THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON) | By SOPHIE ARIE | October 14, 2002 LUIS Gerli scans the flat horizon of Argentina's vast pampas plains in despair. "All this space. You never know where the thieves will strike next. All you know is the police won't be there," said the 50-year-old farmer near the sleepy town of Arrecifes, 100 miles north-west of Buenos Aires.
Bands of thieves are causing havoc across the farming heartland of Argentina, slaughtering cattle, stealing horses and siphoning tonnes of grain from silos. Farmers are left with only the heads, feet and guts of their pounds 200 animals. They blame "delinquents" who slaughter the cattle in the fields, hauling off prime cuts on bicycles or in vans.
As Argentina has agonised through its worst economic crisis this year, isolated from world markets and crippled by debt, crime has spread from the cities to the once peaceful pampas, the size of France. This sea of rich grassland, crops and grazing cattle has turned into a kind of South American Wild West.
Farmers are carrying guns and local people report frequent hold-ups and gunfights with thieves prowling around corrals and silos at night. Ranchers have been killed, beaten and burnt alive in their once peaceful homes by attackers hunting for secret hoards of cash.
"Everyone has a gun," said Mr Gerli, who was tied up and beaten at gunpoint by a gang who stormed his house in February. "I have decided to be armed now. If I have to take someone out, I'll do it. No problem. You have to defend yourself."
In Arrecifes, two farmers alone have lost 37 cows in two weeks.
Last year, as the country's crisis deepened, 21,000 animals, worth more than pounds 6 million, were stolen in the pampas, triple the number stolen in the whole country in 1999, according to the government agricultural security chief, Domingo Malagamba.
While some are simply stealing meat to eat, most are part of an increasingly elaborate black market network, cashing in on the countryside where the collapse of the peso this year has raised the values of grain and cattle. A cow hide worth 100 pesos in Argentina can be exported for more than pounds 60, nearly four times its peso value last year.
With the price of grain rising on international markets, many farmers prefer to save their crops in a silo than put pesos in the country's crippled banks. But sophisticated gangs siphon off lorryloads of grain to sell on for export.
Ingenious thieves in the northern province of Santiago del Estero even took a lorryload of cattle hostage recently, demanding a ransom for their return.
Local people say thieves take orders from local butchers or large-scale exporters before raiding the fields.
Police complain that they are short of staff and cannot afford the petrol or torches to chase the "delinquents" around this open space. But many say the police themselves, who earn pounds 70 a month, are part of the problem.
"Everyone knows who the thieves are," said Fortunato Chiapparra, who farms in Arroyo Corto, 425 miles south of Buenos Aires. "We are sitting targets because they think we have lots of cash."
"The police force needs a clean out, no question," said Hugo Ali, the police chief of Arrecifes.
"The problem is there are people who join the police because it's easier to steal and you're less likely to be caught." Only two per cent of crimes end in a prison sentence. "There's no real justice in this country," said Hugo Machetti, representative of a farmers' association in Pergamino, in the north of Buenos Aires province.
"They catch the thieves one day, and the next morning you bump into them in the street." Yet prisons are full to bursting point and 15 new ones are planned.
The province of Buenos Aires, where around 70 per cent of crime takes place, declared a prison emergency this week, saying it would house overflowing prisoners temporarily in freight containers.
The pampas have always provided Argentina's riches, earning the nation its reputation as the bread basket and the "meat capital" of the world early last century.
Argentines now stand aghast as poverty and hunger affect more than half the population in a country that continues to produce more food than it can eat.
President Jorge Batlle of Uruguay described the people of his larger neighbour earlier this year as "a band of thieves".
Many believe that an endemic rule-bending, profiteering mentality has helped to reduce a naturally rich land to an economic disaster.THE DAILY TELEGRAPH(LONDON):
