“In Medellin, you can find it everywhere. You can even find drugs on the floor,” said one addict. Photo by AFP
Three decades ago the obese and shot body of Pablo Escobar was left on a roof in Medellín. Drug trafficking continued without him and now in his cradle markets abound for flavored cocaine, drugs and hallucinogens based on ketamine.
Squares or drug stores are visible. “Easy access? Yes, really. In Medellin, you can find it anywhere. Even on the floor you can find drugs“, said AFP Manuel Morales, a 32-year-old engineer who describes himself as a” chronic user “of basuco, a derivative of coca base similar to crack.
Trembling, Morales inhaled his dose from a bong made of PVC pipe. A sweet smell strikes on a sunny Friday afternoon in San Antonio Park, a meeting place for shoppers of the cheapest drugs in the local market. Pedestrians and police were watching the scene.
“I’m a little nervous about the substance, you’re really getting careless and you’ve taken it all away,” confession of the engineer, who until four months ago was practicing his profession.
An addict in a park in Medellin. Photo by AFP
Across the city
Now his belongings fit in a threaded briefcase, and when he can’t get three or four dollars to have an inn, he sleeps on the streets.
Its disaster began in a “vice plaza” where addicts, occasional buyers and sellers of drugs hoarded in Medellín. Ten years ago there were 160 drug smuggling points, according to police, but independent studies now estimate the number is in the 800 “places”.
In 2013, 3.5% of Colombians said they had been drinking illegal substances for some time. For 2019, the year of the most recent study, the number jump to 9.7%, according to the state statistical entity. With 2.2 million inhabitants, Medellín is the city with the highest percentage of consumption (15.5%).
The country that produces the most cocaine in the world is facing, behind closed doors, the “micro-trafficking”, the retail sale of illegal substances. Although “when it comes to micro it seems very small”, clarified Luis Fernando Quijano, from the NGO Corporation for Peace and Social Development (Corpades).
But in reality, he warns, it’s “internal drug trafficking and it’s a billionaire business.”
In 2019, 9.7% of Colombians said they had been drinking illegal substances for some time. Photo by AFP
The mayor of Medellin calculates revenues of up to $ 75,000 per month per store or placeequivalent to approximately 300 minimum wages.
With the support of the United States, Colombia sought out large gangs and freighters, prompting traffickers to organize an internal market for cheap and low-quality drugs.
“A product concentration is formed (…) which cannot be exported for this strong anti -drug policy, ”explains toxicologist Juan Carlos Sánchez.
Ivan Duque’s government links micro-trafficking to the lack of security in the city. Since 2018 more than “2,500 people killed” due to gang dispute, according to Police General Herman Bustamante.
But in Medellín the figures show a paradoxical phenomenon. While in 1992, during the Escobar prosecution, the homicide rate was 350 per 100,000 inhabitants, last year it was 15.5.
Since 2021, at least 129 drug houses have been demolished by the government. Photo by AFP
“Mob Peace”
“You feel more mafia peace, than institutional peace”, pointed out Quijano, who denounced an “agreement” between drug traffickers and some authorities so that gangs would not generate more violence in exchange for their operation of their plazas.
“When seizures are made (…) many times it is not the product of (police) intelligence, but they are handed over (by drug traffickers) to keep the idea that everything is working properly; that the security strategy works, ”he added.
Without revealing the number, General Bustamante points out that, in fact, “police involvement identified” in business and “caught” for prosecution. But “as long as we have consumers (…) criminals will see a business opportunity,” he emphasizes.
In 2018, the then mayor of Medellín, Federico Gutiérrez, accompanied an operation with nearly a thousand police to destroy the main drug market in downtown known as “El Bronx” using a bulldozer. uniformed rifles about 500 people were evacuated to buy and drink narcotics.
Four years later, “The Bronx” continues to receive vendors and consumers.
Since 2021 the government has been demolished at least 129 drug sale homes. One of these operations lost the job of the Pereira city police commander, who died in a building several months ago abandoned as a “square.”
Meanwhile, Gutiérrez is the right-wing candidate for the presidential elections on May 29. Among his plans is to tighten the fight against “micro-trafficking”. His main opponent, leftist Gustavo Petro, a favorite in the polls, treats consumption as a public health problem.
When he was mayor of Bogotá (2012-2015), he built a medical post in front of the “Bronx” of the capital. The program was interrupted when one of the officers was killed by the local mafia.
In Medellin, “El Bronx” operates 24 hours. Young people they shout “blones” (marijuana cigarettes), “rocks” (cocaine) and “wheels”, Clonazepam pills, a psychiatric drug that causes sedation and temporary amnesia. Other squares offer ecstasy and “tuku”, the fashionable drug made of ketamine, mescaline and ecstasy.
Although forbidden in some “squares”, in the city it also rotates low quality heroin. Each gram costs about 2.5 dollars. Julián’s faded skin clung to the bones of his face, betraying his addiction to that substance. “Before you didn’t see people injecting themselves on the street, syringes were thrown away. We were just a few and careful,” he remarks.
In the evening, he meets his supplier in a crowd in a park. The transaction takes a few seconds. He had to inject himself four times a day for “convenience”.
In another “square”, engineer Morales finished his last shots of the basuco before the indifferent gaze of two policemen on motorcycles.
AFP agency
PB
Source: Clarin
