THE NARCO AND SISYPHUS' STONE

Since the 1970s, the same policies of mass incarceration for those who produce and sell drugs have remained in place. According to the author, the outcome of those tactics has been a resounding failure. The deployment of federal forces in Rosario has been repeated since 2013, and there too, meaningful progress seems to remain elusive.

Sisyphus and his "punishment" of the stone.

Recovering assets from organized crime offers both the State and social organizations the opportunity to access a vast array of resources to support and develop new policies in areas that have long been neglected in the fight against complex criminal organizations. Currently, the National Congress of Argentina is considering a bill that could serve as the first step toward creating this new system.

Drug trafficking is a postmodern human phenomenon that began in the mid-1950s and has grown steadily ever since. When it was recognized in the early 1970s as a phenomenon with serious consequences, the strategy promoted by economic, political, and military power centers—primarily the United States—was to attack drug supply, drive up prices, and thereby discourage demand. This tactic, common in many areas of the economy, was accompanied by a policy of mass incarceration for those involved in the production, transport, and sale of drugs. The result was a resounding failure. While some major drug lords were imprisoned or killed, the vast majority of those incarcerated or eliminated were easily replaceable links in the criminal chain.

In 2000, after several discussions acknowledging the failure of these tactics, the United Nations held the Convention Against Transnational Organized Crime in Palermo, the capital of Sicily. This event not only reaffirmed those outdated tactics but also introduced a focus on prosecuting money laundering and targeting those actors who facilitate the ongoing operations of criminal organizations. Countries around the world began signing agreements, passing laws, and creating specialized institutions aimed at identifying and recovering the illicit profits of complex criminal networks. And while some progress has been made, many problems persist—and new ones continue to emerge.

Among the former is the securitization of a phenomenon that undoubtedly requires, in addition to security and justice, the involvement of other essential aspects of social life: health, education, employment, housing, and culture. Among the latter is the near-total lack of new tools developed by State agencies for managing and redistributing the assets recovered from criminal organizations.

“Politics is not about arriving; it’s about the journey, about starting processes,” said Pope Francis in a speech. Yet when it comes to complex organized crime, no new process has begun. So, what’s happening in Argentina?

Time and again, harsher sentencing is proposed—despite the fact that most incarcerated individuals haven’t even been convicted. Security plans are announced and implemented in a purely pragmatic manner, yet they neither stop criminal activity nor improve living conditions for those most affected by it. There are many examples of this: Plan Cinturón Sur, which has flooded vulnerable neighborhoods in Buenos Aires with federal forces for over a decade, has at best managed to keep things from getting worse; Plan Bandera in Rosario, which was dismantled shortly after its launch due to a lack of personnel; and Argentina Without Bunkers, focused on demolishing makeshift drug-dealing shacks that sell low-quality narcotics.

Since 2013, federal forces have been deployed in Rosario with the goal of saturating poor neighborhoods, yet more than a decade later the same plans remain in place, yielding the same results. It’s like using a hammer—harder or softer—on a screw. Long-term intervention programs with clearly defined goals were never developed. The other arms of the State—economy, labor, health, sports, education, and culture—should be the ones designing integrated policies capable of draining criminal organizations of their resources, territorial control, and symbolic power.

The modern prison policy of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele spread like wildfire, and in the absence of new paradigms, political leaders across the globe have sought to emulate a system that only functions in that Central American country, which currently operates with suspended constitutional guarantees both inside and outside of its prisons.

According to mythology, Sisyphus—the most cunning human on Earth—tricked the gods and was punished for eternity. He supposedly chained death itself, and the gods condemned him to roll a boulder up a mountain, only to see it fall and force him to begin again and again. The punishment was to perform a futile, repetitive task—devoid of purpose, hope, or outcome.

Security policy in Argentina resembles not a stone that grows lighter with each cycle, but rather a growing mass of mud—persistently accumulating. The relentless push for harsher penalties, the deployment of federal forces to patrol the streets, and calls to involve the military due to the lack of resources in provincial and federal security forces illustrate the futile and repetitive path that public policy has taken in addressing this phenomenon.

Thankfully, despite this bleak outlook, some sectors of the State and many social organizations have developed proposals for the use of recovered assets from organized crime. Cooperatives and grassroots groups have begun utilizing these resources to boost productivity and improve economic conditions for workers—many of whom come from the most disadvantaged sectors of society. Some State institutions have transformed them into spaces that aim to restore lost public trust in government.

Recovered assets can not only financially support various State programs aimed at tackling the complexity of organized crime, but they can also become the cornerstone of a new, long-term public policy—one driven by the whole State apparatus and based on the essential participation of organized civil society.

At this very moment, the National Congress is reviewing a bill that could kickstart such a system: the “Bien Restituido” project, a framework that would organize the use of recovered criminal assets and allocate them efficiently to programs that promote Integral Human Development—a goal that is only achievable if public security is also ensured.