Sicariato in Paraguay: the year 2022 in balance

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By Jorge Rolón Luna* 

Last June 24, D. G. was ar­riv­ing at his home in San Rafael del Paraná when he was hit by close range bul­lets. On the way to the near­est hos­pi­tal, he stopped breath­ing. Up to this point it could be just an­other vi­o­lent episode, just an­other homi­cide. How­ever, what is strik­ing in this case is that the au­thor of the shots was a sniper, no less, who pa­tiently awaited the ar­rival of the vic­tim to am­bush him in front of his own house and shoot him from a va­cant lot lo­cated about thirty me­ters away. DG had no crim­i­nal record or known malfea­sance. Why would any­one want to com­mis­sion his as­sas­si­na­tion and what could ex­plain such a level of so­phis­ti­ca­tion in the “com­mis­sion”? How is it that an ex­pert marks­man was com­mis­sioned to as­sas­si­nate him? Per­haps the fact that both his fa­ther and his two broth­ers are in prison in Ar­gentina, on trial for drug traf­fick­ing, may be part of the an­swer. An­other part of the an­swer is that this area of the coun­try has been a known drug traf­fick­ing route to Ar­gentina for many years.

Like the mur­der of DG, in 2022 there were other cases of con­tract killings that de­serve at­ten­tion, ei­ther be­cause of the vi­o­lence, the overkill (tor­ture) or be­cause the vic­tims were po­lice of­fi­cers, politi­cians, a jour­nal­ist and even a high-rank­ing of­fi­cer of the armed forces. What is not sur­pris­ing is the mul­ti­pli­ca­tion of vi­o­lent homi­cides reg­is­tered in a year once again full of blood due to the ac­tions of as­sas­sins hired to kill, in­tim­i­date and ter­ror­ize.

The year 2022 was a pe­riod of growth in hired killings. It could be said that with some con­tra­dic­tions, be­cause al­though there was an in­crease in the num­ber of hired as­sas­sins, the fi­nal re­sults also show an am­biva­lence that I will try to in­ter­pret be­low.

in Paraguay there are no statistics – or reliable statistics – on this criminal phenomenon, which they try to make invisible or belittle, such as contract killings. It is well known that no public policy – in this case the fight against contract killings – can be adequate without reliable statistical data

In a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle I have ex­plained the pa­ra­me­ters used to clas­sify a case as “hired as­sas­si­na­tion”.  The num­ber of cases that meet the char­ac­ter­is­tics of the in­ter­ven­tion of hired as­sas­sins to in­tim­i­date, threaten or kill some­one, in­creased in 2022 com­pared to 2021. In this as­pect, then, there is a con­ti­nu­ity in terms of the growth of the phe­nom­e­non. In­deed, in 2022, 212 cases of at­tacks or in­ter­ven­tions by hired killers have been recorded, with Jan­u­ary lead­ing with 28 cases (the most vi­o­lent month ever in terms of hired killings), as shown in the fol­low­ing graph.

Graph 1. Hit­men at­tacks 2022

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

The num­ber of ca­su­al­ties, to­tal­ing fa­tal­i­ties and in­juries, reached 228, with Jan­u­ary be­ing the month with the high­est num­ber of ca­su­al­ties.

Graph 2. Vic­tims of hired as­sas­si­na­tion 2022 (dead and wounded)

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

The num­ber of fa­tal­i­ties to­taled 175, with Jan­u­ary lead­ing the way with 30 deaths.

Graph 3. Peo­ple killed by hit­men in 2022

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

The num­ber of in­juries dur­ing the past year was 53.

Graph 4. Peo­ple in­jured by hit­men in 2022

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

Dur­ing 2022, suc­cess­ful or un­suc­cess­ful at­tempts at mur­der, de­pri­va­tion of lib­erty lead­ing to death, ma­chine-gun­ning of homes, busi­nesses or ve­hi­cles, ve­hi­cle ar­son, homes or busi­nesses, bomb­ings (one case), in­creased by 24 cases more than the 188 in 2021 (12.7% in­crease).

Graph 5. Com­par­i­son of hit­men at­tack 2020/​2021/​2022

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

Al­though the num­ber of at­tacks in­creased by a sig­nif­i­cant per­cent­age, the to­tal num­ber of deaths and in­juries is sim­i­lar to last year’s, with a “tie” of 228.

Graph 6. Com­par­a­tive num­ber of vic­tims of hired as­sas­sin at­tacks 2020/​2021/​2022

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

The num­ber of vic­tims recorded a slight de­crease com­pared to 2021 with 8 fewer cases, a de­crease of 4.3%, al­though this is still a very high fig­ure when com­pared to 2020.

Graph 7. Com­par­i­son of peo­ple killed by hired as­sas­sins 2020/​2021/​2022

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

While the num­ber of fa­tal­i­ties de­creased be­tween 2021 and 2022, on the con­trary, in­juries in­creased by 32.5%, a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease, to use a fash­ion­able term.

Graph 8. Com­par­i­son of peo­ple in­jured by hit­men at­tacks 2020/​2021/​2022

Source: Own cre­ation with data from open sources (jour­nal­is­tic).

I wish to em­pha­size that the num­bers I pre­sent here dif­fer dra­mat­i­cally from those re­cently re­leased by the Na­tional Po­lice in a terse doc­u­ment called “In­forme de Gestión 2022” (Man­age­ment Re­port 2022), in which they re­fer to 70 homi­cides for hire through­out the coun­try dur­ing 2022. The doc­u­ment in ques­tion does not pro­vide fur­ther de­tails re­gard­ing its pa­ra­me­ters of in­clu­sion of a homi­cide in the cat­e­gory “for hire” or other data (date, lo­ca­tion, num­ber of vic­tims and oth­ers). I have re­quested in De­cem­ber 2022, in­for­ma­tion from the Na­tional Po­lice re­gard­ing these con­tract killings (num­ber, char­ac­ter­is­tics, lo­ca­tion, date, etc.) un­der Law No. 5282/​14 On Free Cit­i­zen Ac­cess to Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion and Gov­ern­ment Trans­parency. The re­quest was due to the de­sire to com­pare po­lice sta­tis­tics with the record of the cases of hired killings that I have been keep­ing for sev­eral years. The only re­sponse I have re­ceived from the in­sti­tu­tion in charge of in­ter­nal se­cu­rity in the coun­try was lim­ited and un­sat­is­fac­tory, not com­ply­ing with the pro­vi­sions of the afore­men­tioned law. Pub­lic in­for­ma­tion, as stated by the In­ter-Amer­i­can Com­mis­sion on Hu­man Rights, must be “com­plete”, in or­der to com­ply with the prin­ci­ple of “full dis­clo­sure”, es­tab­lished in the In­ter-Amer­i­can Model Law on Ac­cess to Pub­lic In­for­ma­tion.

As I have al­ready pointed out in a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle, in Paraguay there are no sta­tis­tics – or re­li­able sta­tis­tics – on this crim­i­nal phe­nom­e­non, which they try to make in­vis­i­ble or be­lit­tle, such as con­tract killings. It is well known that no pub­lic pol­icy – in this case the fight against con­tract killings – can be ad­e­quate with­out re­li­able sta­tis­ti­cal data. As long as the in­sti­tu­tions do not pro­ceed to cor­rect this sit­u­a­tion, I hope that my con­tri­bu­tion to the se­ries of pub­li­ca­tions on the sub­ject will serve the pur­pose of call­ing at­ten­tion to this com­plex phe­nom­e­non that in­creas­ingly af­fects us as a so­ci­ety.

Cover im­age: Ul­tima Hora