Violent Drug-Trafficking Queenpin Now Facing Conspiracy Charges in the US

The arrest of a female drug trafficker in Guatemala, who allegedly used murder to protect her business, has brought an end to the criminal career of a powerful and violent leader, according to recently unsealed court documents. 

Marta Julia Lorenzana-Cordon was arrested last April in Zacapa, a Guatemalan province that borders Honduras, and is facing drug conspiracy charges in the U.S. and a minimum 10-year sentence. She was picked up in a town just off the Transoceanic Highway, a road used by smugglers to move tonnes of cocaine concealed in trucks from the Honduran coastline to the Guatemalan capital and north toward the United States. 

At the time, little was known about her role in her family’s drug trafficking group, known as the Lorenzanas, which at its height was one of the most “brutal and destructive” drug trafficking organizations in the world, according to U.S. prosecutors. 

But new evidence recently made public in her indictment and a memo justifying her pretrial detention alleges that she was a violent leader in her family’s drug-trafficking business. 

Lorenzana-Cordon’s father Waldermar and brothers Eliu and Waldermar (junior) were extradited and convicted in the U.S., and her brothers are serving life in prison for the drug business they ran from Guatemala, working with the Sinaloa Cartel to the north and Colombian trafficking groups to the south. They both worked with a number of other women, many of who ultimately testified against them in the U.S.

When Marta was arrested last year, there was confusion as to her importance in the family business. But it seems that her arrest so many years after her dad and brothers was because she built different networks to theirs and kept a low profile—the evidence gathered to prosecute her male family members didn’t directly incriminate her.

“I don’t know that it’s easier for women to stay under the radar so much as many of them are smarter than their male counterparts and choose to stay under the radar,” said Bonnie Klapper, a former U.S. prosecutor and criminal lawyer who has handled many cases involving female traffickers.

“The women also don’t have the same macho desire to be thought of as the biggest and baddest. They just want to get the job done,” she said.

It was only following the investigation and arrest of her husband, a notorious and violent trafficker called Jairo Estuardo Orellana Morales, or “el Pelon” (baldy), in May 2014, that Marta’s drug-trafficking activities and connections became clearer, sources close to her case told VICE World News. 

The two got married when he was in detention, but had long been a couple and shared a child as well as drug-trafficking contacts. They both also used violence to further their business interests.

“The [Lorenzana] organization used violence to maintain and grow its power in the drug trafficking community, and the government has evidence personally implicating the defendant [Lorenzana-Cordon] in acts of violence, including murder,” said the memorandum requesting her pretrial detention. 

The investigation and arrest of Lorenzana-Cordon was no doubt expedited by her husband’s extradition to the U.S. in 2015. The case against him has stalled, but it’s fair to speculate that he might also have shared evidence against his wife with U.S prosecutors during his time in custody.

The arrest of Lorenzana-Cordon, who was not well-known in Guatemala, flags the growing participation and visibility of women in Latin American organized crime, on which VICE World News has reported extensively. Her extradition suggests that Lorenzana-Cordon did not face any trafficking charges at home in Guatemala.