Petén

Petén
El Petén
ActiveGrown here in 2000 or later
The landing on the Pasión river at Sayaxché, November 2012
⛶
Location	Guatemala
Coordinates	16.8318, -90.0451
Country	Guatemala
Provinces/States	Petén Department
Area	35,900 km²
Growing history
Conservation
Populations	none documented yet

Petén is a cannabis growing region in the department of Petén, in the north of Guatemala, on the borders with Mexico and Belize. In 1987 the head of Guatemala's Treasury Police said that aerial spraying was aimed at "the numerous marijuana patches in El Peten province". The United States Department of State placed the country's cannabis cultivation in "the large Peten region of northern Guatemala bordering on Belize and Mexico" in its reports on 1996 to 1998, and the Guatemalan government told the Inter-American Drug Abuse Control Commission that 40 per cent of the country's land under marijuana in 2005–2006 lay in the Petén.^: 14 The police and army operations reported in the press from 2014 to 2026 named sites in the municipality of Las Cruces, near the Mexican border, among them Ixmucané, Los Laureles and Santa Rosita, and in Melchor de Mencos, on the Belizean border, and Sayaxché.

The department and Las Cruces

The Petén is a forest region of about 14,000 square miles (36,000 km²), with Belize to the east and Mexico to the north and west; in 1987 it was sparsely populated. In 1999 the State Department found that widespread deforestation in the department had left cleared areas of the former forest open to illicit cultivation. The forest still ran along both sides of the border with Belize in 2000, and the Drug Enforcement Administration saw in it a large region open to traffickers for growing cannabis and for moving cocaine unseen.

Las Cruces was a village until November 2011, when Congress made it a municipality, the 13th of the Petén. In 2016 it had 38 communities over 1,771 km², from the village of El Subín and the communities along the Usumacinta to Bethel, on the Mexican border. Most of its people farmed, growing plantain and papaya, and they were ladinos and Qʼeqchiʼ. The plantations destroyed there in 2014 lay on the slopes of the Pasión, San Pedro and Usumacinta rivers, and those of 2024 and 2025 in forest and in mountainous country.

Reports of cultivation, 1987–2003

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. Aircraft and personnel of the State Department's Bureau of International Narcotics Matters carried out this first eradication campaign against opium poppy and marijuana with the Guatemalan authorities in May and June.^{: 19, 37} In 1989 Guatemala's cannabis was concentrated along the borders with Mexico and Belize, in remote and rugged country; the State Department estimated 240 hectares in production in the whole country. Its aircraft sprayed all the cannabis they found that year, but as much as a fifth of the crop may have stayed undiscovered because the plots were small and remote.^{: 176, 179–180}

In 1994 "the vast Peten region near the Belize border" was the site of cannabis cultivation, and units of the Department of Anti-Narcotics Operations trained by the United States eradicated by hand there and in the highlands.^: 133 In July 1997 a survey from rented helicopters of all the known areas of marijuana cultivation in the Petén located only 21 fields, together 8.5 hectares, which suggested to the State Department that the crop might be decreasing. A survey of the country's illicit crops by its regional reconnaissance and eradication aircraft in September 1998 found only three marijuana fields, which the anti-narcotics police destroyed by hand. In 2001 Guatemala still had significant cannabis cultivation in the Petén; without aircraft for reconnaissance and for carrying the teams, eradication was difficult.

The Drug Enforcement Administration's country brief of April 2003 found cannabis still grown in the northern forests, "especially in the Peten Department along the borders with Belize and Mexico". Guatemalan farmers often crossed into Belize to plant food crops and cannabis, which added to the tension between the two governments. Production was estimated to exceed what the country consumed, which the agency read as a possible sign of exports to Mexico and the United States; Guatemalan police destroyed 38 hectares of cannabis in 2002 and 43 in 2001.^: 3 In 2003 over 625,602 marijuana plants were eradicated in "the remote northern area of the country".

Reports since 2005

On the government's figures, 60 per cent of the land under marijuana in 2005–2006 lay in San Marcos and the other 40 per cent in the Petén.^: 14 By 2009 the Guatemalan authorities reported less cannabis cultivation and trafficking, particularly in the Petén and San Marcos, both on the Mexican border. In 2015 Guatemala grew opium poppy in the western highlands and marijuana in the department of Petén. The International Narcotics Control Board reported that the 6,033,345 plants eradicated in 2017 were mainly in Totonicapán and the Petén.

