Police shootings and cosmetic operations: Criminal and institutional reaction after Ryguasu’s murder

Escuchar la entrada

By Juan A. Martens Mo­las.

The mur­der of Ed­er­son Sali­nas, AKA Ryguasu, in the park­ing lot of a su­per­mar­ket in Asun­cion on Sat­ur­day, Feb­ru­ary 25, 2023, shocked lo­cals as well as the Na­tional Po­lice and is gen­er­at­ing a re­ac­tion from crim­i­nal mar­ket ac­tors. It put the po­lice lead­er­ship up against the wall as it ex­posed the close ties be­tween a sec­tor of the uni­formed of­fi­cers and or­ga­nized crime, whether through the sale of priv­i­leged in­for­ma­tion or through in­ac­tion to al­low crim­i­nals to act with peace of mind.

The me­dia and in­sti­tu­tional pres­sure was con­stant dur­ing the days fol­low­ing the mur­der. How­ever, over 10 days have passed since the mur­der and there has been no news about the as­sas­sins or their route. Not even the get­away car has been lo­cated.

It is sur­pris­ing that there is no fur­ther in­for­ma­tion, con­sid­er­ing that the ex­e­cu­tion took place in a mid­dle-class neigh­bor­hood, where there are hun­dreds of video sur­veil­lance cam­eras. The lead pros­e­cu­tor, Pa­tri­cia Sanchez, stated that she was re­quest­ing war­rants to col­lect the im­ages of the sur­round­ings since the early morn­ing of the mur­der, but so far, she did has not pro­vided any news on the mat­ter.

There­fore, to de­com­press the pres­sure, the po­lice re­sorted to an old strat­egy: to di­vert pub­lic at­ten­tion with suc­cess­ful op­er­a­tions, where the last links of a crim­i­nal struc­ture are ar­rested, so that the busi­ness is not af­fected, and every­thing re­mains the same.

The cosmetic reactions of the National Police, as happened in Capitan Bado and San Lorenzo, (with the clear intention of deactivating citizen pressure), as well as the executions carried out in Pedro Juan Caballero on Sunday, March 5, are expressions of criminal governance and the continuous flow of drug money into the coffers of some officials.

In the early hours of Thurs­day, March 2, the Po­lice Anti-Kid­nap­ping De­part­ment re­leased a video to the me­dia show­ing the ar­rest of a Brazil­ian man op­er­at­ing in Cap­i­tan Bado. He was pre­sented as one of the ma­jor sup­pli­ers of drugs and weapons to the Co­mando Ver­melho, the largest drug traf­fick­ing or­ga­ni­za­tion in Brazil. In the im­ages, Araújo de Abreu can be seen with 10 other peo­ple as they were ar­rested. They also leaked im­ages of am­mu­ni­tion and some weapons. The truth is that only de Abreu was ex­pelled, the oth­ers were re­leased be­cause they had not com­mit­ted any crime.

An­dres’i (as Abreu was known among the po­lice in Bado) was just a pi­ra’i men­su­alero, that is, a small-time crim­i­nal who paid the lo­cal po­lice about 500,000 guara­nies a month to move around and carry out his ac­tiv­i­ties with­out any­one both­er­ing him. He was far from be­ing the boss of a narco struc­ture. Pre­cisely for this rea­son he was the per­fect can­di­date to be­come the scape­goat in sit­u­a­tions where the po­lice are pressed for re­sults.

Two ma­jor crim­i­nal struc­tures op­er­ate in Cap­i­tan Bado with in­sti­tu­tional ac­qui­es­cence. The first is linked to Fe­lipe Baron Es­curra and the other to Danilo Gimenez, Ed­er­son Sali­nas’ com­padre and brother-in-law. In Jan­u­ary of this year, Rene Ramirez, a non-com­mis­sioned of­fi­cer as­signed to the main po­lice sta­tion in the city, was ar­rested and ac­cused of pro­vid­ing data and weapons to Es­curra. Judge Rosar­ito Mon­tanía, spe­cial­ized against Or­ga­nized Crime, or­dered his pre­ven­tive de­ten­tion. The ar­rest of Ramirez not only con­firms the in­sti­tu­tional in­fil­tra­tion, but also shows that the in­ter­ven­tion reaches the low­est links of the struc­ture and only ex­cep­tion­ally, the lead­ers.

