WHEN Eduardo's father came back to Guatemala after a spell in the United States, the tattoos up his arms gave away his roots in the mara (gang). Before long a rival gang had planted a knife in his back; when that failed to kill him they returned to finish him off in the street near his home. Eduardo (not his real name) was only eight at the time. But to avenge his father he joined his gang as a sicario (hitman), and killed his father's murderer. Eduardo is now trying to find out whether life can offer any of the happiness he says he has never known. Since January he has been studying computing with La Ceiba, an NGO. As for that murder: “I enjoyed it,” he says blankly.

The bullet scar on Eduardo's chest and the beaten right arm hanging limply by his side are signs of the violence that has come to engulf Guatemala and much of the Central American isthmus. No region on earth is more routinely murderous. Guatemala's rate of 46 murders per 100,000 people is more than twice as high as Mexico's, and nearly ten times greater than that of the United States. Honduras and El Salvador—the other two countries that make up Central America's “northern triangle”, as it is called—are more violent still (see chart in map). Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama, the quietest members of the group, have also seen violence increase in recent years, as has Belize.

These man-made tragedies are matched by natural disasters. Four of the seven Central American countries are among the 20 reckoned to be the most vulnerable in the world to destructive weather. Hurricanes, floods, landslides, earthquakes and volcanic eruptions are frequent and deadly events. They add to the steady grind of poverty and malnutrition.

Costa Rica and Panama are much better off and better governed than their neighbours. Costa Rica is one of the world's oldest democracies; life expectancy there is on a par with the United States. The others have suffered torpid economic growth in the past decade. Nicaragua is the poorest country in mainland Latin America. Almost half of Guatemala's children are chronically malnourished—a rate worse than Ethiopia's, and said by the World Bank to be the third-worst in the world. The damage is visible. Eduardo the ex-sicario looks much younger than his 18 years; as he recounts his murderous apprenticeship, he shuffles child-sized shoes.

Political conflict compounds these problems. The civil wars that ravaged Central America in the 1970s and 1980s between dictators backed by the United States and guerrillas backed by the Soviet Union and Cuba are over, but a crippling polarisation of right and left remains. In 2009 the president of Honduras fell victim to a coup prompted by fears—or paranoia—about his ties to Venezuela's Hugo Chávez. This year will see a bitter election in Guatemala and a dubious one in Nicaragua, where Daniel Ortega will seek a third presidential term in violation of the constitution.

As if being battered by nature, bad government and youth gangs were not enough, Central America now finds itself thrust into the front line of the drugs trade and prey to big-time organised crime. Nearly all the world's cocaine is produced in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia. The biggest consumer is the United States, where the wholesale price of a kilo of the stuff, even full of impurities, starts at $12,500. The route to market used to run from Colombia to the tip of Florida, across the Caribbean. But the United States Coast Guard shut down that corridor by the early 1990s, and shipments switched to the Pacific coast of Mexico. Now Mexico, too, has increased the pressure on the traffickers, just as Colombia has done in the south.

Ever supple, the drugs business has sought new premises. Somewhere between 250 and 350 tonnes of cocaine—or almost the whole amount heading for the United States—now pass through Guatemala each year, according to American officials. Whereas a decade ago Central America seized less cocaine than either Mexico or the Caribbean, in 2008 it intercepted three times more than the other two combined. Mexico's Sinaloa, Gulf and Zetas mobs are now active through much of the isthmus, often with local allies. Unlike the Colombians, they pay their local help in drugs, not cash.

Overwhelmed in Panama

The impact has been lethal. Guatemala's murder rate has doubled in the past decade. In both Guatemala and El Salvador, the rate of killing is higher now than during their civil wars. Guatemala's government reckons that about two-fifths of murders are linked to the drugs business. Even Panama, much richer than many Central American countries and a favourite retirement spot for wealthy foreigners, has seen its murder rate almost double in the past three years.

As well as using Central America as a corridor, the traffickers are moving more of their operations there. “We went through a phase in which we made the mistake of seeing ourselves as a supply transit centre, so we just had to interdict. That's not enough. In Central America drugs are produced, processed and consumed,” says Laura Chinchilla, Costa Rica's president. In March, to official surprise, what looked like a Mexican cocaine factory was uncovered in Honduras.

As well as taking lives, insecurity carries a heavy economic cost. All in all, dealing with crime and violence costs Central America around 8% of its GDP, according to a report this month by the World Bank. In the most violent countries, cutting the murder rate by 10% could boost income growth per head by up to 1% a year, the bank reckons. Security-related costs are equal to around 4% of private businesses' sales. Alberto Díaz Lobo of Constructora Eterna, a building firm in Honduras, says his security bill has gone up about 20% in the past five years. Walmart recently moved some of its Central American operations from Guatemala to Costa Rica, partly because of higher insurance premiums caused by insecurity, according to a former manager.

