Chile Confronts Organized Crime

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Organized crime in Chile grows more sophisticated, Colombia severs ties with Israel, and Uruguay’s ailing former president offers spontaneous life advice.

High-Profile Killings Put Chile on Alert

Chile is reeling from the killings of three military police officers last Saturday. Their vehicle was found burned alongside a highway, with the officers inside, in the south-central Biobío region. There was no suspect on the scene. Interior Minister Carolina Tohá called the style of the crime “unprecedented,” and President Gabriel Boric declared three days of national mourning.

The killings, which are currently under investigation, occurred in an area where Indigenous Mapuche groups have clashed with authorities in a long-running conflict over land. Criminal groups involved in illegal logging, drug trafficking, and other activities are also present in the area. Some “cloak themselves in the Indigenous cause” as cover for their actions, journalist Patricia Garip wrote in Foreign Policy last year.

To former military police intelligence officer Pablo Zeballos, the killings of the police officers were an “inflection point” in the evolution of crime in Chile. Criminal enterprises are growing more sophisticated in their connections to international networks and appear unafraid to perpetrate brutal actions. In March, the body of a former Venezuelan military officer who had been living in Chile and was a known dissident was found in a suitcase; investigators have linked the event to the Venezuelan organized crime group Tren de Aragua.

Chile’s annual homicide rate has crept up in recent years, from 4.5 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 6.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022. That is low by Latin American standards but historically high for Chile. The rise has made security policy an unexpected focus of the left-wing Boric administration, which took office in March 2022 with plans to reduce inequality and rewrite Chile’s constitution. In 2023, Boric upped security spending by 4.4 percent.

Government responses to organized crime in Latin America range from the laissez-faire style of Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to the sweeping detentions of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele.

Speaking on Americas Quarterly’s AQ Podcast in late March, InSight Crime co-founder Jeremy McDermott noted that Boric appears to be taking a middle approach: using investigative capabilities to pursue those who commit crimes and trying to not sacrifice human rights protections while deploying security forces. Chile has set up new, specialized units in the attorney general’s office and laid out neighborhood-based policing plans.

Last month, Boric’s government announced that Chile’s homicides had dropped 6 percent in 2023 from their total the previous year. If organized crime in the country is evolving, so too is the government’s ability to respond to it, said Tohá, the interior minister. Those capabilities will be tested in the aftermath of Saturday’s attack.

Chile’s crime scare has been accompanied by some xenophobia. A November 2023 survey found that 70 percent of Chileans believe that migration increases crime rates, a conclusion that migration experts dispute. The country’s foreign-born population has risen dramatically in recent years, although the Boric administration has moved to tighten restrictions on migration.

Concern over crime appears to have triggered those crackdowns. After a Venezuelan migrant attacked a police officer with a grenade last November, Boric announced that migrants who had not signed up with a government registry system would be expelled.

The intertwined fears of crime and migration appear elsewhere in the region. In Panama, which will hold a presidential election on Sunday, opposition candidate José Raúl Mulino has capitalized on dissatisfaction with the ruling party and concerns about corruption, a water crisis, and a rise in homicides.

To combat irregular migration, Mulino plans to close the Darién Gap, the country’s jungle border with Colombia through which half a million people moved northward last year. When the crossing was temporarily blocked in February, it prompted migrant bottlenecks and warnings of a humanitarian emergency.

Upcoming Events

Friday, May 3, to Saturday, May 4: Japanese Prime Minister Fumio Kishida visits Brazil and Paraguay.

Friday, May 3: Boric meets with United Nations Secretary General António Guterres in Chile’s capital of Santiago, where they are due to hold a joint press conference.

Sunday, May 5: Panama holds general elections.

What We’re Following

A boy holds a Palestinian flag next to a sign that reads “Latin America is with Palestine” during a demonstration in support of Palestinians in Cali, Colombia, on October 19, 2023.Joaquin Sarmiento/AFP via Getty Images

Colombia’s diplomatic break. Colombian President Gustavo Petro announced at a May Day rally on Wednesday that he would sever the country’s diplomatic relations with Israel over its military campaign in Gaza, which he called “genocidal.” Israel’s foreign minister said in response that an “antisemitic and hateful” leader could not alter the “warm ties” between the two countries.