In the lo­cal po­lice imag­i­nary, these bosses are the un­touch­ables be­cause they ne­go­ti­ate “above”, at the top of the po­lice. When their as­sis­tants are de­tained at the po­lice check­points, it is enough that they re­port this sit­u­a­tion so that they are not both­ered, re­gard­less of whether they are car­ry­ing weapons or drugs. Nande pu’aka moãi hes­ekuera (you won’t be able to fight them) and it is bet­ter to avoid prob­lems, ex­plained a lo­cal po­lice of­fi­cer when I asked him why they acted this way.

The day af­ter the op­er­a­tion in Capitán Bado, three peo­ple were ar­rested in San Lorenzo linked to a scheme of ex­tort­ing ped­dlers for the sale of con­tra­band mer­chan­dise; among them, the sub-com­mis­sioner Rodolfo Martínez Moli­nas, head of In­tel­li­gence of Eco­nomic and Fi­nan­cial Crimes of the Po­lice. The fact would not at­tract at­ten­tion and could even be un­der­stood as part of a scheme to fight in­sti­tu­tional cor­rup­tion, were it not for the fact that the case in which the ar­rests were made dates to Sep­tem­ber 2022, that is, six months ago.

In an un­usual event in Pe­dro Juan Ca­ballero, this Sun­day, March 5, 2023, two ram­page at­tacks oc­curred, both in the home of each vic­tim. In the first case, six men armed with ri­fles en­tered the house and room where Al­berto Med­ina (aged 34) slept with his wife and son, in the Jardín Au­rora neigh­bor­hood. They hand­cuffed him, tor­tured him, and then killed him with ri­fle shots, just as had hap­pened to Car­los Rubén Sánchez, aka Chicharõ, in Au­gust 2021. A few hours later, around 11 a.m., this time in Bar­rio Obrero, Diego An­to­nio del Valle (aged 26) was rid­dled with bul­lets in his back­yard, where he was spend­ing Sun­day morn­ing with his fam­ily.

Ac­cord­ing to Sánchez’s wife, the at­tack­ers were look­ing for some­thing. She said they ran­sacked the en­tire house and in­sis­tently asked “where is it? where is it?”. These two ex­e­cu­tions would be linked to the brief­case that was re­moved from Rygua­su’s apart­ment in Asun­ción af­ter his mur­der. “They are af­ter the brief­case,” said an in­tel­li­gence po­lice of­fi­cer. It is easy to fit up to 5 mil­lion dol­lars in those bags, he added.

The cos­metic re­ac­tions of the Na­tional Po­lice, as hap­pened in Cap­i­tan Bado and San Lorenzo, (with the clear in­ten­tion of de­ac­ti­vat­ing cit­i­zen pres­sure), as well as the ex­e­cu­tions car­ried out in Pe­dro Juan Ca­ballero on Sun­day, March 5, are ex­pres­sions of crim­i­nal gov­er­nance and the con­tin­u­ous flow of drug money into the cof­fers of some of­fi­cials. The ob­jec­tive, as I de­scribed in a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle, is to trade po­lit­i­cal mer­chan­dise that en­sures im­punity for the buyer and per­sonal en­rich­ment for the op­er­a­tors, all to the detri­ment of law en­force­ment.

* Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor of IN­ECIP-Paraguay. PhD from the Uni­ver­sity of Barcelona-Spain (UB). Mas­ter’s in Crim­i­nol­ogy, Crim­i­nal Pol­icy and Se­cu­rity (UB) and Crim­i­nal Guar­an­tees and Pro­ce­dural Law, Na­tional Uni­ver­sity of Pi­lar (UNP-IN­ECIP). Lawyer-UNA. Re­search Pro­fes­sor at UNP and IN­ECIP-Paraguay. Pro­fes­sor of Crim­i­nol­ogy-School of Law UNP and UNI­CAN. Re­searcher cat­e­go­rized Level II PRONII-CONA­CYT. Ex­ec­u­tive Di­rec­tor-IN­ECIP-Paraguay.

Im­age source: Au­thor’s file. These are peo­ple ar­rested and some of the ev­i­dence pre­sented af­ter the raid in Capitán Bado, where de Araújo was also ar­rested. In the end, the other de­tainees were re­leased.