ZACAPA, Guatemala – Jose Miguel Ramirez went hunting for iguanas on a melon farm and paid for it with his life. The 19-year-old’s body was dumped by a stream near the property line, a bullet hole above his left eye.
What happened to Ramirez remains in dispute, though no one is pushing for answers any longer.
The case of Ramirez reveals just how convoluted security and justice have become in Guatemala, where private guards outnumber police 5-to-1. Those with means buy protection the state cannot provide; those without take matters into their own hands.
“You don’t call the police. You don’t call 911. You deal with it yourself,” said Frank Moseley, a private security analyst based in Guatemala.
Ramirez had just crossed the fence onto the ZacapaEx farm when the shots rang out, and he was hit, his brothers-in-law said. They hid as they watched three men dressed in street clothes and a fourth wearing a security guard’s uniform drag the body and dump it off beyond the property line.
Days later, police arrested three men identified by one of Ramirez’s brothers-in-law. Later, authorities arrested a fourth man, a guard hired from a private security firm, Gevas, to patrol the melon farm.
Over the following weeks, all four men were freed, and the farm was cleared of any responsibility.
After Ramirez’s death, the family was visited by Osmany Giron, the melon company’s director of operations, who offered his condolences; he told The Associated Press two of Ramirez’s sisters had worked for him during harvest time. For this visit, he brought tamales, bread and a “small” amount of money for the family.
Ramirez’s mother told AP the company helped her go to a hospital for treatment of her diabetes and bought her medicine.
Weeks later, she said, Giron asked her and her husband to sign a document, even though neither of them could read or write. She said the company paid her $4,500.
A local prosecutor who was there, she said, encouraged them to sign, saying it was the best resolution they could expect.
By signing, the couple absolved ZacapaEx and the three suspects of any charges and agreed to drop their court action.
The sworn statement given by Mario Ramos, the brother-in-law who identified the three suspects that day to the police, also was withdrawn and his testimony recanted.
Ramos told AP that a stranger approached him and warned: “You’re not going to say anything because if you do, we’ll kill you.”
A week after charges were dropped, one of the freed security guards was patrolling the perimeter of the melon farm when he was shot to death by a man passing by on a motorcycle.
A representative of the Gevas security company suggested responsibility lies with friends of Ramirez and his brothers-in-law, whom she described as “criminals.”
“An innocent had to pay for something he didn’t do,” said Gevas’ legal representative.
The family denies any role in the guard’s death, though in their minds, it was a just ending.
“He who kills by the sword, dies by the sword,” Ramos said.