In the northern triangle, weak law enforcement and tracts of wilderness make a perfect environment for organised crime. The Petén, a sprawling, sparsely populated jungle region in northern Guatemala, has become a landing zone for clandestine flights from Colombia and Venezuela. In the Laguna del Tigre national park lies a “cemetery” of more than 30 crashed light aircraft which had been used to ferry cocaine. (The drugs business is so profitable that aircraft are considered disposable.) Locals are paid by narcos to keep the runways open, and sometimes clear more themselves to attract business.

The government does not have the resources to police such an area. Under the peace agreement of 1996 that ended the guerrilla war, the country was supposed to slash the army and expand the police. Only the first happened. The army was cut by two-thirds, but the police force of 25,500 is less than half the size required, says Carlos Menocal, the interior minister. Last year Álvaro Colom, the president, declared a state of emergency in the northern department of Alta Verapaz and sent in the army. He claims that only two drugs flights have landed there since, whereas “before it was like an international airport”. The state of emergency was lifted in February. But Mr Colom concedes that there are still four areas of the country where the drug barons have “temporary control”. To recover them he would need 10,000 more soldiers and 15,000 extra police, he says.

Honduras ordered the army on to the streets of its cities in March; El Salvador did the same last September. Costa Rica abolished its armed forces in 1948. Its 11,000 police are “badly trained, badly armed and equipped and badly housed”, admits José María Tijerino, the interior minister. Plans to recruit an extra 1,000 officers a year for the next four years will still not be enough, he says. The entire force has two two-man helicopters. Its coastguard has a dozen second-world-war-era patrol boats to police two coasts and territorial waters that are 11 times bigger than the country's land area.

Education and the lack of it

Organised crime feeds on Central America's other weaknesses. In several of the countries these start with the economy. This has traditionally been based on the export of coffee and other crops. In the 1990s foreign investors set up textile factories to supply the United States market. Nevertheless, income per head in the northern triangle, plus Nicaragua, rose by 1.6% a year between 1995 and 2009, barely above the Latin American average of 1.5%. Central America's ties to the United States meant that it was badly affected by the recession. It also depends on imported oil and food. As commodity prices rose, poverty increased in the region even before recession struck.

By contrast with its neighbours to the north Costa Rica remains a success story, though not without problems. It is more egalitarian than the others, and since the 19th century has made an effort to educate its people. After opening up its economy in the 1980s, Costa Rica saw foreign direct investment and exports flourish. It is now home to an Intel silicon-chip plant, a cluster of medical-equipment manufacturers and back-office operations of multinationals such as Hewlett-Packard and Procter & Gamble. “This was an educated country that had no economic use for that education,” says Alberto Trejos of INCAE, a business school. “Now foreign investment has turned education into a key comparative advantage.” If Costa Rica faces a shortage of engineers and English-speakers, that is a problem of success. Panama is doing something similar by using its canal to turn itself into a regional business hub.

Contrast that with Guatemala, home to a third of Central America's 42m people. It has a few institutions that work reasonably well, such as the central bank and the private universities. But it has failed to invest in its people. Recent governments have made some effort. But the average Guatemalan has just 4.1 years of schooling. The shocking prevalence of malnutrition rises to up to 80% of children in some rural villages. The health and schooling of the 45% of the population who speak a Mayan language has been especially neglected. Mr Colom admits to “shame” over that, but few other Guatemalans seem to.

In a vicious circle of opportunity forgone, most Central American countries fail to generate enough jobs for their unschooled people. Only 27% of Central Americans (and just 10% of Nicaraguans) are enrolled in their national social-security systems, according to Miguel Gutiérrez Saxe, a Costa Rican economist who compiles regional data. The rest labour in the informal economy, or are among the 11% of youths who neither study nor work. This idleness feeds the maras: in El Salvador some 800 juveniles languish in jail, more than double the number in 2004. At least 15% of Central Americans (6m of them) have emigrated, most to the United States.

One way of injecting more dynamism into Central America's economies would be by improving transport links and cutting red tape. Astonishingly, it can be cheaper to ship goods to the United States from China than from Central America, according to a World Bank study. Border hold-ups and bottlenecks through towns mean that it can take up to five days for a truck to travel the 870km (540 miles) from Guatemala City to San José. Some 80% of Costa Rica's exports and imports, and a chunk of Nicaragua's, pass along a single-carriageway road and a modest wharf at the run-down Caribbean port of Limón.

But governments are now struggling just to maintain existing infrastructure. Central America has long suffered natural disasters. But these now seem to be more frequent—something its leaders attribute to climate change. After a severe drought in 2009, Guatemala suffered its worst recorded flooding last year; together these caused losses of $1.5 billion, according to Mr Colom. Between 2005 and 2009 natural disasters cost Costa Rica 0.8% of GDP, equivalent to around 18% of public investment.

