The ton of cocaine seized by Uruguayan police in Montevideo on September 20, 2024. URUGUAYAN MINISTRY OF THE INTERIOR / AFP
In the port of Montevideo, located on the Rio de la Plata estuary in southern Uruguay, comings and goings never cease. On this gray October morning, Korean fishing boats transfer their catch to refrigerated trucks, while conveyor belts dump tons of grain into three long bulk carriers.
Further on, next to a noisy road lined with logging trucks, workers are busy on several fenced-off construction sites. To cope with the increase in container traffic, which has jumped by 62% since 2019, port authorities have planned numerous developments, including the 27-hectare expansion of the terminal where the multicolored blocks are stacked.
But this ambitious project, which aims to transform the port into a regional logistics hub, also risks increasing its attractiveness for the shipment of a commodity that is increasingly concealed in cargo bound for Europe: cocaine. In recent months, European police have discovered several tons of the drug in ships sailing from Montevideo, hidden in soy flour or bags of rice.
In Uruguay, a small South American country of 3.3 million inhabitants long perceived as a haven of peace in the region, the arrival of drug trafficking has given rise to serious security problems. Ahead of the presidential and parliamentary elections on Sunday, October 27, “insecurity, crime and drug trafficking” have become the main concern of 47% of the population, according to the Cifra Institute, which reported that left-wing opposition candidate Yamandu Orsi leads the polls with 44 %.
The country has become a storage area
The pressure of phenomena as diverse as Plan Colombia in 1999 (US aid to combat drugs), the agreement between Bogota and the guerrilla Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) in 2016 and, more recently, the Covid-19 pandemic, have caused a permanent reconfiguration of cocaine routes. Production has amplified and spread southwards, making Bolivia a manufacturing center for the drug. The white powder now follows a new route, using the “Parana-Paraguay” river route, which links eastern Bolivia with Paraguay, Brazil, Argentina and Uruguay, before being shipped to Europe.
Read more Subscribers only Bolivia has become a ‘strategic hub’ for cocaine trafficking
As a result, trafficking has exploded in Uruguay. In recent years, the country has become a storage area. As the volume of trafficking increases, criminal organizations hide the product, mainly on large rural estates, before exporting it. In return, local criminals keep some of the product for resale to small-scale traffickers, especially in the poorer areas of Montevideo. The drugs are then sold in outlets known as “bocas,” leading to an increase in violence. Between 2013 and 2023, homicides rose by 46%, according to data from the Interior Ministry.
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Publish date : 2024-10-27 01:10:00
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