Santiago, Chile (CNN) — On May 1, Francisca Sandoval, a young Chilean reporter, traveled to a commercial district in the capital, Santiago, to cover a union rally to commemorate International Workers’ Day. It would be her final report.
During the demonstration, violent clashes broke out between local gangs, protesters and the police. A group of armed gang members fired, leaving three people injured, including Sandoval. The 29-year-old journalist died 12 days later.
Sandoval’s death has highlighted an astronomical rise in deadly violence in the country. Similar incidents have long plagued countries like Colombia and Brazil, but in Chile it is a fairly new phenomenon. The data varies among public entities in Chile, however, all present alarming figures. Between 2016 and 2021, homicides increased by 40%, according to the Undersecretary for Crime Prevention of the Ministry of the Interior and Public Security. Meanwhile, the National Prosecutor’s Office found that murders increased 66% between 2016 and 2020.
As homicides and the use of firearms continue to multiply, public safety has become one of the main challenges of the newly elected president. Gabriel Boric and his government. Fighting a powerful influx of drug-related criminal activity into the cities, as well as drug traffickers who are exploiting historic tensions between the state and indigenous communities in the south, and who are now gaining control of territory amid a outbreak of violence.
Politically and economically stable, the country has long had low crime rates compared to the rest of the region. Chile’s homicide rate is 3.6 per 100,000 inhabitants for 2021, according to Insight Crime, a think tank that provides information on organized crime in the Americas.
Compared to Venezuela, at 40.9 per 100,000 inhabitants; Colombia, with 26.8 per 100,000; and Brazil, with 18.5, Chile still ranks low in the regional comparison, according to the organization’s annual homicide report. In the United States, the homicide rate reached 7.8 per 100,000 in 2020, marking the largest annual increase in the homicide rate in 100 years, according to data from the US Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. USA (CDC).
Chileans call for justice at a vigil for the late journalist Francisca Sandoval in Santiago on May 13.
However, Insight Crime’s report also states that “while Chile long avoided the kind of criminal activity and gangs that plagued other countries, that no longer appears to be the case.”
Chile’s Department of Crime Prevention reported that homicides increased by almost 30% between 2019 and 2020, with police attributing the increase to the pandemic, the economic slowdown, and the resulting increase in illicit trade. Although homicides fell by 21.8% between 2020 and 2021, cumulative figures since 2017 show an overall increase in the homicide rate.
“The situation in Chile is worrying,” Juan Pablo Luna, a political scientist at the Institute of Political Sciences at the Catholic University of Chile, told CNN, adding that he is not alone as he descends into violence.
“Countries where the state is relatively strong and with solid democracies were supposed to be immune to this type of scenario, but now we see that it was an illusion,” Luna said.
He pointed to Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Ecuador, among others in the region, which have also faced rising crime.
Ecuador’s statistics are particularly striking, with an 84.4% increase in homicides in the last year, according to the country’s National Institute of Statistics and Census. In Uruguay, the Ministry of the Interior recently said that there was an increase of more than 33% in one year. In Peru, the government declared a state of emergency in Lima and the Callao region earlier this year to combat crime, primarily targeting contract killings. And in Paraguay, contract killings also rose significantly last year, according to Insight Crime.
Experts attribute the rise in violence in the region to the growing reach of global criminal networks.
Alejandra Mohor, a sociologist at the Center for Public Security Studies of the Institute of Public Affairs of the University of Chile, told CNN that “we are witnessing a greater infiltration of international organized crime in these countries.”
“Due to globalization, the type of crime we see has changed. In extremely violent countries like Colombia or Venezuela, you might not notice it, but in Chile, Ecuador, Peru, Bolivia and probably Argentina, the level of specialization of this criminal business is having a big impact because it’s new,” Mohor said.
However, this expansion in Chile has not happened overnight.
A police officer patrols the Yungay neighborhood of Santiago in April.
New criminal strategies have been progressively developed over the past decade, but authorities might not anticipate how badly it would affect society, experts say.
In 2011, for example, the Forensic Medical Services of the Santiago Metropolitan Region warned in a report that weapons-related murders were on the rise.
“The increase in deaths by firearm among young people in our country is a phenomenon that should draw our attention,” the report states.
