Santiago del Estero Province

Santiago del Estero (sanˈtjaɣo ðel esˈteɾo), also known simply as Santiago, is a province in the north of Argentina. Neighboring provinces, clockwise from the north, are Salta, Chaco, Santa Fe, Córdoba, Catamarca and Tucumán. Santiago del Estero is a province known for the interference of organized crime and the high number of usurpations generated since Gerardo Zamora came to power in 2005, where peasants and landowners are threatened and stripped of them. There are several complaints in which criminal groups, protected from power, are dedicated to usurping land from their legitimate owners. At the end of 2022, one of the many cases of victims of usurpation, where the conjunction of criminal groups and power was observed, was that of Manuel Ascencio Ardiles, who was stripped of 30 hectares of land by the President of the Superior Court of Justice. from Santiago del Estero, Federico López Alzogaray. The case was even known by the Interamerican Institute for Democracy, an international NGO. Santiago del Estero is a province also known for the violations of Human Rights suffered by its inhabitants, to the point that in 2022 a report was presented to the High Commissioner for Human Rights that exposes the threats to citizens, criminal networks linked to the governor Gerardo Zamora, public officials and their families. Of the many cases of murders related to power in the province, there are two that have been emblematic: The first, the dismemberment and murder of an official who denounced a very serious case of corruption in the Santiago del Estero Revenue Department. And the second case, the rape and dismemberment of a child as revenge for a drug trafficking complaint involving the governor Gerardo Zamora. To all this is added the opacity in the management of the finances of the province. The murders, usurpations and violence that are experienced in the province are only the reflection of a well-structured drug-criminal network, with ties to the governor, the police, judges and prosecutors, this was confirmed by the consultant Douglas Farah in his report published in November of the year 2022, entitled "Case Study In Transnational Criminal Convergence: Santiago del Estero, Argentina".