Uruguay’s main port received two cargo scanners sixteen years ago to detect drugs and other suspicious loads. Unfortunately, during delivery one of them fell into the sea.
Since then, cocaine shipments to Europe have surged through the port of Montevideo, which handled a record 1.1 million containers last year, fueling a rise in gang violence and undermining Uruguay’s reputation as a beacon of stability in turbulent South America.Uruguay, a small, affluent nation sandwiched between Brazil and Argentina, is desperate for help.
The U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) shuttered its Montevideo office in 2019 after years of strained ties with local law enforcement, four former DEA officials said. The details of the DEA’s exit are previously unreported.
Uruguay’s current center-right government, which took office the following year, has repeatedly asked the DEA to return but U.S. officials say there are no imminent plans to do so.Three former DEA officials told Reuters that – with Washington focused on fentanyl flooding its borders from Mexico and little of the cocaine that transits through Uruguay heading to the United States – there’s scant appetite for seeking congressional approval to re-open a Montevideo office.
“Everything’s fentanyl now,” said former DEA official Larry Reichner, who oversaw Uruguay as the DEA’s assistant regional director for southern South America from 2015-2019. “They couldn’t give a rat’s ass about cocaine.”
European nations, which receive the bulk of the cocaine passing through Uruguay, also have a limited counter-narcotics presence here. Spain is the only European country with a permanent police attache in Montevideo.
Reuters spoke with over two dozen current and former U.S., European and Uruguayan cops, as well as local officials, lawmakers and foreign diplomats. They said Uruguay is in a precarious position, fighting a lonely battle against cocaine smuggling gangs that have expanded into every corner of Latin America over the last decade, turning once-tranquil nations like Ecuador into cartel badlands.Uruguay, home to 3.4 million people, suffered a record 426 murders in 2018. Violence has remained high ever since with grisly turf battles between small drug-dealing clans shocking a country largely unaccustomed to gang violence.
With 382 people killed last year, President Luis Lacalle Pou is struggling to defend his government’s security record ahead of a general election in October, while some far-right lawmakers are calling for troops on the streets.