Las Cruces

In July 2014 soldiers and police counted seven manzanas of plantings, some 280,000 plants, at Santa Rosita and Los Laureles. Over 15 days, 300 soldiers searched the slopes of the three rivers near Santa Rosita, Los Laureles, Bella Guatemala, Bonanza and Flor de la Esperanza, where they destroyed two more plantations. In December the army's jungle special operations brigade found plantations at Ixmucané, Los Laureles and Santa Rosita, with more than 60,000 plants by its estimate; three armed men, taken to be the guards, escaped across the Usumacinta into Mexico.

In March 2021 the army destroyed plantings of 664 and 2,600 square metres in Las Cruces and in September 2024 the police cut 64,426 plants in forest at Ixmucané. At the hamlets of San José Buena Fe and Ixcoch the police counted 178,912 plants in August 2024, and in September the Minister of the Interior, Francisco Jiménez, announced the eradication of 117,298 plants in the municipality. In November 2025 the police cut 156,480 plants in mountain country at Ixmucané and Flor de la Esperanza. An operation at the cooperative of Los Laureles in January 2026 eradicated 430,016 plants, and four Mexican nationals were detained. In May 2026 police, prosecutors and the army searched properties at Los Laureles and found 252,888 plants in five fields near Ixmucané, with rifles, a rocket launcher and explosives. Three operations in the municipality between June and August 2026, two of them at Ixmucané and Los Laureles, destroyed 111,633 plants.

Melchor de Mencos, Sayaxché and the Belizean border

In the municipality of Melchor de Mencos, on the border with Belize, the police destroyed 40,008 plants in four fields at the hamlet of La Rejoya in April 2019 and found some 25 pounds (11 kg) of marijuana ready for use; 102,945 plants on 6,863 square metres of forest near El Rondo in January 2020; 42,600 plants in forest at Rondón in October 2024; and 37,800 plants near La Rejoya in March 2025. In February 2026 the police cut 42,900 plants spread through the municipality's forest, which, they said, criminal groups used for its remoteness and its climate. In Sayaxché, 48,124 plants were burned at the village of Pico de Oro in January 2023, and soldiers found a plantation and a seedbed of about three manzanas at El Mollejón II.

In 2001 the Drug Enforcement Administration reported that squatters from Guatemala planted cannabis on both sides of the "poorly-demarcated" border with Belize. In late May and early June 2016 a joint patrol of the Belize Defence Force and the police destroyed 650 marijuana plants in the Chiquibul National Park, on the Belizean side, and found six Guatemalan families living at Retiro who, the Defence Force said, had been planting marijuana, coffee and pumpkins.

Growers and buyers

In 1990 the State Department wrote that Mexican and Belizean nationals had introduced opium poppy and cannabis to Guatemalan farmers and that Mexican nationals provided financing, seed and a market. The marijuana grown mostly along the Belizean border was generally shipped to the United States through Belize.^: 179 After the spraying in Belize cut that country's crop, many Belizean traffickers bought bulk marijuana in the Petén instead,^: 165 and in 1991 the Belizean police said that marijuana grown in the Petén was being smuggled through Belize. In 1999 wholesale prices paid to farmers in Guatemala averaged US$35 to US$50 a pound.^: 8

Investigators told Prensa Libre in 2014 that the growers of Las Cruces 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 Ixmucané; the army's spokesman said they told the soldiers that destroying the plantations took away their chance of work. Prosecutors described a group, "Grano de Oro", whose members grew marijuana in the Petén from July 2021 to July 2023, packed it and sent it mainly to Guatemala City.

Plants and growing methods

The plants at La Rejoya in 2019 were in the growing and harvest stages. In May 2026 a nursery of 200 young plants was found with the fields at Los Laureles. In July 2025 the police cut the plants of a field in Las Cruces and burned them where they stood, with flamethrowers.

Growing Areas

No growing areas documented yet.

Appellations

No appellations documented yet.

Accessions

No accessions documented yet.

Recent news

No recent news items.

See also

• Belize
• Guatemala
• Herbicide spraying in Belize
• Talamanca