Democracy and organized crime in Argentina
By: Hugo Macchiavelli - 05/04/2023
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Democracy in Argentina was recovered 40 years ago, after the military dictatorship that lasted from 1976 to 1983. Democracies in some Latin American countries are still too young. Imperfect and immature. An ideal context for the advance of Transnational Crime (in the form of mafias that include criminal, terrorist and drug trafficking organizations), in the same way that it occurred in Europe during the 20th century. To think about the progress of Organized Crime in Argentina (and in the region), it is interesting to observe the note by journalist and writer Arturo Santamaría Gómez in the publication in Noroeste.com about Mexico State Narco, which locates the beginning of Organized Crime after of the Condor Plan of 1975-1976. The note underscores that "The cleanup operation of the DEA, the North American anti-narcotics agency,
The case of the Sinaloa cartel spreading in the region is an example. Its advance and ramifications reached Argentina. A few months ago I wrote for La Nación, the outlet where I work, an interview with Javier Cardona Ramirez, alias Jota, a drug lord who collaborated with the DEA while he was imprisoned for twenty years in this country. He knows the subject like few others and spoke about the advance of drug trafficking in the region and, in particular, in Argentina. He considers that the main cartels take advantage of the corruption of the governments that negotiate with those organizations that have large sums of money; and that especially the Sinaloa Cartel was responsible for the carfentanil that arrived in the country in recent months and claimed the lives of more than 25 users. The event was known as Gate 8,
Something similar happened in Colombia after the death of Pablo Escobar Gaviria. Since the persecution -and disarticulation- to a large extent of the Medellín and Cali cartels, drug trafficking has fragmented into the so-called BaCrin (Criminal Gangs). Its leaders expanded within Latin America that continued with the legacy of "El Patrón del Mal" in the region, especially in Mexico. From the Colombian leadership, there was a predominance of the Mexican drug trafficker. The data on organized crime in the Aztec country reached a record that exceeded what happened in Colombia in the 80s and 90s. The brutality of the bloodiest crimes in the early years of the two thousand could not be avoided by the self-defense groups and much least by the security forces or the Mexican military. An example is what happened with the Los Zetas cartel,
The advance of drug trafficking in Paraguay and Bolivia is also notable and includes its penetration of local governments. Some sources and analysts point out that the conflict in Peru is stirred up by the followers of Evo Morales and that behind it is the power of organized crime and drug trafficking. Something similar has happened in Argentina. The advent of democracy did not mean a fight against the mafias. The first president of this democratic period in Argentina was Raúl Alfonsín. He had a catchphrase to defend the system: "With democracy you can eat, heal and educate." The phrase neglected the advance of Transnational Organized Crime.
These days, the film Argentina 1985, which recalls the trial of the military junta in the 1980s, continues to collect awards. However, little is said in relation to a pending and increasingly dangerous subject such as organized guerrillas, with subversion so closely linked to guerrilla groups such as the FARC, ELN (from Colombia) or Sendero Luminoso (from Peru) that continue to operate in the region with militancy and indoctrination. Argentina has neglected this disastrous advance and, to a great extent, has been complicit. The neglect of the State and poverty are necessary conditions for the penetration of Organized Crime and Terrorism that propose large sums of money. I will mention some examples:
The first arms sale to Iran occurred during the Alfonsín government in the 1980s. The event was known as Irangate. Alfonsín's government was succeeded by Menem's in the 1990s. During that decade international terrorism advanced; the bombing of the Israeli Embassy in 1992, the same year that arms trafficking to Croatia was detected. Menem was denounced for arms trafficking to Ecuador, Croatia and Bosnia Herzegovina in the middle of the Yugoslav war and in the middle of Ecuador's war against Peru. He was revealed by a journalistic work: justice echoed, there was condemnation in several instances. However, in 2018 he acquitted the defendants, including former President Menem, for the time delayed in the investigation.
