Argentina Gang Crackdown has Dried Up Cocaine Exports, Security

Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is succeeding

Cocaine exports to Europe have been obstructed, she says

Murders in Rosario hub lowest in at least a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s security minister, is on a mission to mark out drug gangs in the South American country that have driven increasing violence and wolvesbaneuo.com resulted in a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She says she is prospering.

Argentina has actually grown in value as a transit hub for cocaine as production from Peru and Bolivia has actually streamed down crucial waterways and out through river ports such as that of Rosario, Lionel Messi’s hometown. Gang-related murders increased in tandem.

Bullrich, in an unusual interview with worldwide media, informed Reuters the year-old government of libertarian President Javier Milei was separating the gangs and blocking shipments from making their method to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has actually broadened recently.

„We have actually had record cocaine seizures and that’s produced terrific regard for us regionally and also in Europe, since (in 2024) no delivery from Argentina was identified in Europe,“ she said at her workplace in Buenos Aires, including that „obviously there might be some deliveries that were unnoticed.“

The security ministry validated that cocaine was not found in any deliveries that crossed the South Atlantic from Argentina to a significant European port in 2024. Reuters was unable to separately verify that.

Once a rival to Milei as the presidential candidate for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal offense, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and using expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to regional government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year – the most affordable in at least the last years and down from almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took workplace.

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

„We took away the power that the drug employers had in the jails, who utilized the jails to keep their drug criminal activity rings going. We isolated them,“ she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, an Argentine security and intelligence specialist and president of local think tank CRIES, credited an emphasis on event intelligence with aiding the crime reduction.

„There was a collective security effort by the national federal government to prioritize Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence rather than just having more cops on the streets, which is a far more practical method,“ he said.

Bullrich has sent a bill to congress to develop a new anti-mafia law, similar 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 countless gang members in tough conditions that have actually drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually revealed rows of tattooed and partially nude inmates 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 have to be difficult, we are difficult,“ said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

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

Bullrich said the border with Bolivia was being enhanced, consisting of by developing a short stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had actually been a „absence of control over the last few years,“ she said.

„We’re going to begin a program, a strategy, we’re taking soldiers to the border location with Brazil,“ she said.

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not immediately react to a demand for remark. Brazil’s Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently welcomed the concept of reinforcing border security in a reaction to the measures.

Bullrich, a political veteran who has actually brought Milei crucial center-ground support, said she had been won over to the libertarian’s wider financial and social reforms beyond his security focus, which have actually divided Argentines but helped stabilize the nation.

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

Bullrich said the distinctions were now behind them and she and her bloc were helping him as he looks for to gain seats in legislative 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)