Argentina Gang Crackdown has Dried Up Cocaine Exports, Security

Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she states

Murders in Rosario hub most affordable in at least a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s security minister, is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American country that have actually driven increasing violence and led to a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She states she is being successful.

Argentina has grown in significance as a transit center for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has flowed down essential waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi’s home town. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, in an uncommon interview with worldwide media, told Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was breaking up the gangs and obstructing shipments from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually broadened in recent years.

„We’ve had record cocaine seizures which’s produced excellent regard for us regionally and likewise in Europe, due to the fact that (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was found in Europe,“ she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, including that „obviously there may be some deliveries that were undiscovered.“

The security ministry verified that cocaine was not discovered in any deliveries that crossed the from Argentina to a significant European port in 2024. Reuters was not able to individually validate that.

Once a rival to Milei as the governmental candidate for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on crime, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and using artificial intelligence to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year – the most affordable in a minimum of the last decade and yogaasanas.science down from almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

„We chose to strike hard against the gangs,“ Bullrich said, including that cooperation in between the national and local federal governments in Rosario had been a key factor, in addition to the courts taking a tougher line. The federal government has actually also targeted drug kingpins currently behind bars.

„We removed the power that the drug managers had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug criminal activity rings going. We separated them,“ she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence expert and president of regional think tank CRIES, credited a focus on event intelligence with aiding the criminal activity reduction.

„There was a collective security effort by the nationwide federal government to focus on Rosario, with a focus on criminal intelligence rather than simply having more cops on the streets, which is a a lot more practical method,“ he said.

Bullrich has actually sent a costs to congress to develop a brand-new anti-mafia law, akin to U.S. RICO legislation, to remove criminal networks, and said she has actually also gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.

Last year, she hosted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds 10s of thousands of gang members in hard conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order political leaders and criticism from rights groups. Photos have revealed rows of tattooed and partially nude prisoners kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

„In our case, our system has been a little bit, let’s state, less harsh. But when we need to be difficult, we are difficult,“ said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing visits to cocaine-growing locations in Peru, and increasing cooperation with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and Federal Bureau of Investigation.

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being strengthened, including by building a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is likewise doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had been a „lack of control recently,“ she said.

„We’re going to start a program, a plan, we’re taking soldiers to the border area with Brazil,“ she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not immediately respond to an ask for remark. Brazil’s Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently invited the idea of enhancing border security in a response to the procedures.

Bullrich, a political veteran who has actually brought Milei key center-ground support, said she had been won over to the libertarian’s broader financial and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have actually divided Argentines however assisted stabilize the country.

The 2 are previous rivals. During the election race, Milei identified her a leftist „bomb-thrower“ – a referral to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist movement – to which Bullrich had actually shot back that the previous financial expert was mentally unsteady.

Bullrich said the differences were now behind them and she and her bloc were helping him as he looks for to gain seats in legal mid-term elections set for later on this year.

„We’re more libertarian than conservative now,“ she said.

(Reporting by Lucinda Elliott. Additional reporting by Lisandra Paraguassu in Brasilia and Daniel Ramos in La Paz; Editing by Adam Jourdan and Rosalba O’Brien)