The Paraguay-Paraná waterway It has an extension of approximately 3,380 kilometers, connecting at least 150 ports in five countries and serves as the continent’s most important commercial water route. In 1992, the five countries –Brazil, Bolivia, Paraguay, Argentina and Uruguay– agreed to establish the two natural rivers, which are on the border between Paraguay and Argentina, as a transit route for goods, dredging them to allow commercial traffic. Every year, thousands of container ships, barges and other vessels navigate the waterway’s choppy brown waters to transport millions of tons of cargo south to Argentina and from there across the Atlantic.
But this crucial artery has a new function. has become a main route to transport record amounts of cocaine a Europa.
The explosion of the global container shipping business has allowed drug traffickers to take advantage of a waterway that a few years ago would have seemed illogical: heading south, instead of north, from clandestine tracks in Bolivia to the ports of Paraguay and then to the estuary of Silver River Argentinean.
Now fuels growing demand for cocaine of Europe and the world. Since the pandemic, some of the largest drug seizures in Europe have arrived in containers that They first traveled down this river. Cocaine kidnappings linked to the Paraguay-Paraná system are quintupled between 2010 and 2021, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC).
To cite an example: last year, after leaving Asunción, a ship with more than 12 tons of cocaine went unnoticed sailing down the Paraguay River. One of its containers, carrying black sesame seeds to hide the drugs, left the Paraguayan capital in May 2023 and headed south to Uruguay, where it was loaded onto another ship heading to Europe.
The drugs were found in the port of Hamburg at the beginning of July. It was the largest seizure outside of South America in all of 2023.
Nine days before the container of sesame seeds was loaded at the port of Asunción, Paraguayan authorities had held a parade to commemorate the arrival of five new scanners, four of them donated by Taiwan and manufactured in the United States. “With this powerful fleet of high-tech equipment,” the country’s customs officials said in a statement, “Paraguay is no longer a country of river transit for organized crime”.
The massive seizure in Hamburg hit the Paraguayan government like “a bucket of cold water,” said one government official, speaking on condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to discuss the case. “It was a great shame”.
Advanced technology, officials realized, was no panacea.
“It’s the eternal game of cat and mouse.”said Nicolás Benza, head of the UNODC container program for the Southern Cone. “They have unlimited resources, while our resources are limited.”
For generations, drug traffickers focused their business on American consumers, transporting cocaine from Colombia to Central America and the United States. The Brazilian port of Santos used to serve as an alternative departure point from South America. But today, as the cocaine industry has grown and security forces have intensified operations against traditionally vulnerable ports, criminal groups have developed new routes and markets.
Paraguay It became an attractive transit point. It is one of the world’s largest exporters of organic soybeans, beef and sugar. A landlocked country of less than 7 million inhabitants, now has the third largest barge fleet in the worldbehind the United States and China.
This year alone, approximately 78,000 containers have left Paraguayan ports heading south to Argentina or Uruguay and then crossed the Atlantic, according to customs figures.
But the country’s law enforcement agencies are not designed to combat transnational organized crime. Paraguay, unlike its neighbors, has practically no aerial radars. This makes it easier for traffickers in Bolivia to fly drugs – cocaine produced either in Colombia, Peru or Bolivia – to clandestine runways in the northern part of Paraguay, one of the most depopulated areas on the continent.
From there, the drugs are transported in trucks to warehouses, where they are hidden in containers destined for the river.
“The evolution of organized crime has been faster than that of the security forces”said Oscar Chamorro, head of Paraguay’s coast guard.
Every container leaving a Paraguayan port is now required to go through a scanner. However, drug traffickers are increasingly finding ways to bypass technologyinvestigators said, mixing cocaine into liquids, powders and other materials to disguise it. In June, Paraguayan authorities found more than 4 tons of cocaine hidden inside sugar bags in a container in Asunción, destined for Antwerp, Belgium. He had passed through the scanner without being detected.
“We have our doors wide open,” said Deny Yoon Pak, the prosecutor in charge of the sesame case. “How much cargo has been shipped and we had no idea?”
Earlier this month, Paraguay’s anti-drug agency announced it would suspend cooperation with the United States, jeopardizing some of the most important investigations into cocaine trafficking in the country. One of those cases involves the search for Sebastian Marsethe drug dealer fugitive who hid like soccer player professional and is believed to control much of the traffic on the Paraguay River. Some former Paraguayan officials argued that the measure was an attempt to protect high-ranking Paraguayan politicians with ties to drug trafficking.
After a publication in The Washington Post which reported the decision to end cooperation, the Paraguayan government changed its stance, saying it plans to strengthen collaboration with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).
Night fell over the port south of Asunción as a crane lifted one container after another, slowly lowering each one onto the ship “Josamo” as it prepared to set sail.
“Not yet, not yet!” one of the crew members shouted, wagging his finger and gesturing for the crane operator to continue, then stop, until the container landed in place with a loud thump.
In just a few hours, the captain and crew of the “Josamo” would begin their journey south, to Uruguay, transporting containers that would be reloaded on larger ships heading to Europe and the rest of the world.
The crew had never discovered cocaine on board. Even so, the captain, as always, ordered one of the crew members, this time Héctor Medina, 37, to carry out a final round of inspection throughout the ship. With a flashlight in hand, Medina crawled through dark tunnels and looked into the cracks between the containerslooking for signs of smuggling. (The ship’s owner allowed journalists from The Post travel part of the journey along the waterway in the “Josamo”).
Hours later, as dawn approached, the captain announced that they would set sail.
“Reporting… departure maneuver,” said Captain Néstor Riquelme, 37. “Montevideo Destination”.
The “Josamo” left with 292 containers and 12 crew members.
The ground vibrated with the hum of the engine as the boat moved away from the shore and began its descent down the river.
The narrow river was bordered by swamps and farmland, dotted occasionally by horses and cows. There were few lights. The next day, one river flowed into another: Paraguay gave way to Paraná, and the “Josamo” arrived in Argentina.
The ship would pass in front of the industrial city of Rosariohometown of the soccer star Lionel Messi and birthplace of the Marxist revolutionary Che Guevara. The third largest city in Argentina is also among the main agricultural ports in the world.
The river is deep enough in Rosario for oceangoing ships. Cargo traveling from Paraguay must be transhipped here, or at other ports further south, before reaching the ocean.
has become a center for cocaine trafficking to places as far away as Australia.
In August 2022, authorities confiscated more than 1.5 ton of cocaine in a warehouse in Rosario. The packages, found inside bags of corn pellets, were marked with the Louis Vuitton logo and were destined for Spain, according to investigators.
The warehouse, a nondescript garage, is located in one of the city’s most dangerous neighborhoods, where local gangs fight for control and have helped turn Rosario in the most violent city in Argentina.
The government of Javier Mileya radical libertarian and ally of the president-elect Donald Trumphas led an offensive against gang control in the streets and prisons of Rosario.
His administration has deployed resources to the area, including an Israeli-made gunship to patrol against drug traffickers operating in the waters outside the city.
Below is Buenos Airesthe estuary of the Río de la Plata and the open ocean. After passing through the canal, the ships turn northeast, heading for Rotterdam in the Netherlands, Antwerp and Hamburg.
© 2024, The Washington Post.
