2024-01-12 04:18:45
What happened in Ecuador, in the last 72 hours, has caused a Latin American commotion, due to the level of violence with which organized crime has confronted the State and there is no doubt that the concern also reaches Chile, where a phenomenon is being experienced. rising criminal, worrying and also invisible.
Pablo Zeballos, former Carabineros intelligence officer and international consultant on organized crime and emerging phenomena, spoke with The counter regarding the crisis that the neighboring country is experiencing, where the Government of Daniel Noboa has declared war on organized crime. In his opinion, this should be looked at closely from Chile, where “a change in its traditional criminal paradigm” is being experienced.
The expert, who declares that he is not used to public exposure, begins the interview with a phrase from the Italian judge Paolo Borsellino, who died in an attack perpetrated by the Sicilian mafia: “Let’s talk regarding the mafia. He speaks on the radio, on television, every day. But talk regarding it“.
-To what extent is it good to talk regarding the criminal phenomenon? Because sometimes one thinks that the more public information is given regarding this phenomenon, the greater the mark, because criminal organizations also seek publicity. To what extent can it be beneficial or harmful to constantly talk regarding the phenomenon?
-I think it is a debatable topic. There are many views regarding the same thing. I think we have to differentiate two things. One is to talk regarding the problem and promote a criminal brand, especially with respect to its brutal actions, which is never ever recommended, because we run the risk of romanticizing certain figures: the number one boss, the most criminal subject, the most powerful hitman, the nice one, the brilliant guy, and that generates an imitative effect in certain segments of the population who see a form of transformation, growth and status. And two, organized crime itself, as an economic model, as a business model. Organized crime does not have the purpose of going around killing people. Its purpose is to enhance their illicit economies.
The most powerful tool you have is the power to corrupt. This tool of corruption of power is a logical sequence. If a very complex criminalized organization in a country, very strong in a country, manages to reach agreements with the political power, with the judicial power, I am not saying with the power itself, but with certain people who can fall into acts of corruption , the structures become more complex, they become compromised and what remains, incredibly, is a State that has criminalized power. The press has a super complex and dangerous obligation, which is to reveal these dark, corrupt relationships that may exist between established organized crime factions, in the process of legalizing their illicit economy, and the support they may have from certain sectors.
I personally believe that today we do have societies in Latin America, in Africa as well, even in some areas of Europe, that are absolutely committed to criminalization and where it is difficult – due to the level of penetration of the social fabric – to distinguish what is crime and what not.
-In Ecuador, directly, organized crime challenged the State. The question that arises is how the relationship of force between the State and crime will occur. What do you observe regarding the process in Ecuador?
-I have always thought that crime, when it begins to organize and articulate itself in a network, is when it begins to have the conditions that might mean organized crime. Not in the traditional concept of the Palermo Convention, which is very simple. What I feel is that the State has a very strong complexity, because while it tries to impose the State’s norms, the most criminalized sectors reach better agreements precisely with the State, which is a paradox.
Simply put, for some criminalized States, the best way to lower the homicide rate, for example, is to make an agreement with a criminal organization so that they help lower the homicide rate. This is a paradox, because it entails a super complex rethinking of our democratic systems. What one observes, unfortunately, in some areas and increasingly, is that criminal structures tend to form mega gangs, mega structures, which have several areas of criminal diversification. From the purely criminal, drug trafficking, to other forms that have a lot to do with the control of the territory.
-What capabilities does the State have versus organized crime?
-As that criminal from the Medellín cartel, Pablo Escobar, said, “either for silver or for lead.” I have always thought that States have to be strong enough to respond to the criminal threat, but the criminal threat has very special conditions. They are like the myth of the Hydra of Lerna, where one cut off one head but two immediately emerged, so it is never very clear how much damage the state structure can actually impact on organized crime. Organized crime also has the ability to stop its operations, pretend that it is the State that won the battle and thus have time to reorganize, reaffirm itself and increase criminal ties.