In Latin America, Colombia follows Bolivia and Belize in cutting ties with Israel; other countries, such as Chile and Honduras, have recalled their ambassadors since the onset of the Israel-Hamas war last October. More than 34,000 Palestinians have been killed in the conflict, which began with Hamas’s Oct. 7, 2023, attack on southern Israel that killed around 1,200 people.

Many people in Latin America have long been critical of Israel’s treatment of Palestinians and are upset by how Israel is prosecuting its latest war with Hamas. This week, student activists at the National Autonomous University of Mexico set up a pro-Palestinian encampment on school grounds, inspired by similar protests across the United States.

Haiti’s leadership scramble. On Tuesday, four of the seven voting members of Haiti’s transitional governing council chose a head of the council and a prime minister, only to reverse course on Wednesday night, saying they would reselect the prime minister using a different procedure. Former acting Prime Minister Ariel Henry had resigned as part of negotiations that created the council.

In the original announcement on Tuesday, the council decided that former Senate President Edgard Leblanc Fils would serve as its leader, with former Sports Minister Fritz Bélizaire as prime minister. A civil society group represented on the council—by a member that did not support Fils or Bélizaire—said the result represents the triumph of back-room dealmaking by political parties.

Once Haiti appoints new leadership, a Kenyan-led, U.N.-backed security mission is expected to intervene in the country.

Left-wing symposium. Latin America’s conservative politicians and ideologues have gathered at the Brazilian arm of the Conservative Political Action Conference in recent years to hash out coordinated policy and messaging priorities. This week, left-wing politicians and thinkers gathered at their own stomping grounds: a conference in Havana that discussed an agenda for progressive economic policymaking.

The event also included participants from farther afield. Government officials from Algeria, Brazil, Colombia, Cuba, Honduras, and South Africa attended, along with U.N. representatives. Together, they pledged to revive the spirit of a 1974 U.N. declaration on a new international economic order (NIEO) and push for reforms to global financial institutions as well as new forms of south-south collaboration.

Most of the goals of the 1974 NIEO declaration did not come to pass. It’s early to weigh in on the success of this year’s Havana conference. Countries plan to present the joint proposals they developed at the event at this year’s U.N. General Assembly in September. Many of the same themes from the 1974 declaration still rang true at this year’s conference, though it added a new emphasis on combating climate change.

Question of the Week

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In Focus: Mujica’s Message

Former Uruguayan President José Mujica leaves after holding a meeting with Brazil’s then-president-elect, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, in São Paulo on Oct. 31, 2022.Carl De Souza/AFP via Getty Images

Former Uruguayan President José “Pepe” Mujica announced on Monday that he has esophageal cancer that will be difficult to treat due to a preexisting autoimmune disease.

While tests are still underway to gain a clearer understanding of Mujica’s condition, he said at a press conference that he feels the “grim reaper” is at his door. He then launched into a series of reflections about what matters in life. His sporadic advice for young people was republished by news organizations across the region.

“Fight for love. Don’t let yourself be seduced by hate,” Mujica said. “Life is beautiful, and it goes by fast. Triumphing in life is starting again when you fall. If there is an argument, turn it into hope.”

Mujica rose from being a leftist guerrilla in his youth to the president of Uruguay from 2010 to 2015. Today, at 88 years old, he lives on a farm. As an elder statesman, Mujica has eschewed political polarization and committed to bridging political differences. He enjoys a positive dialogue with current center-right Uruguayan President Luis Lacalle Pou; Lacalle Pou called Mujica after his health announcement on Monday to offer his support.

Mujica has also acted as a bridge between Lacalle Pou and Brazil’s leftist president, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, traveling with Lacalle Pou to Lula’s inauguration last year. “We have to maintain a relationship that makes the country survive in the middle of this chaos,” Mujica said of his liaising in March.

Unlike in nearby Argentina, Brazil, and Chile, Uruguayan politics remain decidedly mainstream. The country’s election later this year is expected to hand the presidency to a center-left or center-right candidate. (Lacalle Pou will not run again due to term limits.)

Mujica’s own appeals to broad human virtues have contributed to the country’s healthy political discourse. On Monday, Mujica said he would stay involved in activism for as long as he can. When he goes, “no one will take from me the dances I’ve danced,” he said.