Uruguay seeks to stem unprecedented wave of “narco” violence

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Uruguay is suffering a wave of homicides that has led the government to “redouble” efforts to fight an unprecedented level of drug violence in the South American country, which has become an important drug transit point in recent years.

On May 11, Interior Minister Luis Alberto Heber said they would “redouble police efforts in the fight, without backing down an inch” after meeting with President Luis Lacalle Pou.

Heber asked the president to include in the budget an item to increase the number of police posts, “more vehicles and some more drug prosecutors” to face the violence resulting “from the confrontation of drug gangs”.

The minister affirmed that Lacalle Pou supported his plan, which he did not detail.

Montevideo experienced one of its most dreadful episodes at the end of April.

First, a torso, then a head, and later the limbs, all of the same person, appeared in different parts of the city in little more than a week.

The situation in the country worsened in the last week and a half, a period in which 14 bodies have been found—the last four, between Tuesday, May 10, and Wednesday, May 11, in the Montevideo neighborhood of Peñarol. Three corpses were burned, and one of them was also dismembered—a level of violence unknown in Uruguay.

Heber “is not measuring up,” said opposition Frente Amplio senator Enrique Rubio on local television.

HOMICIDES ON THE RISE

Sociologist and researcher Leonardo Mendiondo estimated that measures to reinforce police and increase patrols would not serve to curb drug trafficking crime.

“This will not be solved with more police and more vehicles, but with a greater understanding of the crimes through the investigation of the modalities of the crimes (…) more heavy-handedness and more repression will not help us get out of where we are,” he told AFP.

For Mendiondo, the problem is not new but has been brewing for decades. Although in recent years, the number of violent deaths in the country has suffered a sustained increase.

In 2014 there were 268 homicides, while in 2018 and 2019, they were around 420 and 393, an upward trend that only the coronavirus pandemic was able to stop: in 2020 and 2021, the figure dropped to 338 and 300.

But in the first quarter of this year, there were 96 homicides, 33% more than in the same period of 2021 and a figure that marks a trend that, if maintained, would mean an annual record for homicides in the country.

This increase in violent deaths parallels Uruguay’s changing role in the global drug trafficking market. In recent years, the country has become a transit point for cocaine traveling from South America to Europe and Africa, according to the international organization Insight Crime.

In June 2021, Spanish authorities seized a ton of cocaine in a container from Montevideo. While two years earlier German customs officers found 4.5 tons of drugs coming from the South American country.

With information from AFP