YOUR SEARCH
The top comprehensive database on organized crimes in the Americas
Chile’s struggle to contain riotous burials for alleged gang members raises questions about why this practice is commonplace in a country that has not traditionally seen the funerary excesses of drug traffickers elsewhere in the region.
On 17 August, the government arrested 10 other people in the city of Maipa, near Santiago, at the funeral of an alleged gang member known as Los Lobos who was killed in an agreement with some other group, according to BioBioChile, bringing up the army police. . Sources. Police reported that participants fired automatic weapons into the air and detonated fireworks.
This is far from being the first incident of its kind in recent months, similar to what is now known as “narco-funerals,” but which the government describes as “high-risk funerals.” On August 16, a chimney believed to have started through chimneys, a “narco-funeral” in Santiago spread to a nearby space and put a child in a critical condition.
And in July, 57 other people were arrested at the funeral of a guy who was shot dead in the community of La Prado in Santiago, according to The Chilean online news page T13. The report added that 21 “narco-funerals” take place in Chile on average each month, even amid the blocking of coronavirus.
Although the funeral did not cause loss of life or significant harm, the government took strong action. Last year, Chile’s Undersecretariat for Crime Prevention (SPD) created a number of measures in particular aimed at the funeral, adding a special team. President Sebastion Piaera has also proposed a law to create consequences for those who fire weapons or light chimneys in public.
This funeral comes at a difficult time for Chile. Violent crime dramatically increased the pandemic and a poll in June revealed that drug trafficking was now the biggest security challenge for the maximum Chileans.
The funerals of young gang members in Chile would likely overlook giant crowds, police escorts and ornate graves at the funerals of drug traffickers who died in Mexico. But that doesn’t make them any less disturbing.
“These narco-funerals are genuine evidence of a loss of public spaces. They have also been linked to a wave of attacks on police stations, which may be a reaction by drug gangs to the repression [of funerals],” Juan Pablo. Toro, director of the Chilean think tank AthenaLab, told InSight Crime.
And while Chile’s low homicide rate still makes it the safest country in Latin America, these expressions of defiance of authority continue in some of its most violent regions. In the district of Lo Prado de Santiago, where several of the funerals were held, the murders amounted to 22% in the first part of 2020, according to police resources cited through La Tercera.
The police’s reaction to the dispatch of the forces is designed to make their presence felt at the funerals of young people killed in gang violence, according to Lucia Dammert, public safety expert at the University of Santiago. “But the murders themselves are positioned in spaces where the presence of the state is very low. It’s a vicious circle,” he told InSight Crime.