Argentina Gang Crackdown has actually Dried Up Cocaine Exports, Security

Patricia Bullrich says crackdown on drug gangs is being successful

Cocaine exports to Europe have been blocked, she states

Murders in Rosario hub most affordable in at least a decade

By Lucinda Elliott

BUENOS AIRES, Feb 7 (Reuters) - Patricia Bullrich, Argentina's security minister, is on a mission to stamp out drug gangs in the South American nation that have driven increasing violence and led to a spike in cocaine deliveries to Europe. She states she is being successful.

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

Bullrich, nerdgaming.science in an unusual interview with worldwide media, informed Reuters the year-old 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 current years.

"We have actually had record cocaine seizures and that's produced terrific respect for us regionally and likewise in Europe, because (in 2024) no shipment from Argentina was detected in Europe," she said at her office in Buenos Aires, including that "naturally there might be some shipments that were unnoticed."

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

Once a competitor to Milei as the presidential prospect for the main conservative bloc, Bullrich is now leading the crackdown on criminal activity, tightening borders with Brazil and Bolivia, privatizing some jails and using artificial intelligence to track gangs.

In Rosario, according to city government figures, murders dropped to 90 last year - the most affordable in a minimum of the last decade and below almost 300 in 2022 and wiki.snooze-hotelsoftware.de 261 in 2023, the year before Milei and Bullrich took workplace.

"We decided to hit hard against the gangs," Bullrich said, including that cooperation between the national and regional governments in Rosario had been an essential factor, as well as the courts taking a harder line. The government has likewise targeted drug kingpins already behind bars.

"We eliminated the power that the drug managers had in the jails, who used the jails to keep their drug criminal offense rings going. We isolated them," she said.

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

"There was a concerted security effort by the nationwide federal government to prioritize Rosario, with a concentrate on criminal intelligence instead of just having more cops on the streets, which is a far more practical method," he said.

Bullrich has actually sent out an expense to congress to establish a new anti-mafia law, similar to U.S. RICO legislation, to remove criminal networks, and said she has 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 tens of thousands of gang members in hard conditions that have actually drawn praise from hardline law-and-order politicians and criticism from rights groups. Photos have revealed rows of tattooed and partially nude inmates kneeling with their hands behind the heads.

"In our case, our system has actually been a bit, let's say, less extreme. But when we need to be difficult, we are difficult," said Bullrich.

TOUGHER BORDERS

Bullrich informed Reuters she was enhancing border controls to stop drug gangs, preparing visits to cocaine-growing locations 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 constructing a brief stretch of wall in northern Salta province. Argentina is likewise doing more monitoring of entry points with Brazil where there had been a "absence of control in 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 hb9lc.org Brazil did not instantly react to a request for remark. Brazil's Minister of Justice, Ricardo Lewandowski, recently invited the idea of reinforcing border security in a response to the steps.

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

The two are former 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 expert was mentally unstable.

Bullrich said the differences 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)