Uruguay: concern and political debate over increase in murders

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – There were eight homicides registered in Uruguay during the weekend, which, added to a ninth on Monday, May 30, bring to 42 the number of murders in May and 171 the total so far in 2022.

At this juncture, different political actors expressed their opinions regarding the situation in the country. Next week, there will be an appearance before the Senate of the Minister of the Interior, Luis Alberto Heber.

“We are present, the operation is working, but unfortunately, we cannot foresee these homicides that sometimes happen in any corner”, said Heber in an interview with Subrayado. As he explained, several of the homicides “have to do with situations of drug score collection”.

He also referred to the Peñarol neighborhood, the most affected by this type of crime in May, and expressed that they had established a very intense operation in the area and had six police mobiles.

“The episode happened a few blocks away from the mobile, but we could not foresee that situation, nor was there a situation to prevent that store from being robbed, looted, and cost that worker’s life,” he lamented.

Although the seriousness of the situation in Uruguay was already public knowledge – the Ministry of the Interior reported in April that during January, February, and March, there was a 33% increase in the number of homicides – last weekend showed that the country is facing an even more delicate situation: there were eight homicides in approximately 48 hours.

The senator for the Frente Amplio, Charles Carrera, expressed his concern for “the situation regarding public security” and considered it “alarming” in a dialogue with La Diaria.

“The minister talks about a plan, [but] there is no plan, what there are, are reactions,” he added and pointed out that “if one analyzes the growth” of homicides “and we compare May of this year with May of last year, crime grew 160%”.

He also referred to the Interior Minister’s plan presented at Torre Ejecutiva on May 11 to curb the increase in homicides. Carrera said that when Heber announced the plan, “15 homicides had been consummated” in the month, and after the announcement, “unfortunately there are at least 27 consummated homicides, so the situation is really very serious; there is no management”.

In addition, he reiterated that the Frente Amplio had warned “that with the increase in activity” after the health emergency, there would be “an increase in violence”.

In that sense, the former director of the National Police, Mario Layera, said that it was evident that “when the measures that prevented mobility were removed,” the increase in violence “was going to resurface again”.

“Homicides are the upper end of what is happening, but much more violence is happening that is also not being contained,” he told the daily.

Layera was against reducing the problem to the actions of the police because it is difficult for the police to sustain “a policy of violence reduction” in the long term.

For the former director of the National Police, “the biggest mistake” was to use the issue “as a story that sought electoral gains”.

After two years (2018 and 2019) of very high homicide figures, in 2020 and 2021, Uruguay went through a decrease in those values.

The government attributed it to the new security policy and -after its approval- to the Law of Urgent Consideration (LUC), which proposed significant changes in security matters.

But the outlook for 2022 is less encouraging, and different political figures are beginning to suggest different views on the increase in crime.

The president of Cabildo Abierto, Guillermo Domenech, attributed the growing number of homicides to the advance of drug trafficking.

“Evidently, recreational marijuana has failed,” which is “nothing more than a gateway” to other drugs, he added.

From his perspective, the government has been “very permissive” with drug consumption because “there is not even a warning, particularly to young people, of the harmful effects of consumption”.

Who also linked drug trafficking to the situation was the senator of the National Party, Jorge Gandini, who said that the increase in homicides “may be a collateral effect of the increased repression of micro-trafficking”.

The senator told the newspaper that, from his perspective, “the course is the right one,” and the party supports the management of Minister Heber.

With information from Infobae