Article: Gang threats

Guatemala police escort workers after gang threat

18 Jan 2005 22:22:15 GMT

EL MILAGRO, Guatemala, Jan 18 (Reuters) - Heavily armed police escorted thousands of people from Guatemala's shantytowns to their jobs in the capital on Tuesday after bus drivers threatened with death by youth gangs refused to work.

Nervous residents of the El Milagro and Carolingia shantytowns on the edge of the capital squeezed into police buses, cars and pick-up trucks.

Police in body armor and carrying automatic weapons accompanied the vehicles as they drove through a maze of cinder block and tin homes on the way to Guatemala City.

Bus drivers stopped service to the district on Monday. They said that members of youth gangs known as "maras" had threatened to kill them if they did not pay increased protection money.

Many bus drivers are forced to pay what is known locally as a "war tax" to drive through gang-dominated areas of the city.

Residents said they were sick of gang violence.

"It endangers us and our children who take the buses every day," said local resident Carmen de Garcia, 71, while waiting to board a police bus.

Deadly assaults on buses are common in the city and are often attributed to "Mara 18" and "Mara Salvatrucha" youth gangs.

The maras are now seen as a major security threat across Central America, a region that was savaged by Cold War-era civil wars in the 1980s. Last month, gunmen murdered 28 people on a public bus in Honduras in an attack attributed to the maras by President Ricardo Maduro.

The maras have their roots in Hispanic gangs in Los Angeles. They established a strong presence in Central America when illegal immigrants in U.S. prisons were sent back to their home countries in the 1990s.