Guatemala

Guatemala
Guatemala
Capital	Guatemala City
Continent	North America
Subregion	Central America
Cannabis Status
Legal Status	Illegal
Status Since	1992
Enforcement	Plantations are destroyed where they are found; possession for one's own use carries four months to two years in prison
Documentation
Growing Regions	0
Growing Areas	0
Accessions	0
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Guatemala is a country in Central America, on the borders of Mexico and Belize. In 1986 United States intelligence counted it, with Panama and Costa Rica, among the countries trying to eliminate marijuana production that were not yet major producers.^: 19 In May and June 1987 aircraft and personnel of the United States State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters carried out a first eradication campaign against opium poppy and marijuana with the Guatemalan authorities. The marijuana was destroyed by chemical spraying.^{: 19, 37}

In 2005–2006 the government placed most of the land under marijuana in San Marcos, in the western highlands, and the rest in the Petén, the northern lowland department on the borders with Mexico and Belize.^: 14 Most of the plants eradicated in 2017 were in Totonicapán and the Petén. In 2003 the State Department reported that all of Guatemala's cannabis was consumed locally. The International Narcotics Control Board reported in 2021 that Guatemala had been, in recent years, the country most often named as the origin, departure point or transit country of cannabis herb seized within Central America.

The drug law of 1992, the Ley contra la Narcoactividad (Decreto 48-92), punishes anyone who sows, grows or harvests without legal authority the seeds, flowers or plants from which drugs can be obtained.^: 7

Geography

The Petén is a sparsely populated forest region of about 14,000 square miles (36,000 km²), bordered by Belize to the east and Mexico to the north and west. When the spraying began in April 1987 the head of the Treasury Police said that it was aimed at "the numerous marijuana patches in El Peten province". United Press International reported that land in western Guatemala was also used to grow marijuana, generally for the market of the United States.

In 1989, on the State Department's estimate, about 240 hectares of cannabis were in production, concentrated along the borders with Mexico and Belize, with some small plantations in the interior departments of Chimaltenango and Jutiapa.^: 176 Through the 1990s its reports placed the cultivation in "the large Peten region of northern Guatemala bordering on Belize and Mexico", with small amounts grown throughout the country for local use. In 1999 widespread deforestation in the Petén had left cleared areas of the former forest open to illicit cultivation. In 2015 Guatemala grew opium poppy in the western highlands and marijuana in the Petén.

The Guatemalan government told the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission that 60 per cent of the land under marijuana in 2005–2006 lay in San Marcos and 40 per cent in the Petén.^: 14 In 2008 the authorities reported less cultivation and trafficking in both departments, which lie along the border with Mexico. Of the 6,033,345 cannabis plants eradicated in 2017, most were in Totonicapán and the Petén. In 2023 the head of the antinarcotics division of the National Civil Police said that marijuana production was high in Huehuetenango, Totonicapán and San Marcos.

Demographics

Communities with cannabis relationships

The State Department wrote in 1990 that Mexican and Belizean nationals had introduced opium poppy and cannabis to Guatemalan farmers.^: 179 In the municipality of Las Cruces in the Petén, investigators told Prensa Libre in 2014 that the growers sold their marijuana to Mexican traffickers. In March 2021 people the army took to be local residents stoned and shot at a unit on its way to destroy a plantation near the hamlet of Ixmucané; the army's spokesman said they had told the soldiers that destroying the plantations took away their chance of work.

In Momostenango and Santa Lucía La Reforma, in Totonicapán, landowners rented out their plots for marijuana in 2014. The police found that traffickers sought mountain land with bad roads and no patrols and, through intermediaries, offered poor farmers up to 600 quetzales for the rent of 464 square metres. A district prosecutor told Prensa Libre that the growers came from elsewhere, some said from Huehuetenango. In the remote municipalities of San Marcos the authorities reported in 2016 that women and children were paid up to 2,000 quetzales for three and a half months' work growing poppy and marijuana on a hectare, against 10 to 15 quetzales a day on legal crops. Communities there opposed the eradication teams, seeing their work disappear.

