Bags with money for the police and armed drug traffickers: that’s how scared they live in the neighborhood of adulterated cocaine

Mariana (that is not her real name, for obvious reasons), is 38 years old. She lives in the Puerta 8 neighborhood, on Tres de Febrero, on Miramar street when she cuts off with corridor 2, right in front of the bunker where the adulterated substance that killed 20 people was sold. From her window she can see in detail the dynamics of the drug traffickers. As she describes it, and her neighbors agree, the business works smoothly. It all starts when strangers bring the drug from the villa 18, which is a few blocks away, in San Martín, and they deliver it to what they call “cornermen”, who receive it already in installments for sale. From that moment on, the “work” is divided into three shifts to be active 24 hours a day. Once a week, on that corner, someone places a bag, the police come by and take it away. The sequence repeats every seven days.

LOOK: 20 people die from poisoned cocaine use in Argentina and 74 are hospitalized

The neighbors, involuntary witnesses, are convinced that to put an end to the drug business, the control of the neighborhood has to be from the National Gendarmerie of Argentina.

“Every week the police receive money from drug traffickers. They enter and take a bag or hand it to the patrolman, that’s why we ask for the presence of the Gendarmerie. Before the coca thing that killed the kids happened, this was a swarm of people. There were kids buying all day”relates to THE NATION Mariana, while checking that her one-year-old daughter does not bury her feet in the mud. Today it rained for much of the morning and the neighborhood also shows its other difficulties, such as flooded corridors and some overflowing sewers.

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The first thing that the neighbors of gate 8 is that yesterday, when the news of the death of the first victims who arrived intoxicated at the hospitals was made public, the police entered and “took any kid.”

A woman walks down a street in the Puerta 8 village, where the adulterated cocaine that has already caused 20 deaths and 70 people hospitalized in Buenos Aires, Argentina, was sold. (EFE/ Juan Ignacio Roncoroni).

In fact, everyone denounces that the supposed bunker that the Buenos Aires police raided and where the bionic eyes of the television cameras later landed, was just a box of a man who died. In the place there was a 30-year-old man named Walter, who is addicted and is now admitted to the Posadas Hospital for consuming the adulterated substance.

“My cousin Walter is complicated. He smoked that merch [sic] and we found it lying in that box that belonged to my uncle, who died a few weeks ago because he was an alcoholic and also had lung problems. The police [sic] it fell here as if this were the bunker and there was nothing here, they put on a show, it’s always the same”, says Héctor, 27, who is preparing to prepare some mates sitting in the same chair from where he saw the uniformed officers break into his house yesterday, around 1:00 p.m.

Inside the box there was a pipe and empty bags of cocaine. Héctor says that Walter locked himself there to consume, alone, far from his family, and there they found him, passed out in bed.

According to the neighbors, yesterday the police entered the neighborhood and began to break doors, padlocks and arrested several “suspects.” Among them was the son of Juan, a 36-year-old gardener who yesterday afternoon paraded through all the news channels to ask for the release of his 15-year-old son, who was released after a few hours and only served to inflate the number of prisoners in a frenetic afternoon.

The Puerta 8 slum, Buenos Aires province, on February 2, 2022, after police raided a house looking for adulterated cocaine. (Emiliano LASALVIA / AFP).

“I saw the minister [Sergio] Berni and I spoke with him. I said, ‘Look, my baby [sic] He is detained and has nothing to do with it’”, remembers Juan, in the midst of a climate that is still tense. No neighbor wants to be in a photo or give his full name. The ghost of Miguel Ángel Villalba, better known as Mameluco and historical narco of the area, and his people walk the corridors of the neighborhood. Even if no one is around, some prefer to talk about the drug quietly, just in case.

“Walter cut his mambo [sic] here alone in the box, but it wasn’t a narco, here it wasn’t the bunker, the bunker is there [y señala para un lugar específico]. I swear to you on my daughters that there was nothing in that box they raided.”says Jaqueline, who is also a cousin of the young boarding school. She points in the direction of Miramar Street.

In that street, the bunker, which was also raided later, is already empty. There is a plate with food remains, a toilet and in the back room they placed a mattress where, according to the people of the neighborhood, the “cornerbacks” rested.

This is the interior of the narco bunker on Miramar Street. (Silva Colombo).

Aerial view of the Puerta 8 neighborhood, province of Buenos Aires, on February 2, 2022 (Emiliano LASALVIA / AFP).

“The drugs are brought by people from Barrio 18, they are not people from here and they are all from Mameluco. The kids sleep in there or sit in the corner to sell and sleep in the chair. You see them there asleep leaning against a wall. And so all day.” says Pamela, 21.

“I have a 19-year-old son and yesterday we left the neighborhood because the police, even if they don’t find anything, they give you the same, it’s like that”, adds Susana, 58, who joined the conversation.

Neighbors remember that in March of last year there was a shootout between gangs that were fighting over the sale of drugs in the neighborhood. They say they saw the “kids with rifles.”

Police officers during a raid on the Puerta 8 villa, on February 2, 2022. (ELIANA OBREGÓN / AFP).

From that moment they demanded that a checkpoint be installed, but they only managed to get a patrol car parked for a few days. Now the issue is on the public agenda and everyone hopes that the tragedy of the dead will bring in the Gendarmerie, a force they trust more than the one from Buenos Aires.

But, you know, it is most likely that in a few days what happened will disappear from the media and everything will continue as it is now, with active drug traffickers and interested visits from the police.

Upstairs a helicopter flies over, today the surveillance is total, but downstairs the neighbors pray for a sentry box that never arrives.

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Source: Elcomercio