But it didn’t gain much traction with law enforcement or city officials, Mohor said. As the violence grew, public policies implemented by successive governments failed to address the basic needs of many low-income neighborhoods, which in turn provided fertile ground for criminal groups to settle and drug trafficking to proliferate.
“We have people who live in segregated areas, far from their place of work, without good public transportation, without schools or health services available. And when the state is absent, organized crime begins to fill that void,” he said.
In a 2021 Urban Violence Research Network article, researchers said the inequality in Latin America felt by the poor and working class with “few other options for survival” makes them “easy recruits for the drug trade.”
“Cocaine trafficking integrates marginalized territories that have been abandoned by the state to global markets and acts as a motor for development,” the organization said.
Paradoxically, prosperity is also seen as a cause of increased violence. More money means more drugs, according to Luna, and the commodity boom that favored South America until 2014 helped illicit businesses flourish.
The increased consumption of drugs also followed the increase in purchasing power, attracting new actors to the illegal economy and consolidating drug trafficking routes in the south.
All these factors triggered new territorial disputes between gangs and more violence in Chile, as well as in Uruguay, Paraguay and Ecuador.
“Surrounded by drug dealers”
NG, who is not fully identified by CNN for security reasons, lives in the impoverished neighborhood of El Bosque in Santiago and has felt that transformation firsthand. The 28-year-old has lived with her mother in the same house since she was born, but now she barely recognizes her block.
“When I was a child, my main concern was that my mother would find me playing in the street instead of doing my homework when I came home. Now I hardly go out,” she said. “We live surrounded by drug traffickers.”
Most of the time, she says that she is afraid.
“Every day we hear fireworks, because traffickers use them as a sign that drug shipments have arrived, because there is a narco-funeral, or simply to cover up the noise of the shooting. We rarely see the police, we cannot live in peace,” he said.
NG said that insecurity has worsened since the covid-19 pandemic began. Experts explain that the economic crisis, the increase in migrant smuggling along the Bolivian-Chilean border, and police corruption have only exacerbated the problem, allowing organized crime to take on a whole new dimension.
Chilean police oversee a large seizure of drugs, including cocaine and cannabis, in April.
Last September, the Chilean Drug Trafficking Observatory warned of the emergence of two Mexican cartels (Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation) and a Colombian cartel (Gulf Cartel) in Chile. Mexican cartels have also increased their operations in Argentina, Colombia, Peru and Ecuador, according to Ernesto López Portillo, coordinator of the public security program at the Universidad Iberoamericana in Mexico City.
Another notorious cartel that has also now made its mark in Chile is the Venezuelan Tren de Aragua, one of the most dangerous criminal organizations on the continent, according to Insight Crime and Ximena Chong, chief prosecutor in Santiago. Its leaders have taken advantage of the migration crisis in the north to tighten their control over new territories, according to Insight Crime.
To cement their control, transnational criminal groups are adapting to each new country by making new alliances with local gangs, Mohor explained.
“We are no longer talking regarding drug trafficking or micro-trafficking,” Chong told CNN. “They are organizations that function as holding companies, with a variety of illicit activities: hired killers, illicit firearms trafficking, extortion, human trafficking, sexual exploitation and more.”
In this context, many South American countries do not have the means to adequately address the problem, Chong said, as the tactics of criminal groups are evolving faster than the ability of many countries to investigate them. Chile, for example, lacks specialized police forces, innovative policing technologies, and adequate witness protection programs. All this, added to corruption, represents enormous obstacles to prosecute and sanction criminal groups, added Chong.
“We need to develop new prosecution strategies that go beyond specific criminal acts, especially considering that, at an international level, we are seeing criminal organizations permeating public services,” he said.
The day following Sandoval, the Chilean journalist, was shot, a man with a criminal record for drug trafficking was arrested and has since been charged with her murder, Chilean media reported. The weapon he allegedly used has not yet been found, however, authorities have established that the bullet was a 40-caliber bullet. The presidential delegate for the Santiago Metropolitan Region said the shooting was related to organized crime and poor gun control. strict, two issues that the government is keen to address.
“States are completely incapable of dismantling transnational organized crime,” said López Portillo.
“This is affecting the health of democracies and weakening the already fragile rule of law. And the countries that had less violence are not exempt from this reality because criminal markets have no borders and never will.”