On 14 July 2021 Carabineros stopped a pickup truck on route A-97B in the Alto Lirima sector of Pica commune, Tarapacá, in which a Bolivian man was riding as the scout, or punta de lanza, for a drug convoy.[1] The convoy carried 867 kg of marijuana, 198.7 kg of cocaine hydrochloride and 25.3 kg of coca paste.[1] According to the Iquique oral-trial court’s ruling, the operation started in Cariquima, in the border commune of Colchane, where the group met a Bolivian national driving a Bolivian-plated vehicle.[1] The court valued the whole load at more than 1,000 million pesos and noted three vehicles coordinated by radio and what it called the operation’s level of sophistication and planning.[1]
Jhoel Ramos Antesana, a Bolivian with no address in Chile, was sentenced to five years and one day in prison.[1] During the case the Tarapacá presidential delegation filed a negative report on expelling him as an alternative penalty, and the court ruled that out because of the length of the sentence.[1] On 12 May 2026 the Ministry of Justice cut three months from his sentence and set his release for two days later.[1] Cooperativa, citing the same Interferencia investigation, reported that the 12 May decree cut his sentence by three months and ended his term two days later.[2]
His case has the largest drug volume among the cases Interferencia reviewed.[1] Interferencia reviewed 150 commutation decrees for foreign nationals issued this year, 115 of them benefiting people convicted of drug offences, and found the ministry opposed none of them.[1] At least 13 of those beneficiaries were stopped at the northern border or on the roads leading down from it, eight of them Bolivian, three Venezuelan, one Colombian and one Argentine.[1] The decrees, citing a 2018 Santiago appeals-court ruling and two Supreme Court rulings, argue that the ministry cannot deny a sentence reduction because of the gravity of the offence.[2]
