Talk:Petén

Talk

Discussion for: Petén • View • Links • Related changes

Use this page for verification notes, disputes, and action items. Keep narrative content on the article.

Page scope

Petén is the cannabis growing region of the department of Petén, in northern Guatemala: the growing that United States reports placed in the Petén from 1987 to 2003, and the plantations eradicated in the municipalities of Las Cruces, Melchor de Mencos and Sayaxché from 2014 to 2026. Las Cruces and its communities (Ixmucané, Los Laureles, Santa Rosita) are covered here, with no page of their own. The western highlands (San Marcos, Totonicapán, Huehuetenango) and Guatemala's law and national figures are treated on the country page.

Data verification

Record source conflicts, dating problems and sources not used here. Keep narrative content on the article.

Discussion

Why the Petén is a growing region

United Press International (21 April 1987) quotes the Treasury Police chief on spraying "the numerous marijuana patches in El Peten province".
The State Department's narcotics reports name the Petén in each edition from the report on 1994 (April 1995, p. 133: "The vast Peten region near the Belize border is the site of cannabis cultivation") through those on 1996, 1997 and 1998 ("the large Peten region of northern Guatemala bordering on Belize and Mexico") to that on 2001 ("significant cannabis cultivation in the northern state of Peten"). The report on 2015 (March 2016, p. 168) places Guatemala's marijuana in the department of Petén.
The Drug Enforcement Administration's country brief of April 2003 (p. 3): cannabis "continues to be cultivated in the northern jungle areas of Guatemala, especially in the Peten Department along the borders with Belize and Mexico".
The Guatemalan government's report to the OAS drug commission for 2005–2006 (p. 14) puts 40 per cent of the land under marijuana in El Petén; the International Narcotics Control Board's reports for 2009 (para. 368) and 2018 (para. 424) name the Petén with San Marcos and with Totonicapán.
The national press reports eradication in Las Cruces in 2014, 2021 and every year from 2024 to 2026, in Melchor de Mencos in 2019, 2020 and 2024 to 2026, and in Sayaxché in 2023.

How the border is drawn

The map border is the whole department of Petén as OpenStreetMap draws it (admin relation 214699), about 35,850 km²; the infobox figure is rounded from it. The department is the unit the United States reports, the OAS figures for 2005–2006 and the International Narcotics Control Board use, and every place the press names for the growing (Las Cruces, Ixmucané, Los Laureles, Santa Rosita, Melchor de Mencos, La Rejoya, El Rondo, Sayaxché, Pico de Oro) lies inside it.
The map line's outer edge was checked for ground above 4,000 m, bare or sparse ground, snow and ice and open water. It did not move, so the border keeps the department line.
The point in the infobox is the centre of the department as OpenStreetMap gives it, not a field.

Growing status

Active: press reports of plantations destroyed in the department run from 2014 to September 2026. No source says the growing has ended.

Source discrepancies

Where in the Petén. The State Department's report on 1989 (p. 176) has cultivation "concentrated along the borders with Mexico and Belize"; the report on 1994 places it "near the Belize border"; those on 1996 to 1998 describe the region as "bordering on Belize and Mexico". The press reports since 2014 name sites on both borders. Each statement is given with its year.
National and departmental figures. The hectare figures of the State Department (240 ha in 1989, 200 ha in 1994, 130 ha in 1998) and of the Drug Enforcement Administration (38 ha destroyed in 2002) are for the whole country. The report on 1998 gives its 130 hectares in the sentence after the one on the Petén.
May 2026, Los Laureles. Prensa Libre (27 May 2026) gives a nursery of 200 young plants; the army's first list of finds, quoted by La Hora the same day, gives 16,000 seedlings. The article uses the newspaper's figure.
March 2021. Prensa Libre (17 March 2021) reports the ambush near Ixmucané and two plantings destroyed in Las Cruces (664 m² with 3,984 plants and 2,600 m² with 28,732); it does not place the two plantings at Ixmucané.
Place names. The sources write El Rondo and Rondón (Melchor de Mencos), Ixmucané and Ixmucane, Los Laureles and Laureles, and call Los Laureles a cooperative, a village and a community, and Ixmucané a hamlet, a cooperative and a sector. One report (La Hora, 20 July 2025) writes of a "caserío Las Cruces". The article keeps the source's spelling for each event.

Sources

State Department, International Narcotics Control Strategy Report. The editions of 1988, 1990 and 1995 are the scans of the National Criminal Justice Reference Service; those of 1997 to 2003 are the State Department pages kept by the End of Term Web Archive; that of 2016 is a copy on GlobalSecurity.org.
Drug Enforcement Administration country briefs. DEA-03002 (Guatemala, April 2003), DEA-20006 (Belize, March 2000) and DEA-01010 (Belize, May 2001), in the National Archives' harvest of the DEA website of 2004.
Las Cruces. Prensa Libre (24 November 2011) reports the vote that made the village a municipality; its report of 4 May 2016 gives the municipality's communities, area, crops and people.
Press, 2014–2026. Prensa Libre, La Hora and Emisoras Unidas report the police and army operations, mostly from statements and posts of the National Civil Police, the army and the Ministry of the Interior. Plant counts and values are the authorities' figures.

Other reports

The same press reports coca bushes eradicated in the Petén in 2025 and 2026, at San Luis and at a Santa Rosita in El Chal (not the Santa Rosita of Las Cruces); the State Department's report of March 2025 places Guatemala's coca in Izabal, Alta Verapaz and the Petén. They are not about cannabis and are not used.
A specialist in addiction treatment, Javier Ramírez, listed "Petenera" among the names of the types of marijuana sold online in Guatemala (Prensa Libre, 20 January 2024). The report gives nothing on where that marijuana was grown, so it is not used.