Surrounded by the mafias

A mafia clan kidnapped a person in the Chapare on September 30; three days later they contacted the victim’s wife, they asked her for a ransom of $200,000 and the next day they contacted her again by video call to show the man on his knees and how they cut off the thumb of his left hand, ignoring his desperate pleas not to be subjected to that torture.

The victim, named Patricio Vásquez Ortiz (34), was kidnapped in Entre Ríos, in the Cochabamba tropics, by Mexican, Brazilian and Colombian drug traffickers and taken to Santa Cruz. The traffickers apparently gave him $200,000 for the purchase of 100 kilograms of cocaine, which Vásquez allegedly ultimately reneged on.

This case demonstrated once again that the activity of the mafias linked to drug trafficking is so evident and visible in our society, that they no longer even take care of the forms and that, on the contrary, they practically appear in public spaces and even in precautionary hearings. .

Indeed, it happened that when the wife of Colombian Rafael Mogollón Fernández, considered the ringleader of the kidnapping, was in a precautionary hearing before the judge, two members of the kidnapping clan were in that same room reporting the events simultaneously to their accomplices for cell phone.

Moreover, the wife of the victim with the severed finger, who was also at the scene, even received a call during the hearing to desist from the lawsuit, and they offered to set Patricio Vásquez Ortiz free in exchange.

Before that, three other members of the gang tried to kidnap Vasquez’s wife when a meeting was arranged supposedly to deliver the ransom money. At that moment the police acted and arrested them.

Finally, the hostage appeared released again in Entre Ríos, but not even that partial outcome closed the circle of a strange case where drug trafficking, mafia organization, criminality, kidnapping, and many doubts that remain floating in the air conclude.

There is no doubt that the Santa Cruz region, in particular, has become the center of operations for Colombian, Mexican, Brazilian and Bolivian mafias and that the news of kidnappings, executions, settling accounts, bodies on which they unload dozens of bullet impacts and others are practically a regular thing and almost every day.

These events have become so frequent that they no longer seem to surprise anyone, and society, by dint of reiteration, seems to be getting used to crimes and associated phenomena taking on the character of ‘normality’ in the region.

At this point, it will be necessary to ask whether the police and military authorities still retain control of the country or whether there are ‘territories free from the law’ and groups linked to the mafia that exercise their own criminal ‘authority’ against which apparently little can be done. do.

We have been warning about it: the mafias are settling more and more in Santa Cruz. Well said and done; We can now remove the gerund condition of the verbs to affirm with sorrow and frustration: they have already been installed.