HomeNewsBriefArgentina Mayor, Police Chief Arrested in Drug Raid of Border Town
BRIEF

Argentina Mayor, Police Chief Arrested in Drug Raid of Border Town

ARGENTINA / 16 MAR 2017 BY DAVID GAGNE EN

The latest drug raid in a border town in Argentina resulted in the arrest of the mayor and several other top municipal officials, uncovering a level of corruption rarely seen in this Southern Cone nation. 

On March 14, 600 members of Argentina's gendarmerie descended upon the town of Itatí, arresting mayor Natividad "Roger" Terán, his top deputy and a local police chief, reported La Nación. Authorities say the officials abused their posts to help move drug shipments through the northern border town, which has long been considered a gateway for marijuana coming from Paraguay.

"The mayor Terán, vice mayor [Fabio] Aquino and the commissioner [Diego] Ocampo Alvarenga, used their positions to facilitate and protect the trafficking of marijuana," a source close to the case told La Nación.

The operation led to a total of 21 arrests, including several other police officials, and authorities are seeking the arrest of 14 other suspects. 

Two witnesses testified that the drug network moved up to six tons of marijuana through Itatí per week, reported Clarín. They also testified that the mayor and the vice mayor were directly involved in acquiring and distributing the marijuana, as well as laundering the illicit proceeds. 

In February, authorities arrested the vice mayor's brother along with four other suspects and seized over 500 kilos of cannabis. The mayor's daughter had been arrested earlier that month, prompting Security Minister Patricia Bullrich to declare, "Itatí was run by narco-politics."

InSight Crime Analysis

The raid in Itatí exemplifies a pattern seen throughout Latin America of mayors increasingly facilitating or directly involved in organized crime activity. But while corruption in city hall appears to be on the rise in countries like Honduras, El Salvador and Mexico, until now there has been little evidence of this phenomenon in Argentina. 

SEE ALSO: Coverage of Argentina

The question now becomes whether the Itatí case is an outlier or points to deeper shifts in Argentina's criminal dynamics. On the one hand, Itatí's location made it a logical entry point for Paraguayan marijuana, suggesting the level of criminal penetration in the municipal offices was partly determined by the town's geography. 

On the other, however, judicial officials and the public have expressed concern about the growth of drug trafficking in the country, and President Mauricio Macri has responded by militarizing the fight against organized crime. Even Pope Francis, a native of Argentina, has warned about the potential "Mexicanization" of the country's criminal landscape. 

share icon icon icon

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

What are your thoughts? Click here to send InSight Crime your comments.

We encourage readers to copy and distribute our work for non-commercial purposes, with attribution to InSight Crime in the byline and links to the original at both the top and bottom of the article. Check the Creative Commons website for more details of how to share our work, and please send us an email if you use an article.

Was this content helpful?

We want to sustain Latin America’s largest organized crime database, but in order to do so, we need resources.

DONATE

Related Content

BRAZIL / 28 JUN 2022

Prosecutors, mayors, prison directors, relatives of officials - are assassinations here to stay in Paraguay?…

BRAZIL / 4 MAR 2022

An alleged deal between government officials and illegal miners in Brazil’s Amazon led to the latter being provided with weapons…

ARGENTINA / 10 AUG 2022

Uruguay has made Latin America's largest ever seizure of European methamphetamine, marking a new phase in drug trafficking dynamics.

About InSight Crime

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Contributes Expertise Across the Board 

22 SEP 2023

This week InSight Crime investigators Sara García and María Fernanda Ramírez led a discussion of the challenges posed by Colombian President Gustavo Petro’s “Total Peace” plan within urban contexts. The…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Cited in New Colombia Drug Policy Plan

15 SEP 2023

InSight Crime’s work on emerging coca cultivation in Honduras, Guatemala, and Venezuela was cited in the Colombian government’s…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime Discusses Honduran Women's Prison Investigation

8 SEP 2023

Investigators Victoria Dittmar and María Fernanda Ramírez discussed InSight Crime’s recent investigation of a massacre in Honduras’ only women’s prison in a Twitter Spaces event on…

THE ORGANIZATION

Human Trafficking Investigation Published in Leading Mexican Newspaper

1 SEP 2023

Leading Mexican media outlet El Universal featured our most recent investigation, “The Geography of Human Trafficking on the US-Mexico Border,” on the front page of its August 30…

THE ORGANIZATION

InSight Crime's Coverage of Ecuador Leads International Debate

25 AUG 2023

This week, Jeremy McDermott, co-director of InSight Crime, was interviewed by La Sexta, a Spanish television channel, about the situation of extreme violence and insecurity in Ecuador…