Agriculture

In Momostenango in 2014, growing marijuana instead of maize, beans and broad beans was a way out of poverty: a manzana of land could give up to three harvests a year of 33,000 plants each. The prosecutor said that maize served only for the family's own food and that Momostenango grew the most marijuana "por el clima y fuentes de agua" (for the climate and the water sources). The mayor of San Marcos told La Hora in 2016 that the broken, cloudy country of those communities offered no conditions for other crops.

The International Narcotics Control Board reported that the methods of growing cannabis in Guatemala had been refined in recent years, giving a drug of higher quality and a higher price on the black market. In May 2026 prosecutors and police found a greenhouse and three shipping containers fitted with lights and fans for growing and processing marijuana at San Andrés Itzapa in Chimaltenango; a prosecutor said that such structures were disguised as vegetable plantings.

Cannabis in Guatemala

History

In April 1987 the Treasury Police chief, Oscar Díaz Urquizu, announced an operation coordinated by the Drug Enforcement Administration in which aircraft supplied by the United States would spray the marijuana of the Petén with a herbicide he called "24-d glyco-phosphate". He said that no such operation had been carried out on Guatemalan marijuana before. United Press International wrote that local drug use had grown in recent years but remained low. The State Department reported that the campaign ran in May and June and that the marijuana destroyed may have covered 325 hectares in 1987.^{: 19, 37} More opium and marijuana were grown in 1988.

A map of 1989 by the Central Intelligence Agency marks a marijuana growing area in eastern Guatemala, with a route running north across Belize. Detail.

In Belize the spraying of the 1980s drove growers into smaller, hidden fields. Belizean traffickers largely switched to Guatemalan suppliers.^{: 163, 165: 70} Many bought bulk marijuana in the Petén, next to Belize. The marijuana grown mostly along the Belizean border was generally shipped to the United States through Belize.^{: 165, 179} In 1991 the Belizean police said that marijuana grown in the Petén was being smuggled through their country.

The State Department's aircraft sprayed all the cannabis they found in 1989, though as much as a fifth of the crop may have stayed undiscovered because the plots were small and remote. Guatemalan police destroyed 47 hectares of cannabis by hand that year.^{: 177, 180} By 1994 units of the Department of Anti-Narcotics Operations trained by the United States worked in the highlands and the Petén, eradicating by hand.^: 133 A survey from rented helicopters of all the known growing areas of the Petén in July 1997 found only 21 fields, together 8.5 hectares. In 2001 the State Department still reported significant cultivation in the Petén.

Cultivation

In July 2014 army special forces and police destroyed two plantations of 600 and 900 square metres, with at least 7,000 and 13,500 plants, near the communities of Santa Rosita, Los Laureles, Bella Guatemala, Bonanza and Flor de la Esperanza in Las Cruces, close to the Mexican border. The operations, under a military plan named for the Maya Biosphere, ran for 15 days along the slopes of the Pasión, San Pedro and Usumacinta rivers. Earlier that month soldiers and police had counted 280,000 plants on seven manzanas at Santa Rosita and Los Laureles. In 2021 two plantings near Ixmucané covered 664 and 2,600 square metres and held 3,984 and 28,732 plants. An operation at the cooperative of Los Laureles in January 2026 eradicated 430,016 plants; four Mexican nationals were detained, and rifles and grenades were seized. Elsewhere in the Petén the police destroyed 102,945 plants on 6,863 square metres of forest near the hamlet of El Rondo, in Melchor de Mencos on the Belizean border, in January 2020. In January 2023 they burned 48,124 plants at Pico de Oro in Sayaxché.

In San Marcos the police eradicated 22,432 plants at the hamlet of Agua Caliente, in Sipacapa, in January 2023. Four operations in Totonicapán in the first two months of 2025 burned about 78,040 plants; the latest, at the hamlet of San José Sigüilá in Momostenango, destroyed 1,260.

Preparations and consumption

In 2003 nine per cent of Guatemalans aged 15 to 64 used it in the year, the highest share in Central America but below the 13 per cent of the United States in 2004.^: 51 In 2007 a limited amount of cannabis of poor quality was grown for the local market. A national survey concluded by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime found that the use of illicit drugs in Guatemala had risen by 40 per cent from 2005 to 2021, with marijuana the drug most used.

