Four French tourists, including a six-year-old child, are missing in the jungle of northern Guatemala, near the border with Mexico and Belize, authorities in the small Central American country announced on Friday.
The tourists, all members of the same family, were “last seen” on Wednesday in Tikal National Park, in the department of Petén, the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism said in a social media bulletin. .
Tikal Park listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site
The four tourists are two women aged 40 and 68, a 41-year-old man and a six-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 km north of the capital.
With its imposing pyramids and temples, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979 and is located in a remote region where gangs linked to drug trafficking operate.
In early January 2022, in the same park, a German tourist was found dead, two days after being reported missing in the region. The 53-year-old man had separated from the group with which he was visiting the site to explore the paths of the archaeological park before disappearing.
One of the most dangerous countries on the continent
Also in the same park, in 2001, several tourists, including Americans and Europeans, 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 was notably raped. Guatemala, the most populous country in Central America with nearly 18 million inhabitants, is plagued by 36 years of civil war, organized crime, corruption and poverty.
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 (maras) and drug trafficking transiting through his territory. Central America’s largest economy remains one of the most unequal countries on the American 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.