2023-06-18 06:58:37
In Argentina, organized crime takes a particular form, compared to the rest of the countries in the Latin American region. “The idea of criminal organizations is diffuse. When these terms are mentioned, there are those who think of the drug cartels in Colombia, but the Argentine criminal reality is very different from all that,” explains Rosario prosecutor Luis Schiappa Pietra.
This difference manifests itself in several ways. One of them is, in most of the Argentine provinces, the absence of extreme violence on the part of criminal groups. As an example of the seriousness of the region: in Colombia, more than 11,000 people were murdered in 2022. In contrast, in Argentina, just over 2,000 homicides were committed in 2021. The Insight Crime Foundation points out that the country “does not suffer the high levels of violence that affect other Latin American countries”.
The second difference, as explained by CONICET researchers Carolina Sampó and Ludmila Quirós, in their text Criminal structures in Argentina and state cooperation initiatives to combat their advance, is that here “criminal structures are not able to control entire cities, but rather that are concentrated in specific enclaves that are usually poor and marginal, such as villas”.
In Mexico, different mafia organizations have schools, soup kitchens, hospitals and clubs under their control, with the aim of obtaining the support of the communities. These types of situations are registered in Veracruz or Tamaulipas and are not new. “There have been several historical examples of criminal groups from Mexico providing essential goods to local communities, especially during the recent coronavirus pandemic,” says Insight Crime.
Therefore, while Argentine institutions continue to function as normal, and criminal groups are a marginalized exception, in other parts of the region the cartels have taken full control of the territory, becoming the institutional authority that not only organizes the business of drugs, but instead gets involved in aspects such as schooling, becoming the State themselves. Faced with the absence of state intervention, criminal organizations position themselves as the dominant hegemony, which is “accepted” by the communities by getting involved and taking charge of other necessary and non-criminal activities.
This provision exists in Argentina, although on a smaller scale, in the form of a tithe to the lord (instead of feudal, narco). The prosecutor indicates: “The gangs are closely linked to their territories and their objectives are very focused on obtaining territorial control to appropriate the points of sale. Once appropriated from the government of public security, they install their own logic of administration of the public space. They have managed to establish the fear and insecurity of many of the social actors and businesses and, in general, they sell them ‘tranquility’ in exchange for money that they periodically withdraw”.
Another manifestation of the differences between criminal groups in Argentina and those in the region is that, here, as explained by the researchers Sampó and Quirós, “there are not, nor have there been, large criminal gangs that have lasted over time,” but rather that “they began to emerged a few years ago” and “are usually characterized by being small groups that can form from a family bond”. The “classic” structure of criminal groups in Argentina are clans: “Entire families were consolidated around the drug business.” And a characteristic of them, key to explaining the lesser violence in the country, is that the clans, in general, the specialists indicate, “do not compete with each other.”
Finally, another difference to point out, also from the same CONICET investigation, is that “drug trafficking, the main business of many criminal organizations, is not the central space that (the organizations) have in Argentina.”
They are not just drug dealers. Although one of the main activities of criminal organizations is drug trafficking, this area is not the only one. The particularity of the drug business is that it moves other illegal markets. In the Latin American region there are three large cocaine producers, Colombia, Peru and Bolivia, and the organizations whose main income is the sale of drugs “carry out activities related to arms trafficking, human trafficking, merchandise smuggling and the illegal exploitation of natural resources”, explain the researchers Sampó and Quirós.
They indicate that “asset laundering is transversal to all manifestations, since it is the only way to insert the money generated illegally in the legal market.” Criminal activities are diverse, and as indicated by the Federal Plan to Address Organized Crime 2021-2023, they include environmental crimes; auto theft and the sale of auto parts; arms sales; the smuggling of grains and merchandise; and cybercrimes such as identity theft, online sexual harassment or theft of personal data.
It is worth mentioning that the Plan considers “the reuse of assets seized and confiscated in criminal proceedings by federal police and security forces” to curb the development of the criminal economy. They point out the need to modernize the forces “to prevent and ward off complex crime in the 21st century” and to implement comprehensive control “by air, land and water at the borders.”
Argentine criminals. So: how do Argentine criminal organizations act? Of course there is drug trafficking, but Argentina has a “predominant role as a center for money laundering and a point of transit and consumption of drugs,” indicates Insight Crime. “The clans begin to build alliances with police and judicial forces to ensure impunity, but they also weave networks with local political power, for example mayors, which grants them protection in the illegal business, as well as mutual gains,” say the researchers. .
In addition, “they benefit from their border position. It is believed that Argentina ‘imports’ a good number of Paraguayan and Dominican women for brothels”. They also help to enter migrants through unauthorized passages, with prior payment of bribes, and then “transfer them to the Once neighborhood of Buenos Aires.”
The Triple Border between Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay is the perfect scenario for illegality. It is a wooded space, with an extension of 2,500 km2, impossible to cover in its entirety, at least in its current state. “Argentina shares a border with drug-producing countries,” says Insight Crime. And to this is added “the more than 5,300 kilometers of the Atlantic coast to the southwest (which) are home to numerous important ports, such as the one in the capital, Buenos Aires, through which significant amounts of illicit goods and drugs circulate from and to international markets.
However, “not all the ‘problem’ –in this case, the Rosario– is confined to the ‘narco’. When drug trafficking is spoken of as the great scourge and the only one responsible for the violent acts that we see daily in the media, a cut-off view of the phenomenon is offered and the social realities behind the problems are hidden”, affirms the Rosario prosecutor. Luis Schiappa Pietra.
“To begin with, in Rosario we have a very particular situation: a very high degree of social exclusion that is combined with a group of boys and girls from the urban peripheries with a high dose of violence in their social relationships, and marginality in their affective ties and coexistence. They see in the retail sale of drugs, and in the extortion of businesses, a quick way out of the difficulties that life throws at them. In the vast majority of cases, many of these young people act on their own and do not belong to cartel-style criminal structures, ”he explains.
He continues: “Many of these groups have, rather, an affiliation generated by their friendships and neighborhood ties. They usually have some reference to ‘historical’ leaders. These referents maintain their control associated with fear or admiration. And in addition, they have the power of fire in the streets ”.
crime continuity. You will wonder why with all this data that describes the management of the organizations, they continue with their operation without problems. The two central variables are, as the prosecutor explains: on the one hand, the lack of a strong State that manages to impose its power in the territory, and on the other, the survival of a business that generates (illegal) profits that are later placed in formal markets.
“In Rosario these two variables are out of control. The illicit business generates money that is ‘laundered’ very quietly. A large part of that money is later injected into businesses of a different nature; real estate has been one of those areas affected by this injection of illicit money, with more than one case that we have brought to trial”, he explains.
“To this is added a dismembered police force, with phenomenal collusion with illicit markets. In many cases they participate as one more member and under the orders of other more relevant criminal actors. It is striking to see so many policemen who, far from being the ones running the business, thus seeking a kind of illegal regulation of these markets, do not even aspire to that, and are only seen trying to obtain something from those profits”, he affirms.
“In a particular case, several police officers had investigated a criminal association, an investigation that led to the arrest of several of its members. One of those agents who was investigating that group was part of the opposing gang,” says Schiappa Pietra. “This year, with a new complaint, in both cases the local jurisdiction intervened and tried them for crimes under provincial jurisdiction. This is part of the weakness of the State ”, he concludes.
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