Fight Club

When I first saw this story, all I could say was "That's fucked up."

The gist of the story is that, in a small town outside Guatemala City, three criminals kidnapped a local official. He attacked the driver because he thought they were going to kill him, and the locals realized what was going on. Two of the men got away and the townspeople grabbed the one bad guy left.

They took him to the municipality to demand action be taken, but also wondering what to do with the man. This isn't all that rare in Guatemala, towns take the law into their own hands all the time. But as the mob was standing out there holding this man, another man walked by. That man was accused of having scammed some of the locals.

So here's what they did: they caught the other guy, beat him up a little bit, and then forced the two of them to fight each other. One of the men was beating up on the other pretty good, was choking him, doused him with gasoline, and lit him up after someone gave him a match.

Cops finally showed up and arrested the man that "won." The townspeople demanded that this criminal (he was the kidnapper) be released since he had won. Cops said "Umm, no" and took him away. There was no mention of what happened to the guy that was lit on fire (this is a standard hiccup in Guatemalan journalism).

The inevitable question: if the town took the law into their own hands, should the guy be allowed to go, as they wanted him to be, because he had been "put through trial" by the town? Because he "won" the fight?

These are the questions we tackle in Guatemala, we hope you'll still come and visit.