Argentina Gang Crackdown has actually Dried Up Cocaine Exports, Security

Patricia Bullrich states crackdown on drug gangs is prospering

Cocaine exports to Europe have been blocked, she says

Murders in Rosario center least expensive in at least a years

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) – Patricia Bullrich, Argentina’s security minister, is on an objective to stamp out drug gangs in the South American country that have actually driven rising violence and resulted in a spike in cocaine shipments to Europe. She states she is prospering.

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

Bullrich, in a with global media, told Reuters the year-old federal government of libertarian President Javier Milei was breaking up the gangs and blocking shipments from making their way to end markets, consisting of to Europe, where the cocaine market has expanded in the last few years.

“We’ve had record cocaine seizures and that’s created excellent respect for us regionally and also in Europe, because (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was detected in Europe,” she said at her office in Buenos Aires, adding that “of course there may be some deliveries that were undiscovered.”

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

Once a competitor to Milei as the governmental prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on crime, tightening up borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and using expert system to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to regional federal government figures, murders dropped to 90 in 2015 – the most affordable in at least the last decade and below almost 300 in 2022 and 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took office.

“We decided to hit hard against the gangs,” Bullrich said, including that cooperation in between the nationwide and local federal governments in Rosario had actually 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 employers had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug criminal offense rings going. We isolated them,” she said.

Andrei Serbin Pont, sitiosecuador.com an Argentine security and intelligence expert and president of local think tank CRIES, credited a focus on event intelligence with aiding the crime reduction.

“There was a collective security effort by the nationwide government to focus on Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence instead of just having more cops on the streets, which is a much more viable strategy,” he said.

Bullrich has actually sent out a costs to congress to establish a new anti-mafia law, comparable to U.S. RICO legislation, to take down criminal networks, and said she has actually likewise gained from security forces in Britain and Italy.

Last year, bphomesteading.com she hosted El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, and visited his mega-prison that holds tens of thousands of gang members in tough conditions that have drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have actually shown rows of tattooed and partially nude inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

“In our case, our system has actually been a little, let’s say, less harsh. But when we have to be difficult, we are difficult,” said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, planning check outs 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 strengthened, consisting of by constructing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is also doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had been a “absence of control recently,” she said.

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

Authorities in Bolivia and Brazil did not right away react to an ask for comment. Brazil’s Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, last week welcomed the concept of reinforcing border security in an action to the measures.

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

The two are previous competitors. During the election race, Milei labeled her a leftist “bomb-thrower” – a recommendation to her time with the youth wing of the Peronist movement – to which Bullrich had actually shot back that the previous financial pundit was mentally unstable.

Bullrich said the distinctions were now behind them and she and her bloc were assisting him as he looks for to gain seats in legislative mid-term elections set for later 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)