Where money proliferates, drug trafficking will follow. Where drug trafficking takes hold, the state fails. If the state fails, complete the sentence…
Recent statements by Magallanes regional prosecutor Cristián Crisosto confirm a phenomenon experts have warned about for several years: transnational gangs are operating forcefully in Chile’s far south.
The evidence is abundant. It ranges from major seizures and an increase in the prison population linked to trafficking to a deadly drug rip-off in Punta Arenas’s Barrio Prat in 2025.
What is worrying is the familiar reactive response. While authorities announce the discovery, the gangs watch passively: they have been there for years. While a plan is being considered, drug-trafficking organizations are already evaluating new ways to continue operating. They remain one or two steps ahead of those pursuing them.
Organized crime is polyamorous and ideologically agnostic. The phrase is not mine; it belongs to Pablo Zeballos, an expert and field researcher. I would add another characteristic: it has geostrategic interests. The common factor is simple—speed and adaptability over time.
Before the Panama Canal opened in 1914, only months before the beginning of the First World War, the Strait of Magellan was the most important interoceanic passage on the planet. It brought economic and demographic growth and even strengthened Chilean sovereignty in the region.
The connection is clear: the white continent and its proximity to Magallanes, with the Antarctic Treaty due for review in 2048. All this unfolds amid a turbulent international landscape and a persistent struggle for global hegemony between the United States and China.
Its natural resources, maritime routes and foreseeable international investment will attract those who control illicit economies. Where money proliferates, drug trafficking will follow. Where drug trafficking takes hold, the state fails. If the state fails, complete the sentence…
Will we be able to get ahead of the criminal organizations’ roadmap? Or are geopolitics and the Antarctic question simply too distant from the next election?