On March 17, 1992, the Israeli Embassy and consulate exploded. There were 22 dead and 242 wounded. It was the first international terrorist attack that our country suffered.
Two years later, on July 18, 1994, the headquarters of the Israelite Mutual Association, AMIA, was blown up, with at least 85 dead and hundreds injured. Behind both events was international terrorism. The Hezbollah organization was accused. The same one that is suspected was visited by the crew of the plane of the Emtrasur company that still remains in Argentina. At the beginning of the Menem government, there was a cover-up of this fact according to what was investigated by the justice system. It was the same president who lost his son Carlitos Juniors in an air tragedy that was investigated as an accident.
The cover-up of Iranian officials accused of being responsible for the AMIA attack was the basis for the complaint filed by prosecutor Alberto Nisman, who was on the verge of suing Cristina Fernández de Kirchner and other officials for the so-called Memorandum of Understanding with Iran. Argentine justice investigates Nisman's death as murder.
In the early 2000s, the era of the Kirchners began, who have been in government for four terms from 2003 to the present. In these twenty years, deaths from Organized Crime in forms of drug trafficking and terrorism have multiplied. In the same way as the income of funds from this criminal world. These days the trial for the Antonino Wilson case will begin, who was discovered entering a suitcase with 800 thousand dollars from Venezuela. That money was one of the last shipments of Chavismo funds (believed to come from the PDVSA oil company) and was destined for the Kirchners' political campaign. Like several of the checks that were discovered after the raids on laboratories where they discovered ephedrine being exported to Mexico.
In the two almost uninterrupted decades of the K government, facts of an advance of drug trafficking like never before in our country were revealed. Some of the events that are publicly known today, such as the threat to the player Lionel Messi (with the shooting at the supermarket of his wife's family) and the new type of murder of minors, are just the tip of an iceberg that does not show what What happens below the surface. Impunity emulates the phrase of Pablo Escobar Gaviria when he bought the politicians and officials of Colombia; Silver or Lead, he said. The same thing happens in Rosario when police stations or businesses that do not accept to work for the Mafia are shot at.
While this is happening, the public stage is titled by the stories widely spread among the media of the so-called causes of Corruption K: Roads or Public Works (for which Cristina Fernández received her first sentence of six years in prison for Fraud against the Administration public); The money route K; Hotesur and Los Sauces, Cuadernos de las Coimas, Memorandum with Iran, among others.
But little is said about the complicity and laziness of various officials of this government in the advance of Terrorism or Transnational Organized Crime. At this point, it is worth asking if Argentina is on its way to becoming a Narco-state. There are those who speak of the Mexicanization of our country.
As I write these lines, federal judge Sandra Arroyo Salgado, widow of prosecutor Nisman, says that she was threatened and told that she would end up like her husband if she messed with drug trafficking. And that in one of her cases she discovered an operation of “The Sinaloa Cartel in Argentina. A DEA report corroborated this. As a judge, she was able to find out that a Mexican from that cartel in Argentina was responsible; Together with Argentine Customs personnel and other government officials, they were part of a drug container transport bound for Yucatan, Mexico, to end up in Europe,” she said in an interview on the La Nación + channel.
