When one hears of hired assassins killing judges and prosecutors in the middle of the street, drug lords who live like kings surrounded by security guards and cartels disputing routes through massacres and shootings that sometimes victimize the innocent, it is usually associated these images to Colombia, Mexico and even Brazil.
But a tragic example made it clear that drug trafficking has also mixed strongly in Argentine society. This is the episode in which the sale of adulterated cocaine on the outskirts of Buenos Aires, at the beginning of the month, killed 24 people and caused at least a hundred hospitalizations.
Studies revealed that the drug sold in a “bunker” – as the points of sale in the poorer neighborhoods around the capital are called – was contaminated with carfentanil, a type of opioid 10,000 times more potent than morphine used as a veterinary sedative in large animals such as elephants and rhinos.
Sold at low prices in a bunker in Hurlingham, a city in the Buenos Aires metropolitan area, the doses of adulterated cocaine were the trigger for a crisis that led local authorities to urgently ask that whoever bought the drug discard it immediately.
The police work with some theories in the investigation of the case. One of them is that the episode was a kind of demarcation of territory through a deliberate poisoning — with the deaths serving as a warning from one cartel to another to show who “belongs” to that region.
Another thesis, defended by the Minister of Security of Buenos Aires, Sergio Berni, is that those responsible for the contamination were trying to manufacture an even more potent drug, but that they “lost their grip” during the process.
The fact that several of the people who were hospitalized after consuming cocaine with carfentanil have returned to use the same drug gives the dimension of the problem of chemical dependence in the Argentine peripheries.
“What happened in Hurlingham offers several interpretations. First of all, we cannot get the idea that this is only happening in vulnerable neighborhoods. of cartels and where there is a large market of poor and vulnerable people who end up being the first victims”, says Carlos Damín, director of the toxicology section at the University of Buenos Aires’ faculty of medicine.
In an interview with leafthe expert says that a statistical analysis of the Argentine scenario allows us to infer that there is a change in consumption habits, characterized mainly by the decrease in the average age of those who consume alcohol and other drugs.
According to the Argentine Drug Observatory, from 2010 to 2017, there was a decrease in the consumption of crack — locally called “paco” — and an increase in the use of cocaine, amphetamine and ecstasy. “Argentina is not a major producer of these drugs. From here, routes and ports are used, and there are clandestine establishments to finish the production of many of them. But yes, we are a large consumer country”, observes Damín.
Argentina is the third country that consumes cocaine in the Americas, behind only the United States and Brazil, according to a survey by the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
For the professor, the arrival of opioids in Argentina, evidenced in the case of Hurlingham, is cause for alarm. “We were not an opioid consuming country. It will be a very serious problem if we become one and there are no policies [públicas] that accompany [essa tendência]”, it says.
Gustavo Zbuczynski of the Argentinian Harm Reduction Association points out that the country’s failure to respond to drugs begins with budgetary issues. “More than 90% of the resources for this issue go to arms and combat the problem, and only 10% to prevention and damage containment. What is spent on strategies such as the ‘war on drug trafficking’ by the USA and Mexico, which went bankrupt, it’s absurd.”
Since the place is for transit and consumption, rather than production, the control of drug trafficking routes has been the concern of different governments. The results are below expectations when one observes, for example, the case of Rosário, the main port of exit for illicit drugs.
The substances arrive in the city from different origins, but mainly from Bolivia and Paraguay. They cross routes through the interior of Argentina until they end up in what has always been a beautiful and peaceful port city, built in the 17th century, on the banks of the Paraná River.
Known for being the birthplace of Ernesto Che Guevara and Lionel Messi, Rosario is now living a nightmare. The city is home to Argentina’s main drug cartel, known as Los Monos. The group has ramifications within the organized supporters of the main local football clubs, such as Rosario Central and Newell’s Old Boys.
On the outskirts of the capital of the province of Santa Fe, there are “bunkers” that sell drugs to the local population, but the main trafficking activity is related to the illegal shipment of drugs through various access points to the port.
The city has been collecting horror stories, such as a wedding ceremony between two fugitives from justice for involvement in drug trafficking. During the party at a famous church, hired assassins, possibly hired by rival factions, killed three people, including a one-year-old baby.
The capital of Santa Fe still experiences daily shootings — this year alone there were more than 50 —, which means that a large part of the population lives a kind of curfew and stops going out at night. While the national average of homicides in Argentina is 5.3 per 100,000 inhabitants, in Rosario the rate is 16.4. Last year, at least 231 murders were related to drug trafficking.
For specialists, there is a health and security policy problem regarding drug trafficking in Argentina. “We have to understand that we need a health system prepared to serve consumers and stop seeing consumption in a stigmatized way”, says neurologist Facundo Manes, deputy for the Radical Civic Union party. “Of course, it is necessary to redouble efforts to contain traffic on routes and drug sales, but this needs to be part of a comprehensive reform.”
For prosecutor Mónica Cuñarro, who specializes in combating drug trafficking, Argentina still lacks the political will to come up with a long-term solution. According to her, destroying or closing one or a hundred points of sale is a temporary solution.
The issue also has a social cut. In the “bunkers”, there are consumers and sellers who form the base of the trafficking pyramid. Above them, and consequently less accessible, are big businessmen, builders and financiers, says Cuñarro.
“If we want to attack drug trafficking, we must stop treating everything in a media, electoral way, and face the issue head on, follow the money route. It is very easy to take a drug leader from a humble neighborhood to jail, but Behind that, we know there are police, and even some judges and prosecutors.”