A very interesting case is the PCC (the First Capital Command) in Sao Paulo, which is a very emblematic case of a structure that emerges as a kind of defense of the inmates within the brutal prison system that it has to this day. today Brazil. After achieving unity within the prisons, following a terrible event in 1992 where 111 inmates died, this organization begins to transform, to take control, a positive control in quotes of the penitentiary facilities. That is, they let the jumbos –the parcels that family members give to people who are incarcerated– will reach their recipients, something that did not happen before, because other higher-ranking criminals stole them.
-The idea of the good bad guy…
-Clear. They began to put an end to acts of sodomy within the penitentiary centers and following that they transferred that system of control, security and protection to the favelas. Because of this, there was a terrible war between the state of Sao Paulo and the criminals, because the existence of these groups was unknown, but then the State – in 2006 – had to compromise with them. What organized crime has, unlike States, is extraordinary flexibility, an impressive capacity for adaptation, a continuous recruitment of personnel without barriers to entry, with the possibility of social mobilization, from very below, to the board of directors of the criminal organization. That is why criminal organizations have super useful conditions for prolonged struggles, they have conditions that allow them to negotiate with some States and they also have the capacity to instill terror or send messages to the population, to a certain target audience.
-Each act of this type of crime can be seen as a message.
-Indeed, these subjects work a lot on our hyperconnection. We are all looking at our social networks, today we have an abundance of information never seen before. These subjects have managed to take multifactorial advantage of this. They take advantage from many sides. For example, what happened in Ecuador when criminals entered a media outlet. This, keeping the proportions, had a similar impact to what happened on 9/11 in 2001 in the attack on the Twin Towers, where the whole world saw an impressive terrorist attack live, which generated a global impact that changed the world’s agendas. Keeping the proportion, what this criminal organization sought was to send a message to certain target groups.
In this case, I believe, it was towards the population. They wanted to show that they had a capacity that went beyond what had ever been said, because those guys who came in to take control of the live broadcast did not do it like kamikazes. They knew perfectly well that they had to do that, transmit the messages, show their firepower, and then when the police arrived, surrender without hostages, without violence, without blood, and return to their state of natural security, which is prison. So, the message generated a gigantic global impact and, on the other hand, we began to have other horrific messages that I really do not recommend that people fall into the morbidity of seeing it, which were focused on another target group: the police and law enforcement agencies. answer.
-And to whom was the message to kill live gendarmes or guards directed?
-If you observe, you realize that they affected the lowest-ranking police officers. The message there is ‘that it’s not worth fighting with us, it’s not worth it even for your salary, it’s not worth it even for your generals who are going to abandon you, who drive around in armored cars. Not worth it’. That is the message, and that message is very shocking because it makes them evaluate a very strong response from the Ecuadorian police or prison service when a companion was killed.
What is clear, yes, I don’t think there is much discussion, is that this criminal organization, both “Los Choneros” and 17 others that are operating today and that are taking advantage of this moment of chaos, send messages, and therefore The less we distinguish a direct message to the authorities and the population, of terror and another more directed to those who must be the regulators of crime, which are the police and the penitentiary services.
I believe that we must pay close attention to the possibility of replicating itself and that in any aspect of life. Criminals also replicate successful models, without necessarily having a connection with the original model.
-In one of your observations, you have made a kind of categorization regarding the stages of organized crime. And if we look at Chile, we are in the intimidation stage.
-In Chile we are having several processes that are happening in parallel and these processes are accompanied by uncertainty regarding the diagnoses, because we have very extreme diagnoses. I I think that yes or yes Chile is experiencing a change in its traditional criminal paradigm. You have been a journalist for many years, you covered crime 20 years ago and it is very different from what you are covering now, because there are codes that have also changed, there is a transformation that has had its origin or that has been added to social transformations that have occurred. the world, particularly Chile. We have a space where the world shuts down for a while with the pandemic, but crime continues to operate in the neighborhoods and, in fact, in some countries it worked much better than the State, probably in Chile as well.
