In her characteristic no-holds-barred fashion, Argentine Vice President, and former President, Cristina Fernández de Kirchner told a March 21 conference that the only way to deal with the drug trade that is burgeoning in the nation’s cities, is to go after and “disarm the financial system that launders the drug money.” Fernández de Kirchner was addressing the Third International Human Rights Forum in Buenos Aires, sponsored by the Puebla Group of progressive politicians and academics, which had gathered to also address the unparalleled legal persecution of which Kirchner has been a victim for years.
In the recent period, the city of Rosario, home to one of the country’s most important ports, has seen the drug trade surge, and the Alberto Fernández government has had to take emergency action to respond to the associated increase in violence, gang warfare and murders plaguing this important city in the province of Santa Fe.
To understand this, Kirchner said, one must understand the role of neoliberalism “that displaces the state and allows the other great drama of our time, of our region and of our societies, which is the drug trade, to move in. When the State disappears, then this phenomenon arises—the drug trade that takes the place of the state. If we’re going to fight against the drug trade, first we have to disarm the financial system which launders the drug money.”
She ridiculed those who say they’re fighting the cartels to free women and children who have been lured into the system of retail drug marketing. Face the facts, she said. “Are we going to believe that gangs with the pompous names of illiterates are the ones that put together the machinery to launder the billions” in drug money? “Please,” she told the audience, drop that idea once and for all. She went on to say that the key is to rebuild the justice system, which in Argentina has been thoroughly corrupted. It has persecuted her, but it also goes after any leader who bucks the system to try to “take on the real tragedy of our time, from the drug trade or to when they come to take our natural resources.”
In an earlier speech, days ago, Kirchner had also addressed the drug issue in Rosario, emphasizing that it is also a social problem, which requires a full response from the state to address issues of poverty, lack of development, joblessness, etc. recalling that this is how she dealt with the problem in 2014 during her second term as President.
