Yankee Imperialism Expands its Counter Insurgency Campaign in Guatemala
Featured image: Yankee soldiers conducting exercises in the jungle with GuatemalanKaibili special forces. Source: DVIDS
On September 21, Yankee imperialism resumed its federal exports of arms to Guatemala for the first time since 1977 through its Foreign Military Sales (FMS). This comes as part of arming the new Special Jungle Operations Brigade in Petén, bordering Mexico, whose missions are so-called “counter-narcotics” operations, guarding the Mexican border, and “protecting natural resources.”
The exports – which include thousands of M4A1 rifles, grenade launchers, ammunition, communications systems and night vision helmets – are part of a larger effort to field around 8,000 additional rifles throughout 16 battalions, mainly in the Department of Petén, and is linked to the Yankee-led Shield of the Americas coalition against “drug-trafficking.”
Part of the developments in Petén is also a construction project in the village of El Subín in La Libertad, which aims at “modernizing” the military in an area that it considers a priority due to “drug trafficking corridors, human trafficking, and other threats from transnational organized crime.” This project aims at the construction of a military complex spanning some 87,000 m2, and with more than 97 buildings will have the capacity to house more than three platoons as well as patrol boats, which will be used in operations along the many river-routes in the region.
In March, 2026, the US Army Green Berets conducted a joint exercise in Poptún, Petén, focusing on “small-unit tactics, reconnaissance, communications, and coordinated maneuver in complex terrain” with COFEN and the infamous Kaibilis of the Guatemalan army. Likewise, a “jungle warfare reinforcement course” was carried out in June, at the Joint Readiness Training Center (JRTC) at Fort Polk, Louisiana – where around 42 Kaibil soldiers attended. Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo claimed that this was part of “broader counternarcotics efforts.”
Yankee imperialism has been carrying out similar exercises in other parts of Latin America, such as with the Brazilian Army in the Amazonas, on which we have previously reported:
History of Yankee imperialist counterinsurgency operations in Guatemala
While this may be the first US federal sale of arms to Guatemala in the past 49 years, Yankee imperialism has – through private arms companies, lackey States such as Israel, or covert arms transfers, continued the arms exports to Guatemala, and has remained its primary supplier, even when not accounting for exports of small arms, according to data from the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute (SIPRI).
During the 1980’s until the 1990’s, Yankee imperialism covertly funded, through the CIA, Guatemala’s D-2 intelligence branch as part of its counter-revolutionary offensive. The D-2 intelligence branch identified, murdered and tortured political opponents, acting as the US arm against communism in Guatemala. D-2 was also responsible for the facilitation of the genocide against the Maya population carried out during the Guatemalan civil war – in which nearly 300,000 people were murdered, most of them Maya. CIA continued its funding of D-2 even after the 1990’s, justifying it as “combating drug trafficking,” mirroring the, at this point farcical tropes, used for the justification of the development of the counter-insurgency campaign in Latin America today.
The aforementioned Kaibiles are a special operations wing of the armed forces of Guatemala specializing in “jungle warfare tactics” and counterinsurgency operations. They were formed in 1974, during the civil war, with the specific purpose of conducting counterinsurgency operations against revolutionist combatants – primarily organized under the coalition Guatemalan National Revolutionary Unity (URNG) which was comprised of the Guerrilla Army of the Poor (EGP), Organization of the People in Arms (ORPA), Rebel Armed Forces (FAR) and the National Directing Nucleus of the Guatemalan Party of Labor (PGT-NDN). The Kaibiles infamously carried out the Las Dos Erres massacre, where more than 200 people were murdered, including children. Their connection to Yankee imperialist campaigns of counterinsurgency is in other words not unprecedented.
In 1977, during the Carter regime, federal exports of arms to Guatemala was outlawed due to widespread protests, and reports documenting extensive human rights violations as part of the anti-communist operations led against the many rebel groups combating the Yankee-led government propped up in the Yankee coup d’État in 1954. Federal exports of arms into Guatemala are as such not without precedence, and were directly connected to combating communism.
The Yankee imperialist economic stranglehold
The semi-colonial and semi-feudal relations in Guatemala are thoroughly developed, mainly by Yankee imperialism, and has been developed in part through the CAFTA-DR trade agreement, a framework of exploitation developed by the US in Costa Rica, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Nicaragua, as well as the Dominican Republic. The agreement facilitates the extraction of raw resources, allows the dumping of US subsidized products onto the Guatemalan market, and has laid the foundation for the construction of subsidized US industry in Guatemala. Through this agreement, the US has a stranglehold on the Guatemalan economy, with 17% of its GDP being from US trade, with a trade surplus for the US of around 4,7 billion USD.
Another indication of the vast exploitation of Guatemala is the percentage of its GDP made up of remittances. A remittance is money received from an individual abroad, usually from families receiving money from family members who have moved to an imperialist country in order to work. 20% of Guatemala’s GDP is made up of remittances, making Guatemala one of 11 countries most dependent on remittance for the reproduction of its population. This offers a real indication of the conditions of the exploitation of Guatemala, with the lack of income forcing around 10% of the country’s population to move to imperialist countries in order to feed their families.
You can read our article on the global rise in remittances here:
The recent developments in Guatemala is part of the general offensive of Yankee imperialism on Latin America, falling in line with the recent attacks on Venezuela, and the current offensive being waged against Cuba. The reversal of the decision to halt federal sales of arms to Guatemala is in this context naturally not a coincidence, as it follows in line with the so-called “Donroe Doctrine” outlined in its 2025 National Security Strategy – developing and maintaining US military and economic positions in the “Western Hemisphere” in competition with encroaching Chinese and Russian imperialism in the region. In the same vein it serves as preparation for the Yankee imperialist counteroffensive – clumsily concealed with the tired excuse of combating “narco-trafficking” – against the inevitably massive wave of popular struggle it will face as a result of its increasing exploitation of the Latin American continent.
