La Cana

Tonight I went to an interesting informal chat about police corruption here in Argentina. The speaker is a civil-rights lawyer that works for a non-profit agency.

It turns out that there is corruption at all level, both by individual officers and what she called "institutional corruption". The biggest problem is what we would call "racial profiling", but it takes place on a larger scale here. Basically, Argentina police have right to detain anyone for 10-24 hours (depending on the province) to check their identity and their police record. Hundreds of thousands of these identity checks are made every year, and nearly all of them are indians or mestizos (half-indian, half-european). If you're short, dark and dress shabbily you're much more likely to be detained by the police.

It's routine that you are taken to the police station without being told why. Once you're there, they decide whether it's a short-term detention, an arrest or whether they'll charge you with a crime. Various torture methods are common, often used to force someone into a confession for something they didn't do.

The speaker also told us about cases of "gatillo fácil" ("easy trigger"). The organization that she works for has handled 1959 cases of killings by police in the past 20 years, more than 400 in the last 3 years. Bribes and forced "contributions" to the policeman's fund are also common.

The good news for me is that this sort of thing basically never happens to foreigners with European features.

The speaker spoke to us in Spanish most of time, and her son translated to English. Both of them spoke good English. I really only went to have a chance to practice some Spanish, but it turned out to be a really interesting evening.