What one observes or perceives on the street is that we have transformations in a model of extremely violent criminal activity, with many deaths, with people who are not only murdered but who are brutalized once morest their bodies. This makes us raise the hypothesis that we currently have a crisis due to the overlap of criminal structures: one wants to be superimposed on another, which might even be associated foreign structures that are trying to achieve and gain territory for an initial criminal activity and it is necessary to send several messages there. A message that is internal to them, that is, ‘look, we are here, we are already advancing’, to their bosses, to their controllers, a message that is for the structures with which they are fighting, it is a message to demonstrate capacity, but also – incredibly – it is a message for themselves, to show that it is a kind of motivation, it is like the song that the military makes when they go to training, it is ‘look, we are brave, we are unique, we are selected for a mission very special, they trust us etc.’.
-Do we then have a problem of violence and also of diagnosis?
-We have a lot of symbolism, I think we are in a complex stage, I think we have a serious lack of diagnosis, I think we have a large number of people giving opinions, which are valid, but we should have to give opinions or thoughtful solutions, dimensioning whether As a country or as a society we are prepared to make those decisions.
Normally one hears that it is said ‘hey, we are going to do this, we are going to block, we are going to close borders completely’ and the question, first, is if we have the capacity to do it and, second, if we will face the consequences of what we do. to be willing to accept that it was a decision that we had to make as a country.
-Where should the emphasis be placed?
-We have to pay close attention to controlling our territories, our neighborhoods, knowing what is really happening in the precarious settlements, in the camps, how we are entering those places, who are the ones who are really entering them. these places and how a different social fabric is being formed, which no longer requires the State.
I had the opportunity to visit one of the largest favelas in Rio called Paraisópolis. This is in the middle of the most exclusive neighborhood in Sao Paulo. 100,000 people live in 10 square kilometers and in that place justice, social work, job opportunities, and security are guaranteed by a criminal structure. That is what must be avoided, because people understand that that is their reality. It is very difficult for us to understand it, but when a person who lives permanently without seeing the presence of the State and a group comes along that assumes certain powers and those powers work, I am probably going to accept submission to that group, which is not the State, but it offers me a much stronger presence than the formalized State should offer me.
-How can we move forward as a country in the direction of protecting the territory to prevent it from being under the control of organized crime? What successful experiences have you been able to verify?
-It is complex for me to say, but I have seen very few successful experiences. It is unfortunate, but it is a reality and it is a reality that is a little demotivating, but that does not mean that we do not have to search for rather successful experiences. Criminal structures are normally powerful due to the level they have of intertwining with society, that is what makes a criminal structure different from other structures. A criminal structure is successful when it manages to get into the social mechanism and take advantage of that mechanism and participate in almost all the activity that formality symbolizes. In this logic, the structures, when generating a brand from an economic perspective, a well-known, reputed, valued brand, have several options for moving forward, especially if they convert it into a franchise. One can see that there are megastructures, but in reality those megastructures are multiple groups that agreed to agreements to integrate and occupy a brand and in this way gain territory.
-How are these megastructures formed? Are we talking regarding a great poster?
-Undoubtedly these megastructures have a headquarters, so to speak, they have a board of directors normally with a fairly charismatic or quite bloody leader or a born murderer or a brilliant rooster or a person who is not a born murderer, who comes from the police world. and that he made a change in the discipline, but there are always some leaders and they advance. The key thing is to understand what are the conditions that allow this structure to advance in a society, because the only thing that is clear to us is that criminal organizations do not conceive of borders as we conceive them, where we know that we have to buy a plane ticket, buy a bus ticket, reach another border, show a passport. Crime does not conceive it that way, crime sees borders as a business opportunity. ‘Hey, you know what? Nobody controls the ports in Chile. Ready, let’s go there’, they are not interested in how they are going to enter, they are not interested in getting a passport. They go, they send someone to see which are the conditions that can be exploited, with what an alliance can be made or who should be deprived of that right and who should be corrupted, etc.
To counteract this, the first thing is that we must be very drastic with the issue of corruption, which is a facilitator of entry, strengthen not only our police forces, strengthen what historically in Latin America has been the generating entity of these megastructures: the prisons, and work together and achieve a diagnosis and understand that this is a State problem.
1705046876
#Chile #experiencing #change #criminal #paradigm