Below is a list of facts that are decisive to understand this progress. These events were described by the undersigned in the lecture given, whose link follows: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=X43a9GdjMxc&list=UULFGxN7yeT3RkHX3WdGxaKlsQ&index=18
The idea of the Narco-state was stripped naked from the money of Organized Crime, perverting politics in all its phases. From the federal forces, prisons, armed forces, judicial and government officials. The latest crimes that occurred in Rosario were ordered from jail. This week it was learned that a drug trafficker convicted of several crimes (including a homicide) bought a helicopter in Paraguay for an escape operation that was prevented by a joint effort by several prosecutors, including Diego Iglesias from the Narcocrime Prosecutor's Office. The prosecutor Cecilia Incardona and judge Nicolás Kreplak also intervened. Officials who were not bought by the Narcopolitics that follows in its wake. Let's review some cases to understand this process:
Argentina routinely uses half a ton of ephedrine for the local pharmaceutical industry. But since the entry of the Kirchners in 2003, it began to have a record of imports of chemical precursors that reached 20 tons until 2007. In other words, it increased by more than a thousand percent. Imagine that much of that ephedrine ended up in the hands of the Mexican cartels. The government of that country had put a control on that drug due to the advance of drug groups and chemical drug trafficking. The triple crime of General Rodriguez was a before and after in this advance. In 2008, they murdered Sebastián Forza, Leopoldo Bina and Damión Ferrón, three pharmaceutical businessmen linked to the trafficking of Ephedrine from laboratories that contributed to the K campaign. Checks were found to prove it. The unusual thing is that the then government minister was Anibal Fernández, he is the same one that these days is in charge of the Security and Justice portfolio. Many pointed out that behind this advance and organized crime was "the walrus." And that nickname corresponds to the minister.
The appearance of clandestine runways for planes that transport drugs in different areas of the country was another symptom while shipments multiplied through the so-called cocaine and marijuana routes. The so-called Hidrovía, which runs through Mesopotamia from the north to the center of the country, is the main source and route for drug traffickers; There they transport quantities of drugs that come from Mexico, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Paraguay and end up in Europe via shipments inside containers that they load with complicity in ports or on the high seas. This was demonstrated by several judicial cases in seizures in Europe on shipments that arrived from Buenos Aires.
The rise of Rosario Narco. The Argentine Sinaloa. The link of El sicariato emerges. The chain of organized crime that goes from recruiting little soldiers to transport drugs to laundering money on a large scale through investments in neighborhoods and boats. Everything works with complicity in each of the State checkpoints. At this point, both in the various customs and in the key logistics posts there are officials who work for the drug traffickers.
The plane of the Emtrasur company of Iranian-Venezuelan origin that was transporting Iranians who were detained in Argentina suspected of being terrorists is still in Buenos Aires. That flight, which was detected almost by chance, violated our airspace without drawing the attention of the local authorities. Before arriving in Argentina, he had been in Ciudad del Este, Paraguay. An area known as the Triple Frontier. The refuge for Hezbollah terrorist cells and other Organized Crime organizations. However, they were released by justice. Those sources confirmed to me that they could not verify one hundred percent that they were terrorists. Despite the fact that the US justice system investigates them for these reasons based on verification of their identities and membership in organizations of that origin.
Rosario in Santa Fe, the Conurbano in the province of Buenos Aires or the capital in the province of Córdoba represent the most visible part of the division of tasks and of the business that is only fought, in part, in its smallest form, such as the drug dealing The northern provinces of Argentina are the source of supplies, routes and clandestine laboratories. The central provinces are the ones that export to the international market and those that receive the investment funds in entire neighborhoods (as has happened with various condominiums in Santa Fe, Córdoba and Buenos Aires). In the south, Organized Crime has other forms more linked to business with the State.
However, in recent years, it has been discovered that chaos, disinvestment, social, political and economic crisis in fledgling democracies have called private ownership of land into question. This idea, also known as agrarian reform (in a postmodern version) proposes a new distribution of spaces for those who can possess it with the power of force and money. It is the hypothesis of the owners of the land with the intervention of various social, political, native and even terrorist groups. Some examples in Argentina are:
The pseudo-Mapuches that harass southern Argentina and southern Chile. With the so-called Maldonado Case, an attempt was made to blow up the Macri government due to his death, but Justice demonstrated that he drowned in the Santa Cruz River. The then Patricia Bullrich was able to overcome that obstacle despite the insistence of sectors of this government to accuse the previous government. I know the case well; I was the first journalist to enter that so-called Mapuche sacred territory when Maldonado was still being sought. The hooded advance in the usurpations with fire and violence. They threaten and use violence against the inhabitants under the slogan that this territory belongs to them. Behind these hooded men are foreign groups. And the lawyers who represent them are former Montoneros (the subversive group that waved the Peronist flag).