Trade and commerce

Much of the cannabis seized in El Salvador came from Guatemala: in 2005 the Salvadoran authorities put the share at 75 per cent.^: 51 The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime judged in 2007 that most of the cannabis grown in Central America was used at home and some crossed borders within the region. Little if any reached the United States from or through Central America.^{: 51, 64}

Prosecutors described a group, "Grano de Oro", which from July 2021 to July 2023 grew marijuana in the Petén, packed it and sent it mainly to Guatemala City, where a second cell sold it retail. Police investigators said in 2014 that the marijuana of Totonicapán that escaped seizure was sold retail in the capital.

Legal status

The Ley contra la Narcoactividad was passed by Congress on 23 September 1992 and sanctioned the next day; it entered into force 15 days after its publication in the official gazette. Under article 2 a drug is any substance that changes the functions of the body and the states of consciousness, and "las semillas, florescencias, plantas o parte de ellas" (seeds, flowers, plants or parts of them) from which drugs can be extracted are also drugs. Narcotics and psychotropic substances are those classed as such in the international treaties binding on Guatemala, the Health Code and other regulations. Under article 3, as amended in 1999, drugs may be imported, produced, held and used only in strictly necessary quantities by authorised persons, for medical treatment, toxicological and pharmacological analysis, scientific research and the making of medicines.^{: 1–2, 13–14}

Article 36 punishes sowing, growing or harvesting such seeds, flowers or plants without legal authority with five to 20 years in prison and a fine of 10,000 to 100,000 quetzales. Trafficking in seeds, leaves, plants or flowers classed as drugs carries 12 to 20 years and a fine of 50,000 to one million quetzales (article 38). Promoting their cultivation carries six to ten years (article 40). Under article 39 anyone who acquires or holds a drug for their own use faces four months to two years in prison and a fine of 200 to 10,000 quetzales; the use counts as one's own when the drug seized does not exceed "la cantidad razonable para el consumo inmediato" (the reasonable quantity for immediate use), and no weight is set.^: 7 Article 19, as amended in 1999 and 2012, lets the Ministerio Público authorise the destruction of drug plantations where they stand, keeping a sample as evidence.^: 4–5

Enforcement

Aerial and manual eradication destroyed half of the estimated 200 hectares of cannabis in 1994^: 135 and 84.2 per cent of a crop estimated at 253.7 hectares in 1996. For 1998 the State Department estimated 130 hectares under cannabis; a survey by its regional reconnaissance and eradication aircraft in September found only three marijuana fields, which the anti-narcotics police destroyed by hand. Over 46 hectares were located and destroyed in 1999 and over 625,602 plants in the remote north in 2003.

The government reported eradicating 694,779 plants in 2005 and 156,362 in 2006.^: 14 The government eradicated 6.10 hectares of cannabis in 2007, 33.14 in 2008 and 25.85 in 2009, all by hand. Its seizures of cannabis plants reached 10,817,497 in 2008 and 4,296,107 in 2009.^{: 11, 17} On the figures compiled by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the plants eradicated rose from 3,138,298 at 427 sites in 2016 to 6,033,345 in 2017 and 5,189,422 in 2018, then fell to 3,447,979 in 2019, 3,339,526 in 2021 and 1,735,465 at 175 sites in 2023.

Growing Regions

Landrace cannabis growing regions currently documented on the wiki: No growing regions documented yet.

Growing Areas

Landrace cannabis growing areas currently documented on the wiki: No growing areas documented yet.

Accessions

List

No accessions documented yet.

Conservation status

Herbarium sheets of cannabis gathered in Guatemala from 1983 to 2001 are held in the National Herbarium of Mexico (MEXU) at the National Autonomous University of Mexico. Haydée de Díaz collected a cultivated plant in Guatemala City in November 1983. M. Véliz collected a cultivated plant in the department of San Marcos on 21 August 1992, with the locality "Guardia de Hacienda" (MEXU 910615). L. Fernández collected another cultivated plant in the capital in October 2001; that sheet came from the Herbario BIGUA. The 1983 and 1992 sheets carry the name of the University of San Carlos of Guatemala.

Recent news

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See also

• Belize
• Bonanza marimbera
• Costa Rica
• Herbicide spraying in Belize
• Herbicide spraying of cannabis
• Honduras
• Landrace Cannabis
• Mexico
• United States and cannabis eradication abroad