"Every man needs a wife, a horse and a gun." - Guatemalan campaign slogan

Mexican and Guatemalan drug traffickers arguing about a horse race in a rural border town began a series of gunbattles in which 17 people died, police said Dec. 1.

National police spokesman Donald Gonzalez said the traffickers were drinking in the town of Santa Ana Huista on Sunday afternoon when an argument broke out over bets on a horse race, leading to a pursuit in which the gunmen shot at each other with automatic weapons from trucks racing down roads near a remote part of the Mexican border.

Gonzalez said police even found grenade-launchers at the scene of the final shootout, along with hundreds of bullet cartridges and a truck with license plates from the Mexican state of Tamaulipas.

Guatemala is a key transit point for South American cocaine being smuggled into Mexico and the United States.