By Jorge Rolón Luna*
The recent murder in Asunción of Ederson Salinas Benítez, a drug trafficker from the Amambay area, although without any official investigation, showed once again that hired assassination is no longer an “Amambay” or “border” issue, as was the relief of the capital’s population regarding this type of crime.
Criminal groups involved in drug trafficking and who habitually resort to contract killings as a way to settle their disputes, today are spread throughout the border area (whether by land or that which separates us from neighboring countries by rivers such as the Paraguay and Paraná), as well as in Asunción, the metropolitan area and departments that do not form part of the border.
Truth be told, the traditional areas of drug trafficking activity have long since ceased to have that macabre exclusivity, although the numbers continue to show that the hot areas in terms of homicides continue to be them, with the special case of the department of Amambay, which also has the most violent city in the country, Pedro Juan Caballero (PJC). This is visible in Graph 1, which shows unpublished data that correspond to the map of the hitmen in Paraguay, according to a survey of the episodes recorded throughout the year 2022.
Total hitmen attacks by department 2022.
Source: Own creation based on press sources.
In a series of articles published last year, I compared data from the first four months of the years 2021 and 2022 regarding the geolocation of the actions of hired killers. In the first one, I consigned the location of these attacks by department: Amambay, Concepción, Asunción and Central (considered together, since the capital does not belong to Central, but they form an almost undivided whole today), topped the ranking, with the first one comfortably ahead of the following hot spots. To uproot the idea that Amambay is almost exclusive territory of hired killings, here is some data: in the first four months of 2021 it concentrated 47% of the cases, while in the whole of 2022, only 39%. Seen from another angle, last year more than half of the cases of contract killings were distributed outside the department.
In another article, where I also analyzed the same period of time, I stated the localities that registered the highest number of cases: Pedro Juan Caballero (PJC), Capitán Bado and Yvy Yaú, in that order, although in the total of both four-month periods PJC far exceeded the other two localities. An interesting fact: in this comparison, Asunción already appeared in fourth place, with 3 cases, both in 2021 and 2022.
A first conclusion is that Asunción has been a territory of hitmen attacks for some years now, immediately after cities and towns traditionally considered “hot”.
If we consider the data on hitmen attacks by department corresponding to 2022, we see that Amambay leads the ranking overwhelmingly, as shown in graphs 1 and 2. However, what stands out is that 61.4% of the hitmen cases occur outside of Amambay. On the other hand, five departments concentrate almost 80% of the cases of hired killings: Amambay, Alto Paraná, Concepción, Itapúa, Canindeyú. The rest of the cases are distributed among the remaining eleven of the 16 departments that registered cases last year.
Another striking aspect of the analysis of these statistics is that Asunción and the metropolitan area concentrate 10.3% of the cases, a phenomenon attributable specially to disputes within the micro-trafficking business. We can affirm that, today, the capital and its periphery are already “red” zones, if not “red”, at least orange in terms of contract homicides.
Ranking of departments by hitmen attacks 2022 in totals and percentages
|
Department |
Total | Percentage |
|
Amambay |
82 | 39% |
| Alto Paraná | 23 |
11% |
| Asunción | 6 |
3% |
|
Anchovy |
1 | 0% |
|
Caaguazú |
5 | 2% |
| Canindeyú | 19 |
9% |
| Central | 16 |
8% |
|
Concepcion |
22 | 10% |
|
Cordillera |
4 | 2% |
| Guairá | 1 |
0% |
| San Pedro | 7 |
3% |
|
Itapua |
22 | 10% |
|
Missions |
1 | 0% |
| Caazapá | 1 |
0% |
|
Paraguarí |
1 | 0% |
| P. Hayes | 1 |
0% |
| 212 |
100% |
Source: Own creation based on press sources.
As can be seen in Figure 3, Pedro Juan Caballero is by far the city most affected, followed by Capitán Bado, also in Amambay. However, there are some surprising localities, such as San Pedro del Paraná, whose appearance on the map of hired killings is indicative of high drug trafficking activity to Argentina from Itapua and the conflict that this has been unleashing lately in that area.
Ranking of 10 cities and localities with cases of hired assassinations 2022
|
Location |
Total | Percentage |
|
Pedro J. C. |
52 |
26.4% |
| Cap. Bado | 20 |
9.4% |
|
S. Pedro P. |
13 | 6.1% |
| CDE | 11 |
5.2% |
|
Yvy Yau |
11 | 5.2% |
| Asunción | 6 |
2.8% |
|
S.J. F. L. |
5 | 2.4% |
| Itakyry | 4 |
1.9% |
|
P. C. Cora |
4 | 1.9% |
| Yvy Pytä | 3 |
1.4% |
Source: Own creation based on press sources.
If we consider the data on hitmen attacks by department corresponding to 2022, we see that Amambay leads the ranking overwhelmingly, as shown in graphs 1 and 2. However, what stands out is that 61.4% of the hitmen cases occur outside of Amambay.
In summary, it is true that Amambay and Pedro Juan Caballero are confirmed, according to these data, for one more year as the department and the city with the highest number of hired killings, showing that they are the epicenter of international drug trafficking in Paraguay, but it is also an undeniable fact that high levels of this illegal activity are not limited to that area of the country.
These data show that the territorial dispersion of the hitmen has several notable facets. First, the areas near Amambay also suffer the scourge of drug violence (Concepción and Canindeyú, especially), as well as the border departments, whether dry or rivers, because they are areas where trafficking to Brazil and Argentina takes place. Finally, Asunción and Central, for reasons probably different from those in the northern part of the country (micro-trafficking, drug retailing), are not immune to the action of hitmen.
*Independent researcher, former director of the Observatory of Coexistence and Citizen Security of the Ministry of the Interior. Author of the book of short stories “Los sicarios”.
Image Source: Infobae