Former Intel Official Explains Organized Crime Explosion in Chile

For decades, Chile enjoyed an enviable position in South America, seemingly relatively untouched by the violence that organized crime inflicted on many of its neighbors on the continent.

But with bomb threats at courthouses, a sharp increase in crimes such as kidnappings and problems maintaining order in prisons, warning signs are mounting that Chile’s status as one of Latin America’s “safe” countries is coming to an end.

SEE ALSO: Chile’s high-profile murder shows Tren de Aragua’s sophistication

President Gabriel Boric acknowledged the “serious problem” facing the country at a press conference and announced the creation of a new maximum-security prison for people involved in organized crime, after 16 murders were committed in a 48-hour period in July.

In the recently published book “A Virus Among Shadows” (“Un virus entre sombras”), Pablo Zeballos, an organized crime consultant and former intelligence officer with the Chilean Carabineros police, analyzes how the loss of confidence in the country’s institutions, the influence of transnational criminal organizations, weaknesses in the prison system and other factors are leading to a decline in security.

InSight Crime spoke with Zeballos about the changes in the country’s criminal landscape.

InSight Crime (IC): The book focuses on the changes in crime in Chile. What are they and what has caused these shifts?

Pablo Zeballos (PZ): I believe the driving force behind the changes is the role of drug traffickers in prisons. Twenty or thirty years ago they were very low on the ladder of imprisonment because they were seen as corrupting the population.

But with the huge profits from drug trafficking, these actors began to gain importance in the prison world and this then grew outside the prison walls. As a result, the lines between being a thief and being a drug dealer began to blur and the perception grew that these two crimes could be complementary.

I think that crime is also changing in Chile. We are going from structures with territorial links to structures with functional links. That is, it no longer matters where you come from, but what your specialty is to contribute to the organized criminal enterprise.

IC: The book draws a connection between the protests that began in 2019 in response to complaints about social inequality and the changes in criminal dynamics in Chile. How do you explain that?

PZ: Since before the protests, Chile had been experiencing a series of events that delegitimized institutions, including police and military institutions, especially in cases of corruption. Furthermore, politics as a mechanism to manage social demands was also not working due to a loss of legitimacy in the eyes of the Chilean people. When the protests broke out, much of the violence we saw in the streets meant the withdrawal of the police from the neighborhoods. That is, the police lost respectability due to human rights violations, which meant that they were leaving the places they were supposed to keep safe, because they were rejected by the communities.

This was then exacerbated by looting and robbery dynamics that were more associated with criminal structures than with the population. Then came the pandemic, which pushed state representatives even further from the streets, not only in Chile of course, but in much of the region. This was very cleverly exploited by organized crime structures, especially drug trafficking and other illegal markets that occupied the spaces ceded by the state.

IC: What is the impact of the arrival and growth of transnational groups in Chile?

PZ:The arrival of these groups in Chile was accompanied by a dynamic that Chilean criminals were not used to.

For example, the Venezuelan criminal group Tren de Aragua has popularized territorial power, but by controlling that territory the group has diversified its criminal activities.

SEE ALSO: 3 Reasons Why Security in Northern Chile Has Deteriorated

Normally, an organization that controls territory in Chile does so to control drug trafficking, but Tren de Aragua has shown that it can carry out multiple criminal activities in the same territory, such as extortion, sexual exploitation or informal loans.

This has shown Chilean criminals that by dominating territory they can develop multiple, interconnected illicit markets and also generate local money laundering logics that are harder to detect. This has been accompanied by excessive and irrational violence that constantly questions the presence of the state. Chilean criminals will have to adapt to this as well.

IC: Regarding control within prisons, which is the responsibility of the Gendarmería, is there anything specific that the authorities should do that they have not yet tried?

PZ: I think that the Gendarmería must work quickly to adapt its classification system so that it can better segment criminals. We have a system that was created with parameters that are probably outdated in the face of the new criminality. Especially because it does not take into account factors such as criminal groups that come from abroad and the dynamics of collaboration between groups that are present in countries like Central America or even Venezuela and Colombia.

It is necessary to better classify the criminals who enter the prison system and separate those who are associated with criminal structures from those who are not. The great challenge for Chile is to prevent prisons from becoming a recruitment center for criminals to create a megastructure, whether Chilean or “hybrid”, that is, composed of both Chileans and foreigners.

Main image: Chilean Investigation Police (Policía de Investigaciones de Chile – PDI) in the middle of a security operation. Credit: PDI.