Four French tourists, including a six-year-old child, are missing in the jungle of northern Guatemala, in a remote region of the small Central American country where drug-trafficking-related gangs operate.
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The tourists, all members of the same family, were “last seen” on Wednesday in the Tikal National Park in the department of Petén, the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism said in a bulletin published on social media on Friday.
According to the same source, the four tourists are two women, aged 40 and 68, a 41-year-old man and a six-year-old boy.
The alert was also sent to the diplomatic and consular corps accredited in Guatemala, according to the Bulletin of the Guatemalan Institute.
Tikal Park is the most important Mayan archaeological site in Guatemala and is located more than 500 km north of the capital, near the borders with Mexico and Belize.
With its pyramids and imposing temples, it has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1979.
In early January 2022, a German tourist was found dead in the same park, two days after he was reported missing in the area. The 53-year-old man had split from the group he was taking to visit the site to explore the archeological park’s trails before disappearing.
drug trafficking
Also in the same park, in 2001, several tourists, including Americans and Europeans, were attacked by hooded and armed men who killed a ranger who tried to defend them. A tourist from Honduras living in the United States was particularly raped.
Guatemala, the most populous country in Central America with nearly 18 million people, has been plagued by 36 years of civil war, organized crime, corruption and poverty.
The country is one of the most violent on the continent, with a homicide rate of 17.3 per 100,000 people at the end of 2022, according to the UN, half of which is attributed to criminal gangs (maras) and the drug trade that travels through its territory.
According to the World Bank, Central America’s largest economy remains one of the most unequal countries in the Americas, with a poverty rate of 59.3%.
Guatemala saw a peak of around 2.5 million foreign tourists in 2019, resulting in nearly US$1.3 billion in revenue.
In 2022, after the pandemic, 1.8 million visitors came to the country. According to the Guatemalan Institute of Tourism, the main countries of origin of tourists this year were El Salvador (39%), another small country in Central America, and the United States (24%).