of what happened to him, El Periódico had to stop completely.
A lot of Guatemalans have decided to protest the current state of corruption in a different manner. They have left their ballots blank, stating that they do not wish to participate in this sham election, it seems.
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