# Guatemala declares emergency after prison riots and attacks kill nine police officers
IO Digest Desk
Guatemala has entered a 30-day state of emergency after a wave of prison unrest and gang attacks left nine police officers dead and several others injured.
AFP, reported by France 24, said the capital was unusually quiet on the first day of the emergency, with schools, courts and universities shuttered and streets half-empty. President Bernardo Arévalo declared the emergency on Sunday after eight officers were killed during attacks linked to suspected members of Barrio 18, and a ninth died of injuries on Monday.
The unrest began with prison mutinies at three facilities, where inmates took 45 guards and a psychiatrist hostage to demand that gang leaders be transferred from maximum-security custody to less restrictive prisons. Security forces stormed the prisons and restored control on Sunday. The interior ministry later posted video of officers handcuffing and leading away Aldo Dupie, alias “El Lobo”, whom authorities identified as Barrio 18’s alleged leader in Guatemala.
The police killings followed the crackdown. According to AFP, gang members attacked police stations and patrols in retaliation. The government said the emergency would allow police and the army to act more aggressively against organised crime, though soldiers remained in barracks on Monday awaiting orders.
The scale of the violence has deepened public fear in a country already accustomed to gang power and prison-based criminal networks. Barrio 18 and its rival Mara Salvatrucha, or MS-13, are blamed for much of the drug trafficking and extortion that plague Central America. Washington has designated both groups as terrorist organisations.
Arévalo also presided over a memorial ceremony for the slain officers at the interior ministry, where the coffins were draped in Guatemalan flags and lined by colleagues in uniform. He met grieving relatives, reflecting the political and social shock caused by the killings.
Public reaction on the streets was mixed, if unsurprising under the pressure of insecurity. One older resident told AFP that gangs should simply be destroyed, while a shopkeeper said the government should emulate El Salvador’s Nayib Bukele, whose mass incarceration strategy has sharply reduced murders but raised human rights concerns.
The latest violence did not come out of nowhere. AFP reported that since mid-2025 gang members had staged several prison uprisings to demand better conditions for their leaders. In October, 20 Barrio 18 leaders escaped from prison; only six have been recaptured and one was later killed. The government asked the FBI for help tracking the remaining escapees.
That backdrop matters because it shows the current emergency is not just a reaction to one deadly weekend. It is part of a long-running struggle in which gangs use prisons as command centres and officials struggle to keep the state in control.
For now, the emergency gives Arévalo extra legal powers, but it does not solve the deeper problem. Guatemala’s prisons remain contested spaces, the gangs remain armed and organised, and the public is left watching whether the state can turn a short-term security response into lasting control.