States without cash

While the demands on governments multiply, their cash does not. Even by Latin American standards, the state in Central America is weak and poor. In Guatemala the tax take is just 10.4% of GDP. To reach Costa Rica's social indicators of 2010 would need a tax take of 18% for ten years, reckons Edelberto Torres Rivas, a consultant to the UN Development Programme.

But fiscal reform is a hostage to Guatemala's political deadlock, blocked by the country's powerful business lobby. Businessmen complain, reasonably enough, of government corruption and say that the civil service needs reform. But their implacable opposition to a modest cash-transfer programme for the poorest, implemented by Mr Colom's wife, Sandra Torres, betrays a complete lack of social solidarity. The contrast with Colombia is instructive. Álvaro Uribe, Colombia's stern former president, who made his country safer and also implemented a similar transfer programme, has become the hottest conference speaker in Central America. Businessmen in Guatemala last October loudly applauded his message about security; but when he exhorted them to pay their taxes, he was met with silence. Even in Costa Rica, “Tax evasion is the national sport,” says Ofelia Taitelbaum, the ombudsman.

That is partly because the better-off in Central America make private arrangements not just for health and education but for security. Private security guards are reckoned to outnumber the police and the army by a ratio of about five to one in Guatemala and four to one in Honduras. Everyone pays for protection, “including the poor, who pay for poor security”, according to Pedro Trujillo, a former colonel in the Spanish army turned political scientist at Francisco Marroquín University in Guatemala City. He found that in the 12 years following Guatemala's peace accords in 1996, 110 private security firms were registered in the country; the previous three decades had seen fewer than 40. In San Pedro Sula, the economic capital of Honduras, the chamber of commerce reports that security is the biggest cost for its members after manpower and electricity.

Explore the drugs paradox north of the region with our interactive map of Mexico's traffic routes, "cartels" and violence

Change can come only through political consensus. But Central America's political systems are nearly all dysfunctional. Nicaragua's democracy has been castrated by Mr Ortega, whose party orchestrated widespread fraud in local elections in 2008. In Guatemala, no political party has held office for more than one presidential term since democracy was restored in 1986. By contrast, in El Salvador it was only in 2009 that the opposition managed to end two decades of rule by Arena, a powerful conservative party. The new president, Mauricio Funes, is a moderate left-winger; he must battle against his own party, many of whose leaders are pro-Cuban. Honduras has paid a high price in lost aid money and investment for its political strife.

Panama has built an increasingly solid democracy since American troops overthrew General Manuel Noriega in 1989, but its politics have been marred by corruption and high-handedness. Even Costa Rica faces political problems. A stable two-party system broke down when one of the parties, the Social Christians, imploded after corruption scandals. Lacking a majority in Congress, Ms Chinchilla faces a struggle to win approval for extra taxes to pay for her modest security build-up.

Not everything is gloomy in Central America. The Central American Common Market has survived political conflicts among the neighbours—including an incursion into Costa Rican territory last year by Nicaraguan troops. Most countries are making efforts to respond to the security threat. Honduras last year passed an asset-seizure law, copied from Colombia. In Guatemala, a UN-sponsored anti-impunity commission, known by its Spanish initials as CICIG, has secured such innovations as wiretaps, plea-bargaining and witness protection. But the country still lacks a computerised intelligence platform. The World Bank cites estimates of 2m guns in the country, of which less than 10% are legally registered. And Francisco Dall'Anese, CICIG's head, has faced a campaign of vilification from businessmen.

Uncle Sam's role

Not surprisingly, Central America's leaders think the United States should do more to help tackle the consequences of its own demand for cocaine. Though the region is more violent than both Mexico and Colombia, Central America receives much less American aid. The Central American Regional Security Initiative, the latest aid scheme, offers just $260m over three years to the seven countries. “A drop in a bucket,” says Óscar Álvarez, Honduras's security minister. “Costa Rica is not a country that goes begging,” says Ms Chinchilla. But she is frustrated that when the Americans come to help, “they always arrive late. When they give significant aid it's when countries have been invaded by organised crime. They think Nicaragua, Costa Rica and Panama are OK.” Seizures of drugs are neither a good measure nor a good solution to the problem, she says.

The Obama administration has at least shown “an understanding that the problem isn't just ours,” says Mr Colom. “They are looking for a different plan, because the plan they already have isn't working,” he believes. Though American officials stress that the strategy will come from Central America and not from Washington, there are some signs of a shift in thinking. William Brownfield, a former ambassador to Colombia who is now the State Department's top anti-drug man, visited Guatemala, Honduras and El Salvador in February, his first trip in his new job. Mr Obama visited El Salvador in March, when he announced a modest increase in anti-drugs aid to the region, if Congress agrees. There is a feeling that in the isthmus, aid delivers “more bang for your buck” than in Mexico or Colombia, one diplomat suggests. With cash scarce in Washington, aid may be redistributed rather than increased.

Some things are getting better in Central America. But the problem, as an American diplomat in the region says, is that whereas the improvements are linear, the threats are growing exponentially.