Hitmen in Paraguay: A phenomenon that is becoming more complex?

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By Jorge Rolón Luna.*

There is no doubt that the as­sas­si­na­tion has be­come a phe­nom­e­non that pre­sents di­verse an­gles and that such a mul­ti­form face has be­come a char­ac­ter­is­tic. In May 2023 a po­lice in­ves­ti­ga­tion thwarted an at­tack that was un­der­way, at least ac­cord­ing to the in­ves­ti­ga­tors, which would have been a new twist to the phe­nom­e­non. It was an at­tack on a mas­sive event in Asun­ción, which would make the tragic event that oc­curred at the Ja’umína Fest mu­sic fes­ti­val (Jan­u­ary 30, 2022), as the work of boy scouts: “sup­pos­edly the plan was that the as­sas­sins should use long weapons since the tar­get is al­ways pro­tected by two thugs which would gen­er­ate a cross­fire in which many of the at­ten­dees could be hit by bul­lets from the cross­fire…“. This was a crim­i­nal op­er­a­tion, far from their bases, with in­tel­li­gence work, lo­gis­tics and a high num­ber of un­usual di­rect op­er­a­tives to com­ply with an or­der. Not that it was un­usual (think of the Rafaat op­er­a­tion in 2016), but there is no doubt that the ca­pac­ity and ver­sa­til­ity of crim­i­nal drug traf­fick­ing groups is only in­creas­ing.

We could say that the in­crease is in num­ber and di­ver­sity. If we fo­cus on the crimes com­mit­ted by hired as­sas­sins dur­ing the year 2022, we can reg­is­ter at­tacks on po­lice sta­tions, the homes of prison guards, pri­vate ve­hi­cles of po­lice of­fi­cers, stores and busi­nesses, and even at­tacks with ex­plo­sives in gel. Al­though in many cases the fi­nal ob­jec­tive was the typ­i­cal and char­ac­ter­is­tic of this modal­ity, that is, mur­der, the analy­sis of the facts sug­gests that, in many other cases, the only pur­pose was to threaten, ter­ror­ize and in­tim­i­date the vic­tims.

Quan­ti­ta­tively, if we com­pare 2022 with 2021, we see that there were more hit­men (more at­tacks) and the same num­ber of vic­tims (dead and wounded), but there were fewer deaths, i.e. more peo­ple were wounded. Con­sid­er­ing the facts re­ported by the me­dia, in 2022 there were 212 cases of hired killings and in 2021, 188, that is, an an­nual in­crease of 13% (Fig­ure 1).

Fig­ure 1: Acts re­lated to hired as­sas­si­na­tions recorded in 2021 and 2022

Source: Own, based on data from jour­nal­is­tic sources.

De­spite this in­crease in at­tacks, the num­ber of vic­tims (count­ing deaths and in­juries) was the same in both 2022 and 2021. This sug­gests that ei­ther the hit­men had a higher “er­ror” rate, i.e., they did not meet the ob­jec­tive of pro­duc­ing vic­tims, or the at­tacks had a mo­ti­va­tion other than to pro­duce deaths. In fact, in 2022 there was a de­crease (-4%) in fa­tal­i­ties com­pared to the pre­vi­ous year. How­ever, there was a sig­nif­i­cant in­crease (13%) in the num­ber of in­jured.

Throughout 2022 there were 175 deaths and 53 wounded in the 212 registered attacks. Although the statistics show that the number of deaths because of hired assassination decreased in 2022, it must be emphasized that this is far from being encouraging data on the state of citizen security, since 175 fatalities is undoubtedly a chilling number that indicates that it is not a marginal or controlled phenomenon

How is it that the lethal­ity and ef­fec­tive­ness of at­tacks or in­ter­ven­tions by hired killers de­creased, given that there were more at­tacks in 2022 than in the pre­vi­ous year?

A first ex­plana­tory hy­poth­e­sis could be that the phe­nom­e­non of “sicari­ato”, as it ex­pands quan­ti­ta­tively and ter­ri­to­ri­ally, re­cruits less “qual­i­fied” (less “pro­fes­sional”, less ex­pe­ri­enced) “la­bor”, in­creas­ing the pos­si­bil­ity of er­ror or fail­ure at the time of ex­e­cu­tion of the mur­ders.

Al­though the lat­ter could ex­plain some iso­lated event, a deeper analy­sis shows that what is hap­pen­ing is the com­plex­i­fi­ca­tion of the phe­nom­e­non. In­deed, in 2022 there were nu­mer­ous cases of ram­page of homes, busi­nesses and ar­son of prop­erty, where the ob­jec­tive, ev­i­dently, was not to kill. In such com­plex sce­nario, we in­clude events where the “man­power” re­quired has been hy­per-pro­fes­sional due to the dif­fi­cul­ties that had to be over­come to ful­fill the pur­poses de­sired by crim­i­nal or­ga­ni­za­tions, some­thing that should be of con­cern be­cause it is ev­i­dent that in this sce­nario, not even high of­fi­cials or other well-pro­tected tar­gets are not safe.

On the other hand, as noted, the use of hired as­sas­sins in 2022 would have ex­panded its scope of ac­tion to in­cor­po­rate prac­tices such as in­tim­i­da­tion, ex­tor­tion, “send­ing mes­sages”, warn­ings, and threats (ter­ror­ism?) and would no longer be lim­ited to the pur­pose of as­sas­si­na­tion. These “other faces” of hired as­sas­si­na­tion would no longer be aimed at killing the peo­ple tar­geted. They are aimed at ter­ror­iz­ing and am­pli­fy­ing the role of hired as­sas­si­na­tion to a model of “ter­ri­to­r­ial con­trol” as we pointed out in a pre­vi­ous ar­ti­cle.

Through­out 2022 there were 175 deaths and 53 wounded in the 212 reg­is­tered at­tacks. Al­though the sta­tis­tics show that the num­ber of deaths be­cause of hired as­sas­si­na­tion de­creased in 2022, it must be em­pha­sized that this is far from be­ing en­cour­ag­ing data on the state of cit­i­zen se­cu­rity, since 175 fa­tal­i­ties is un­doubt­edly a chill­ing num­ber that in­di­cates that it is not a mar­ginal or con­trolled phe­nom­e­non. Nor is it an in­di­ca­tor of a re­trac­tion in the ac­tiv­ity of hired as­sas­sins, given that this drop in deaths is coun­ter­bal­anced by an in­crease in the num­ber of wounded.

Dur­ing 2022 we have had a hit­man at­tack every 42 hours, a vic­tim (dead or wounded) every 38 hours, and a death every 2 days. The sicari­ato, with­out a doubt, is trans­form­ing, be­com­ing more com­plex and its na­ture is chang­ing while it en­joys good health as it leaves its trail of deaths, phys­i­cally and psy­cho­log­i­cally dam­aged peo­ple, as well as com­mu­ni­ties im­pris­oned by its vi­o­lence and ter­ror.

* In­de­pen­dent re­searcher, teacher, writer, au­thor of the book of short sto­ries “Los sicar­ios”.

Cover im­age: ABC Color