CRIME-ARGENTINA: Menem Pledges to “Clean Up the Streets”

By Marcela Valente Reprint | | Print |

Marcela Valente

BUENOS AIRES, Apr 15 1999 (IPS) - Argentine President Carlos Menem ordered Thursday the mobilisation of all security forces to cooperate in fighting the wave of increasingly violent crime sweeping the country.

Menem called the Council of Interior Security – comprised of law enforcement officials and security forces countrywide – to declare all security forces in a “state of mobilisation.”

The Prefecture and Gendarmerie will thus join federal and provincial police in patrolling the streets of greater Buenos Aires – home to around 11 million of Argentina’s 33 million inhabitants.

Around half of those surveyed in Buenos Aires by the Institute of Public Policies on Urban Security said they were robbed or mugged last year.

Menem has taken the initiative in fighting crime, the second most pressing public concern after unemployment, according to a recent report by the Centre of Studies for the New Majority.

Unemployment currently stands at 12.4 percent, after peaking at around 18 percent in 1995. But it is on the rise again, and the government is trying to keep the figure from climbing to a projected 15.5 percent this year. The figure for under-employment – including work in the informal sector – is even higher.

The increasing lack of safety and high crime rates began to receive attention here in 1996. But in the past few months, the fear of becoming a victim has become more intense and widespread, with the face of crime changing, and offenders becoming younger and younger – and more and more bold.

Today, many adult and juvenile thieves do not hesitate in raping, torturing or killing their victims. Another increasingly common phenomenon are murders committed during the theft of cars – or even shoes or jackets.

Police believe that many murders committed during armed robbery involve youths inexperienced in handling weapons and often operating under the effect of drugs.

When victims make the slightest move toward satisfying the demands, they are often shot in a knee-jerk reaction by the would- be-thieves, in their fear that the victim is about to pull out a gun.

According to official reports, a total of 1.8 million firearms are registered in Argentina, more than one million of which are in the hands of civilians. But police estimate that another one million, smuggled into the country and sold at affordable prices, are illegally owned.

Just two days after Interior Minister Carlos Corach claimed that crime rates in Argentina were among the lowest in the world, Menem declared Thursday that he was not willing to “sit back and watch the spectacle of a country where politicians talk while citizens die.

“We are going to clean up the streets of criminals, and guarantee everyone’s right to safety, because this involves the country’s governability,” said Menem, who blamed the crime wave on drugs and soft prison sentences.

The president did not draw any connection between crime rates and unemployment and poverty levels, as opposition sectors have done, six months before the October presidential elections.

Nearly every day, newspaper headlines and radio and TV newscasts are dominated by reports of armed robberies – mainly in greater Buenos Aires – many of which are committed by minors.

A growing number of robberies end in murder – of the victim, like in an incident Wednesday in which a woman was killed as she left a bank – or the thief, shot down by police.

There are also victims who report having been raped or tortured because they had too little money to satisfy their attackers.

Petrol station-owner Eliseo Garachoa told a local radio station Thursday that he had been robbed 129 times in the past three years. But he pointed out that the 44 violent incidents – including brutality, blows, shots and one death – took place this year.

“My family wants me to leave the business, but what can I do? I’m broke, my employees want to leave, and no one is going to buy my business under these conditions,” he complained.

Three armed men took 600 public school students hostage in a Buenos Aires suburb last Friday, in order to rob the salaries of the teachers.

And last week, three men broke into a house, dragged the homeowner by his hair into the shower, and forced him to grasp electric cables once he was sopping wet. Meanwhile, his wife was being raped by another of the attackers. Before leaving, the thieves stole the couple’s valuables and money.

Juan Manuel Velasco, coordinator of the Institute of Public Policies on Urban Security, said that since according to official data nearly 70 percent of the victims of theft do not go to the police, his organisation carried out its own survey to determine the extent of the recent rise in crime.

A full 47 percent of those interviewed in the city said they had been mugged in the streets or robbed at home in 1998, a proportion that climbed to 52 percent in outlying areas of Buenos Aires.

The poll found out that 78 percent of respondents affected by crime last year had taken some measure to improve their safety. “Thirty percent put armour-plating on the doors of their homes, 20 percent installed alarm systems, and 30 percent installed bars,” said Velasco, a sociologist.

The survey also illustrated that private security agencies were doing brisk business.

Twenty-three percent of respondents who lived in apartments said their buildings had hired private security guards, and 10 percent of those living in houses had joined with their neighbours to hire private security services.

Last week, Interior Minister Corach admitted that Argentina’s current socioeconomic crisis was one of – but not one of “the most important,” he maintained – factors in the rise in crime.

Argentina’s present economic crisis is largely the result of first the “tequila effect” after the late 1994 crash of the Mexican peso and now the fallout of the plunge of the Brazilian real since mid-January.

Drug addiction expert Jorge Grinson, who works in the rehabilitation of drug abusers, said there were more and more youths in Argentina “prepared to die” due to the “amputation of their future.”

Grinson said today’s juvenile delinquents have generally dropped out – or have been expelled – from the school system, and have no jobs and no future of any kind except the prospect of an early death in the middle of an armed robbery.

“Fuelling this crime wave is the awful inequality, the growing flippancy of wealth amassed by a small sector of the population, while another sector becomes poorer by the day.

“The ostentatiousness of many is part of the violence being experienced, and the culture of ‘shoppings’ (malls) – huge shopping centres where all of those things which many cannot afford are displayed – is also part of that violence,” he argued.