The new Security Minister dismissed an officer strictly connected with an expansive definition of victims and anti-cult campaigns. Why?
by Massimo Introvigne
Controversies continue to plague anti-human-trafficking agencies in Argentina, which “Bitter Winter” has often criticized for their involvement in the repression of religious minorities through false accusations of trafficking.
On March 15, Argentina’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich dismissed the now former director of the Executive Committee to Combat Trafficking, Gustavo Vera, after the agency was transferred from the Ministry of Human Capital to the Ministry of Security. Although through his social media Vera protested and argued that the dismissal was due to his insistent requests to the government for assistance to 130 victims of trafficking he claimed were rescued in recent months, the reality shows that there may be other reasons.
On its website, the Committee states that its task is to coordinate the design and planning of public policy on prevention, prosecution, and assistance to victims. The body was created in 2012 as part of a series of actions aimed at strengthening the punitive response against human trafficking in Argentina that, among other measures, resulted in the amendment of Law 26364 and, subsequently, the creation of the Office of the Prosecutor for Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons (PROTEX). The legislative approach against trafficking and its implementation by various state agencies were criticized by different scholars and academics. Among other negative effects there were the creation of false victims, the unprecedented increase in irregular arrests and criminalization of women, the weaponization of the notion of vulnerability, and the questionable procedures for quantifying cases and victims in the public reports of anti-trafficking agencies.
Vera boasts that, during his administration, Argentina reached level 1 in the evaluations of the U.S. State Department due to its effectiveness in the fight against trafficking. However, it is also true that for years the U.S. State Department suggested to Argentina to change the law on trafficking in persons so that force, fraud, or coercion would be considered as essential elements of the crime, in accordance with the UN TIP Protocol, rather than as mere aggravating factors as they are now. It went so far as to warn in the last TIP Report that due to the breadth of conduct that can be construed as trafficking in persons, “it was unknown how many of the cases prosecuted under Law 26842 involved trafficking offenses as defined by international law.”
Recently the federal prosecutor Juan Manuel Pettigiani, from the city of Mar del Plata, pointed out that in recent years PROTEX unduly expanded the criminal definition of trafficking, generating enormous damage. These claims are in addition to what has already been published by “Bitter Winter” and Human Rights Without Frontiers regarding the assault on religious and spiritual minority groups using the argument of human trafficking based on a distorted notion of “vulnerability,” and the alleged use of brainwashing (a discredited pseudo-scientific category), which resulted in the fabrication of false victims of trafficking. The Federal Oral Court of Paraná, in a recent ruling, suggested investigating the abuses and possible crimes committed by psychologists and anti-trafficking agencies, which acted on the basis of prejudices and violated constitutional rights of both the alleged victims and the defendants. In other words, when it comes to figures, the reports of the Argentinian government agencies leave much to be desired.
Vera is actively involved in the dissemination of the anti-cult ideology embraced by PROTEX, as seen in his committee’s sponsorship of the brochure against “coercive organizations” published by the Argentine government in July 2023. He also personally suggested at the seventh meeting of national authorities against human trafficking of the Organization of the American States to consider the activities of these “coercive organizations” as a new modality of crime. It is not strange that Vera and PROTEX share these ideas, given that they also have in common a connection with Argentinian anti-cult activist Pablo Salum.
But that is not the only feature that links Vera to PROTEX and other anti-trafficking agencies. At the end of last year, the Argentinian newspaper “La Nación” published an investigation into the dubious management of the Public Trust Fund for Direct Assistance to Victims of Trafficking. The investigation revealed that since 2021, the year the Fund was put into operation, only 11.5 million Argentine pesos out of 21.8 million had been distributed, with no reports on the current status or destination of the remaining money. Shortly thereafter, the federal prosecutor Juan Manuel Pettigiani—in whose jurisdiction the highest number of sentences for human trafficking in the country had been rendered—denounced that not a single victim in that jurisdiction had been indemnified by the Fund up to that moment. Vera was also involved in an obscure matter of possible appropriation of sewing machines seized in a trafficking case, although the cases against him were finally dismissed. Vera’s defense at the time was that a judge had authorized him to remove the machines. Coincidentally, the judge was Ariel Lijo— the same one who described the Buenos Aires Yoga School as a “brainwashing cult.” Some particularly mischievous observer might even think that this was not a simple coincidence.
Interestingly, the body that administers the awarding of reparations to victims from the Assistance Fund is the Federal Council for the Fight Against Trafficking and Exploitation of Persons and for the Protection and Assistance to Victims, made up of representatives of different state and civilian agencies, including Vera and the head prosecutors of PROTEX, Alejandra Mángano and Marcelo Colombo. The Fund’s source of income comes from the seizure of goods and money in judicial cases of trafficking—not necessarily with a final sentence.
It is for this reason that Pettigiani suggests that the increasingly extensive application of the category of trafficking by state agencies may have the purpose of “increasing the Trust Fund created by law 27508” with the “sense of feeding a certain ideological sector and, at the same time, also a slush fund, allowing that, in the name of the victims, a large administrative structure and a huge public expenditure is sustained, but without attending to what should be the main and exclusive purpose of care and containment of the victims.” With all this in mind, Vera’s argument to explain his dismissal is ironic. The real reasons were obviously different.
These are not the only harms of Argentina’s current anti-trafficking policies. Due to the actions of PROTEX and other agencies, as had been denounced more than once by “Bitter Winter,” Human Rights Without Frontiers, the Federal Oral Court of Paraná, and numerous international NGOs, what is at stake are human rights, especially the right to self-determination and freedom of religion or belief.
