Alarm in Chile Over Rising Drug Violence: Deaths, Feuds, and Shootings at Funerals

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Shots from moving vehicles, fatal clashes, drug funerals and public feuds, all have been seen in recent weeks in Chile. Everything is part of territorial disputes between drug gangs faced with the new formulas they were forced to adopt after the onset of the pandemic.

Reports, investigations, studies and testimonies have been collected to reach an alarming and, according to the authorities, challenging picture. The truth is that the power of drug trafficking in Chile is gaining ground based on new methods in the way it acts and executes its purposes.

The data was compiled by the Chilean National Prosecutor’s Office in its Drug Trafficking Observatory Annual Report. It contains a range of data on the behavior of drug trafficking in Chile.

Narcotic modernization hand in hand with the pandemic

The drugs with highest consumption rate in Chile are marijuana, cocaine, base paste and ecstasy. This reference is provided based on individual consumption data. Every year the number of tons seized by the police increases, as well as money, weapons and property.

With the advent of the pandemic, the drug trade underwent changes. Unlike other trade items, it began to move faster and the old habit of buying on street corners, for instance, was abandoned. Now there are distribution networks that communicate through digital apps and are distributed in the purest “delivery” style.

According to police reports, gangs operating in Chile have organized themselves with modern and much more specialized distribution networks, thereby expediting the process of production, delivery and profits. Essentially, the ways in which European gangs operate have been replicated.

Another change concerns the “invisibility” of their leaders. In the past, the drug lord lived in the neighborhood, gained the trust of his neighbors, and executed plans from his ostentatious homes in the town. Nowadays, this is different: they change sectors more frequently and create companies that monitor the action of their networks. They maintain contact with neighboring countries, particularly Peru and Bolivia, and open routes from Colombia. They celebrate their dead by holding narco-funerals to let people know who is in charge of this or that place.

They have become specialized in the formation of laundering companies, companies that hire attorneys to launder money and diversify with other activities to “throw off the scent”. However, the most serious aspect is the information from the Chilean National Prosecutor’s Office which has stated that narcotics are very close to penetrating certain structures of the Chilean State.

Known figures and black figures

It is a company and as such should be spread throughout the territory. Just as it is spread out in Santiago, it is also expanding and diversifying into other regions throughout the rest of the country on a daily basis thanks to a logistic chain that operates like clockwork.

The statistics of the Drug Trafficking Observatory prepared by the National Prosecutor’s Office are enlightening. Between 2010 and 2019, the number of people accused of trafficking exceeded 220,000. Meanwhile, the figure rises to over 163,000 for those accused of crimes associated with the Arms Law.

The numbers of the Chilean Civil Police are equally alarming. Up to June 2020, 11,500 kilos of drugs broken down between marijuana, cocaine and base paste were seized. Converted into money, it amounts to over US$162 million.

According to the statistics, the report states that between January and June 2019, drug seizures totaled 9,174 kilos, amounting to over US$130,000. In 2020, a 19% increase was recorded, particularly since April, when the measures against COVID-19, including quarantine, were at their peak. Seizures increased by 81.5% in that period.

Other voices, experts in analyzing gang behavior in Chile, such as retired Carabineros colonel Pedro Valdivia, also urge not to forget a figure that might be added to the above, one that is unknown. “In this, there are also black figures,” he declares.

At the gates of politics

The most alarming statement came from the head of the National Prosecutor’s Office Drug Unit, Luis Toledo, who said that organized crime is on the state’s doorstep. Moreover, the judicial system is failing to enforce the law and grants reduced sentences that allow traffickers to be released from prison in a short time and to quickly reinvent themselves. “If we don’t react, the state could slip through our fingers. The penetration of drug trafficking and its networks of corruption in the public service, in the financing of politics, is an issue that is not as distant, losing the State in this is not that difficult. In Mexico it didn’t take long. About fifteen years,” alerts Toledo.

In 2017, an investigation by the news program Informe Especial reported that there were people with a history of trafficking working in the municipality of San Ramón, located in the southern part of the capital’s metropolitan region. Further data emerged later. Investigations by the Center for Investigative Journalism (CIPER), reported that drug traffickers had contributed to Mayor Aguilera’s campaigns and that the community leader’s driver was taking orders from a drug dealer who was in prison. They call him “the boss of the southern zone” and, according to the investigation later confirmed by the Comptroller General’s Office, Aguilera had agreements and contracts with some 50 people, many of them the mayor’s relatives, with a history of drug trafficking. However, the accused was removed from the Socialist Party (PS), but he announced that he will run again for municipal office and will have no competition, according to analysts.

To have the support of a mayor “is the dream of a drug trafficker”, says sociologist Axel Callis, researcher of the Chile 21 Foundation’s electoral field. “Politics and drug trafficking dispute the same territory and dispute control over the same people or voters. So, in some communes where there is drug trafficking and poverty, they can cooperate politically with drug trafficking and produce a circle that allows both to achieve their goals. In both cases these goals are related to patronage: payment for services in exchange for political favors, money or control over the territory. Patronage is the gateway to facilitate the drug trafficker’s access to the market. This is what occurred initially in countries like Mexico and Colombia. And Chile is not exempt from this,” he warns.

Increase in violence

Security expert and retired Chilean military police colonel Pedro Valdivia said that “drug debts are paid with death”. In his opinion, the current context of drug trafficking in Chile contributes to the increase in violence and its consequences. Death. “In Chile we were not used to having 17 deaths in a single weekend. In the past, there were at most three deaths each weekend,” he says. In his opinion, this shows that security is at stake due to the violent attack of drug gangs and the dispute for territory.

Last week, Chile lamented four deaths, all with the same mode of action. In the middle of a soccer field, square or Christmas market, very common at this time, a vehicle drives by and shoots at a group of people. The peculiarity of these cases is that they have occurred in a very close urban range. A shooting on a soccer field with two deaths; a shooting in the town’s central plaza where a Christmas market was being held, resulting in the death of a 58-year-old woman and seven wounded, and, a day later, another shooting at a market in the same town where a 60-year-old man died.

In recent hours, the whereabouts of one of the criminals who was involved in the shooting at the Maipú Plaza were found. Preliminary data shows that it was payback that did not have the intended fate, and affected innocent people.

The authorities are alarmed. They try to reassure the population, but the violence has become more evident in recent months, precisely when the health measures implemented as a result of COVID-19 have become more stringent.

A few days ago, several local press reports mentioned the new trends of drug operations in Chile and highlighted a point. In light of the latest police operations a common denominator drew attention. The large increase in seizures of millions, in fact, the last seizure made by the Carabineros reported the finding of almost half a ton of drugs, valued at US$28,000. And this is not the first time, they have been reported several times during 2020. As a result, the operations of foreign drug traffickers are under investigation. “It is important to recognize that we are already part of the global drug trade and probably other types of criminal organizations. We need investigative capacity and international cooperation”, explains Lucía Dammert, analyst and academic of the Government School of the University of Santiago de Chile.

Chilean authorities say they are working “watchful” of the new phenomena that are settling with violence and lamentable death figures. A complex scenario, which surprises a government focused on different fronts, pandemic, vaccine, public acceptance crisis, economic crisis, among others, that now adds a new edge, perhaps as a consequence of all the above. More violence, more drug trafficking and deaths that, according to critical experts, the country has not known how to prevent.