The emergence of La Tupac Amaru in Jujuy under the leadership of Milagro Sala, which received extraordinary amounts of funds from the State for the construction of houses that it never carried out, with complaints ranging from illegal association to coercion, threats and violence against those who did not obey their orders. dictatorial designs, hit to a great extent an entire sector of the population of the northern province of Jujuy. A few months ago I toured the province documenting these cases that were published on the La Nación TV channel.
The Peasant Movement of Santiago del Estero, MOCASE, is another example. In the province governed by the Zamora, who have shared feudal power over the years, there is a plague of complaints about the worst abuses by groups allied with the power of the day. MOCASE was born a few decades ago to defend itself against the usurpations that came from the power of the landowners. Today they have changed sides and support certain usurpations. You have to know the stories.
In 2006 I dedicated a chapter of a book called Tierras SA, under the title "Dear Santiago, stolen Santiago", alluding to the song by singer-songwriter Leo Dan (a native of those lands) who wrote a song called "Dear Santiago, adored Santiago" . In that book I recounted the abuse in the usurpations that peasants suffer. This continues until today: a couple of years ago I returned and the situation had worsened. I also told it in a TV investigative program called La Cornisa, very popular in Argentina. There are two emblematic cases to understand these abuses; the Tonani case and the Ardiles case, which were very well documented on his trip by Ambassador Armando Valladares together with Marcel Feraud and the team from the Inter-American Institute for Democracy IID. To this we must add the advance of drug trafficking in Santiago del Estero; there are more and more clandestine tracks that take and bring drugs. The usurpations need guerrilla groups in preparation or permanent formation. That is what has been detected in some places in Argentina. In the north and also in the south, cells of the Shining Path organization were detected working on this indoctrination.
Indoctrination in schools is another of the methods in the fertile fields that Organized Crime needs. A systematic work, like an ant, that works under the slogan of a popular type of education that generates early resentment on those who produce wealth. Flags of Che Guevara are waved to hate those who generate capital and all forms of wealth, and tribute is offered to the rulers of the day -like gods-. Idolatry of certain political leaders is generated (as has happened with organizations such as La Cámpora, which idolizes Cristina Fernández de Kirchner) or as was proposed by the San Pablo Forum, and they are invited to march in their favor. Obedience to the leader is generated. In return for giving your soul to the devil, crumbs are offered,
Social groups and civil claims are a pressure cooker and the state is sufficient for madness. A few days ago, a town burned down the house of several drug traffickers suspected of having murdered Máximo Jerez, an 11-year-old boy who was shot in the back after a shootout on the outskirts of Rosario. The images showed a chaos similar to an earthly hell. There was a fire in houses and the residents executed the defendants who were protected by the police. The Dantesque panorama seemed taken from a post-apocalyptic series. That happens when the State is absent or complicit. And the situation can get worse.
Democracy is imperfect and has cracks like any human system. That is why everyone's contribution and commitment is needed. Ultimately, it is a cultural problem. Practices of social groups, family. Of complete communities where the only important thing is to build power and wealth. The messianics of poverty get rich at the expense of a herd willing to sell their souls to the devil. It is goodbye to meritocracy. To the good, the ethical, the moral and the beautiful. There is no race to be better. Only servile idolatry matters to the god on duty. Basically it is also a problem of identity. Individual and collective. From civil society, institutions and the State. The government on duty must conform to the law and release its privileges. For that, the Executive Power has controls in the Legislative and the Judicial. And for this the role of journalism is key. To light up the cave. To push towards the search for the truth. The work of revealing the secret is key; to disseminate better stories that circulate in entities like these in which I have the privilege of expressing them freely.
«The opinions published herein are the sole responsibility of its author».