A Rivera court sentenced a 25-year-old Brazilian man and a 27-year-old Uruguayan woman to three years in prison for negotiating prohibited narcotics, the charge known in Uruguay as suministro de sustancias estupefacientes.[1] The two lived in Santana do Livramento, the Brazilian city facing Rivera across the border.[2]

A Plateia says they supplied several bocas de venta, Uruguay’s term for open-air drug-selling points, on the Uruguayan side of the frontier.[1] The investigation was run by the northern region of the National Police’s investigations directorate as Operation Mapuche.[2] Officers stopped the couple once they had crossed into Uruguay, at Aparicio Saravia and Ignacio Núñez streets, in the Recreo neighbourhood.[1] The search found 997 grams of marijuana, 255 grams of pasta base, a cocaine paste, and 154 grams of cocaine.[2] Officers also took 968 reais, a motorcycle and a mobile phone, and the third-turn prosecutor ordered the couple held.[2]

With the pair detained, the Uruguayan police passed the information to the intelligence unit of the Military Police in Santana do Livramento, which searched a storage site.[2] There Brazilian police seized a further 1,816 grams of marijuana, 2,740 grams of cocaine and 1,247 grams of pasta base.[2] The same Brazilian find included a pistol magazine, 79 rounds of 9 mm and .45 ammunition, 41,480 reais and 1,332 pesos.[2] Diario Norte, the Rivera daily, reported the operation as a joint Uruguayan-Brazilian action and said the investigations were continuing on both sides of the border.[3]