In Guatemala, violence is always near

Mica Rosenberg interviews transvestite prostitutes, often victims of violence, on the streets of Guatemala City November 21, 2006. Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in the Americas, with almost 6,000 people murdered here last year. That is 46 victims per 100,000 people, a rate eight times higher than in the United States. To match WITNESS-GUATEMALA/VIOLENCE

GUATEMALA CITY (Reuters) - The last time I saw Arnulfo Andrade, I was crouched behind his driver's seat on a smoky city bus, interviewing him about the dangers he faced on his route in one of Guatemala's most violent neighborhoods.

"You go to work scared all the time," he told me over the engine's roar, "but you gotta keep working."

He looked younger than his 30 years with his baseball cap on backwards and a wispy mustache, an easygoing man joking with his young assistant collecting the 13 cent (7 pence) fare.

Arnulfo was just doing his job, and for that he was murdered, shot in the head and stomach and left to die behind the wheel. His 17-year-old helper took a bullet in the arm.

He was the 43rd bus driver to be killed in Guatemala last year; most were executed for failing to pay "war taxes" to violent street gangs controlling certain districts in the sprawling Central American capital.

The gangs pull in millions of dollars extorting daily or weekly fees from terrified shop owners, factory workers, teachers, deliverymen and families under threat of kidnapping, rape or death.

Much of the money goes to pay off corrupt cops who do little to protect innocent victims like Arnulfo.

Guatemala is one of the most violent countries in the Americas, with almost 6,000 people murdered here last year. That is 46 victims per 100,000 people, a rate eight times higher than in the United States.

Bodies are thrown in gutters, stuffed in trunks, chopped up and packed in suitcases. Many are victims of the gangs while vigilantes like to target street kids and prostitutes, sometimes helped by police. But with 98 percent of murders left unsolved, no one really bothers to find out why.

At 26, and after brief stints reporting in Mexico, Colombia and New York, I had never seen a dead person before arriving in Guatemala two years ago.

At the first crime scene I saw soon after arriving, there were seven. All were gang members, younger than me, killed by vigilantes. Two were women in their 20s, splayed on the ground, clothes ripped off and exposed to the leering crowd.

LIVING WITH VIOLENCE

Two months after I met Arnulfo, I found myself wandering a city cemetery looking for his grave. It was a cold and drizzly day and I got lost shuffling my way through weeping, umbrella covered groups huddled over coffins in narrow pathways.

The sprawling cemetery is, like Guatemala City, segregated by class. The wealthy have elaborate tombs surrounded by iron fences while the poor are stacked on top of each other in moss-covered shelves overlooking the city dump.

When families are unable to pay grave maintenence fees, workers dig up the dead and throw them over the fence into the garbage.

After 36 years of civil war that claimed close to a quarter million lives and a decade of peace wracked with violent crime, Guatemalans seem used to the chaos.

I have seen children strike up a soccer game in an empty lot near a crime scene, the ball rolling under the yellow police line. It's a way of dealing with death here -- you ignore it and move on until it catches up with you.

Recently, I have felt it moving closer. Armed robbers beat up a teacher, slashed the arm of a little girl and stole a school bus soon after it dropped off the 6-year old son of the Reuters photographer here.

A local journalist, distraught by a failed relationship, shot himself on the lawn in front of the house of the Reuters cameraman.

Two blocks from my office someone gunned down the secretary of the leading presidential candidate, Otto Perez Molina, who had served me coffee as I waited for an interview on a plush leather couch. And then I heard about Arnulfo.

I am an outsider and these events have brushed only the edges of my life, but they reveal something about the depth of trauma many people here live with.

"Guatemala is where friends can die under any circumstance at any moment," one close friend wrote in an email when I told him about Arnulfo's murder. "Welcome to my reality."