El Hilo · My Cultura and iHeartPodcasts

De Guatemala a Colombia: la secta Lev Tahor busca hogar en los márgenes de América Latina

December 5, 2025·28 min·2 clips

How did the ultra-orthodox Lev Tahor sect operate for over a decade in Guatemala despite facing accusations of trafficking and forced pregnancy?

The trail reaches Colombia. That arrival lands heavily because, as the hosts explain, Colombia is already the sixth country crossed by Lev Tahor, after time in places including the United States, Canada, Mexico, and Guatemala. Guatemala is where the story slows down. According to the guest, the group stayed there for more than a decade while complaints about abuse, minors being forced into marriage, adolescent pregnancies, and restricted freedoms kept coming up. The timeline is grim because it is not quick. Early complaints appear around 2015 and 2016, grow by 2019, and keep moving through the years instead of ending as one contained scandal. Former members took the accusations outside the community. Some who left and had Canadian or United States nationality went back to their countries and said their freedoms had been restricted, while relatives were still inside. In Guatemala, authorities did little for years. The guest connects that inaction to a political and cultural mood shaped by conservative governments, sympathy toward Israel, and anxiety about being seen as antisemitic. That distinction got muddy. Officials and local authorities, in this telling, often saw the group mainly through its Jewish identity, without sitting with its anti-Zionist position or the accusations against it. That fear mattered. If authorities acted hard, they worried they could be accused of persecuting Jews for being different, and that charge carried weight because Israel was treated as a strategic ally. Then 2024 shifts the story. In November, people from the sect went to Guatemala's Public Ministry and reported the abuses they said they were suffering. The episode stays careful. It does not turn Lev Tahor into a spectacle. It follows the harder thing: how institutions freeze when religion, geopolitics, national self-image, and child protection all collide. Colombia becomes the next pressure point in a Latin American pattern that already has vulnerable people, official caution, and serious allegations in the same room.

As heard by us

A sober regional look at Lev Tahor, abuse allegations, and the official hesitation that let concerns follow the group across borders.

El Hilo follows Lev Tahor from its long stay in Guatemala to Colombia's concern that the group may try to establish another foothold. The episode centers on allegations that have followed its leaders across countries, including trafficking, forced pregnancy, abduction, abuse,…

Read the full review in PlayNext →

Listen to the show on

Apple Podcasts Spotify

Play clips from this episode More from El Hilo