On 14 March 2017, some 600 members of Argentina’s Gendarmería Nacional descended on Itatí, a town of about 9,000 on the Paraná river facing Paraguay, arresting mayor Natividad “Roger” Terán, his deputy and a local police chief.[1] The officials were accused of using their posts to help move drug shipments through the border town, long considered a gateway for marijuana coming from Paraguay.[1]
The operation produced 21 arrests in total, including several other police officials, and the authorities were seeking 14 more suspects.[1] The raids, about 47 across Buenos Aires, Corrientes, Chaco and Córdoba provinces including one in a prison unit, were ordered by federal judge Sergio Torres against a network led by Carlos “Cachito” Bareiro, who ran his group from Chaco’s Unit 7 prison, and fugitives Federico “Morenita” Marín and Luis “Gordo” Saucedo.[2]
A town run by traffickers
Witnesses testified that the network moved at least six tonnes of marijuana through Itatí per week, with one putting the flow at 15,000 kilos, and that the mayor and vice mayor were directly involved in acquiring and distributing the drug and laundering the proceeds.[1][2] The marijuana came from large plantations around Pedro Juan Caballero in northern Paraguay, trucked to the riverbank and ferried across the Paraná in fishing boats carrying 500 to 600 kilos each, then split into loads bound for seven Argentine provinces.[2]
The case followed February arrests in the same network, including the vice mayor’s brother with more than 500 kilos and the mayor’s daughter, after which the security minister declared that Itatí had been run by narco-politics.[1]
