Four French tourists, including a 6-year-old child, are missing in the jungle of northern Guatemala, in a remote region of the small Central American country and where gangs linked to drug trafficking operate, announced on Friday August 11, the local authorities. The vacationers, all members of the same family, were “last seen” Wednesday in Tikal National Park, in the department of Peten, the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism reported in a social media bulletin.
The four tourists are two women aged 40 and 68, a 41-year-old man and a 6-year-old boy, according to the same source. The alert was also sent to the diplomatic and consular corps accredited in Guatemala, according to the bulletin of the Guatemalan institute.
Tikal Park is the main Mayan archaeological site in Guatemala, located more than 500 kilometers north of the capital. With its pyramids and imposing temples, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
Country plagued by organized crime
In early January 2022, in the same park, a 53-year-old German tourist was found dead, two days after being reported missing. He had separated from the group with which he was visiting the site to explore the paths of the archaeological park before disappearing. Also in the same park, in 2001, several tourists were attacked by hooded and armed men who killed a ranger who was trying to defend them. A tourist from Honduras residing in the United States had been raped.
Guatemala, a country of nearly 18 million people, is plagued by thirty-six years of civil war, organized crime and corruption. The country is one of the most violent on the continent, with a homicide rate of 17.3 per 100,000 inhabitants at the end of 2022, according to the UN, half attributed to criminal gangs (the maras) and drug trafficking transiting through its territory.
Central America’s largest economy remains one of the most unequal countries on the continent with a poverty rate of 59.3%, according to the World Bank.
Guatemala received a peak of some 2.5 million foreign tourists in 2019, which left receipts of nearly US$1.3 billion.
In 2022, after the pandemic, 1.8 million visitors entered the country. The main countries of origin of tourists this year were El Salvador (39%) and the United States (24%), according to the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism.