When talking about drug trafficking, drug dealing, ‘taken, liberated zones or any other definition that you want to give it, you have to know that the greatest miseries are shown in the suburbs of the province of Buenos Aires. But the detours and the forms that in other latitudes prefer to adopt are also avoided.
Direct, judges, prosecutors, police chiefs know that first of all they must go through the offices or homes of senators, deputies or mayors. They are the true ‘owners of the pens’ who then designate the non-political authorities of the other levels of the State.
What nobody tells about the drama of the adulterated drug
What was seen this week in the northern corner of Tres de Febrero, with the adulterated drug tragedy that killed more than 20 people and hospitalized nearly 100 (figures at the end of this column) was nothing more than global decline to which we are subjected.
These are not experienced dealers, who sell ‘in a good way’, but merchants who are the ‘drivers’ or ‘little soldiers’ of the old drug bosses, such as Miguel Ángel ‘Mameluco’ Villalba or Javier ‘El rengo’ Pacheco, who dominated the territories of General San Martín and surrounding areas.
He is not the only one who was a driver. Several current mayors were mayors of their respective political bosses on more than one occasion. Knowing how to listen helps a lot, it seems.
So, if Justice depends on politics, and the leadership on not “altering what we already manage,” the settlements, dealers, and crimes will continue to occur because “in these cases, everything new is more expensive and worse.” “. Wise words from a recognized regional leader or already about to retire.
The decline of the suburbs, in the first person
In the area where they are moved by the deaths and the distribution of ‘killer drugs’ as if the normal one did not do it —already nonsense— in the mid-1990s, a police commissioner arrived at the Special Investigations delegation based in Caseros. surname Ferrari, Luis, who did not have a good relationship with his superiors at the Regional and much less with the mayor Hugo Curto, political chief of the district and the region.
The first day he called a press conference and the next he asked this journalist to accompany him to an operation in Pablo Podestá, on the other side of Gate 8, crossing Route 8. Hundreds of disarmed and buried cars were found there.
The next day, the head of the department and his deputy summoned him to ask for explanations. Daring, he asked me to accompany him and, to my surprise, a well-known commissioner who had passed through several towns repeatedly asked where it was that trafficking in stolen goods and drugs was being reported.
27 years have passed since then. 9 de Julio and Villa 18 already existed as well-known distribution centers. But the authorities at the time kept asking what place we were talking about. Of course, two months later, Ferrari was transferred…
The day they threatened me
The 21st century had just dawned and one of the most ‘heavy’ criminals of those times met me at a well-known fast food business in a shopping center to give me the following message. “If you keep talking about this, you can be killed at any time. Don’t mess around with that stuff.”
‘Carlitos’ is now in prison because they confirmed a murder and several other facts that may have him ‘saved’ for more than an additional decade to the one he already carries. His complaint-threat had to do with a note written in 2009 about the “Clandestine Drug Trafficking Route”, which precisely connected the famous Gate 8 of Loma Hermosa with Villa Cárcova, on the border through a route self-built by drug traffickers. and criminals parallel to the Camino del Buen Ayre.
The conversation continued, the threat became a ‘joke’ and some time later our lives crossed again when he tried, unsuccessfully, to offer his ambulance, which worked to enter the corridors where the Present State did not arrive, to the municipality.
It is that ‘Carlitos’ had the idea of donating that ambulance to the municipality of General San Martín as a contribution to the new municipal administration that he had just assumed, in 2011. They rejected it.
At that time, the La Sonrisa de los Niños foundation and its founder began a storm of complaints and threats that caused one of the most important management officials to have to move from their neighborhood and home. he went from a house with a park to an apartment in the heart of General San Martín.
What is striking about this situation is that the ‘ambulance strategy’ seems to have transcended several borders. Mario Ishii, who accompanied President Alberto Fernández on his tour of Russia and China, already said so, who two years ago accused the doctors and nurses of protecting them “while they traffic ‘falopa’ in the ambulances” of José C. Paz.
When ‘Mameluco’ wanted to be mayor
Years later, a little more sophisticated, Miguel Ángel ‘Mameluco’ Villalba tried to be mayor of this same town. For that he set up a great media operation.
Villalba was a member, like Milagro Sala and many others, in Kolina, Alicia Kirchner’s group. Even Marcela ‘La Tigresa’ Acuña, always far from any kind of issue that linked her to the drug trafficker, she knew how to have some common encounter with him. She was from the same group but in Tres de Febrero, bordering San Marín.
However, Villalba’s political history ended abruptly when he wanted to join an event organized by Graciela Camaño for her presidential candidate, Eduardo Duhalde, in the Hipólito Yrigoyen Park, almost as a prepo.
With his powerful black 4×4, ‘Mameluco’ walked through the door of the local Deliberative Council, insulted the Peronist and Kirchnerist political leaders personally or through the media and absolutely nothing happened to him.
Every day ‘seekers’, dealers, ‘leaders’ and self-employed people passed through his laundry room in Juan D. Perón y Caseros. His brother used to be one of the few to shut him up. However, all that power, gained through arrogance and audacity, ended when he hit a limit.
The day after his alleged incursion, surprisingly by order of a judge closely related to politics, Juan Manuel Yalj, who was in charge of Federal Court 1 of San Martín, was arrested for multiple reasons. All true, nothing invented. But requested directly by the political branch of the town that no longer supported the interference of the narco-political.
Later in time, another ‘powerful’, who managed the Punta Mogotes de La Salada complex, José Catillo, tried something similar and began to denounce the current provincial chief of staff, then mayor of Lomas de Zamora, Martín Insaurralde. Suddenly, they found all the evidence that people believed he already had from before and remains, to this day, in prison.
Mamluk and gifts to his pursuers
As for ‘Mameluco’, his fame had already begun to permeate the local security forces for giving away high-end vehicles to his pursuers.
‘La Casita’, created by former Commissioner Rossi, famous in the time of Eduardo Duhalde for managing the northern zone and especially drug trafficking, received some kind of present every day at its headquarters from Luis María Campos, almost arriving at Fiat . Such was the connection with the police of the 8th, 4th and 5th police stations of San Martín that Judge Yalj had to use Gendarmes for the operation to arrest him. He even distrusted the Federal Police. Villalba was surprised, he did not expect it, but he believed that he would leave quickly. He is still in prison.
As for the ‘chalet’ or ‘La Casita’, it was called that because it was that: a typical neighborhood construction that today still serves as the headquarters of the Narcotics Delegation that covers General San Martín and Tres de Febrero.
Why did Mameluco want to be mayor?
Everyone, including himself, knew that this would never happen. But the campaign of more than a year served to install his brand and appear as the head of a territory. Who else should talk to those who wanted to sell any apocryphal substance in the region?
Since his fall there have been replacements, rearrangements and surprise appearances, such as “the Peruvians” who wanted to be nicknamed Villa Loyola, at the other end of General San Martín, about 20 blocks from CABA. A strong commitment from all levels of the State (municipal, provincial and national) made their strength dilute and they also drove away. Today, the residents on the other side of Constituyentes Avenue, in the Villas Habana and Las Flores, are suffering from these exoduses and new settlements.
Settlements, usurpations and monoblocks. Nothing is casual and everything is in a key place. La 9 de Julio, Cárcova, Corea, Puerta 8 and La 18, for example, are usurpations on land whose owners never claimed or were prosecutors. Located in front of an avenue, such as 9 de Julio, or in the vicinity of national and provincial routes, they are exceptional for their logistical possibility to quickly reach Rosario, Tigre, San Fernando, General Rodríguez, Luján, Moreno, and the City. from Buenos Aires.
The Ejército De los Andes neighborhood complex, commonly known as Fuerte Apache, is 10 blocks from General Paz. Loyola, at 20. And the Carlos Gardel, behind the Posadas Hospital, in Haedo, almost on the side of the Autopista del Oeste. All Fonavi neighborhoods were transformed by the empire of marginality and decadence into areas to be guarded that also affected the neighboring neighborhoods.
In short, the chronicle of an Argentina that everyone has been seeing, but no one dares to change.
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