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At dawn on Friday, December 13, fishermen searching for bait found the body of Edith Antonia Román. The murdered 17-year-old girl was found in a ditch in the Pilcomayo River, an indigenous territory in the northeast corner of Salta province, on the border with Paraguay and Bolivia. Four people have been arrested.

Edith was from the Betania Community, but lived about seven kilometers away, in San Anselmo, with her sister, to go to school. Her body was found in the Misión La Gracia Community, very close to the La Estrella Community, in the sprawling Rivadavia department, more than 500 kilometers from the provincial capital. 

The news reached Edith's father, Chief Reinaldo Román, at noon. He arrived at the ditch at 2 p.m. in the middle of a storm and recognized his daughter. "We found her little body lying in a canal there, near the community, soaked with water, naked, with bruises. They had dragged her and dumped her there, in that well filled with water," he recounted. 

On Sunday, after burying her daughter, she spoke with Presentes and gave more details about the condition of her daughter's body, with visible signs of the violence she had suffered. 

Four arrested 

The autopsy determined that she died of drowning and that she had suffered sexual abuse. "She suffered head trauma, multiple injuries to various parts of her body, and injuries consistent with sexual abuse. The cause of death was drowning," reported the Salta Public Prosecutor's Office. 

The prosecutor's office also reported that four people have been arrested. Three adult men and a 15-year-old boy, all members of the area's indigenous communities. One of them had "injuries to various parts of his body, consistent with scratches," the prosecutor's office stated. In statements to National Radio, criminal prosecutor Gonzalo Vega said that two of the defendants are brothers.

Reinaldo Román has no doubt about the responsibility of those arrested. He points out that a fifth person is involved. The only witness, the cousin with whom Edith had gone out on the night of December 12, was unable to identify him because she had never met him before. 

Román told Presentes that he knows from the cousin's testimony that Mabel Segundo, 20, left the house at 8:00 p.m. on December 12. They met up with a group of young men, including the now-detained suspects, the unidentified fifth suspect, and the cousin's boyfriend. They drank alcohol and listened to music. At 4:00 a.m., the cousin and her boyfriend left. The young woman returned around 5:00 a.m. but didn't find anyone there and went back to her home.

Rural settlements 

The communities mentioned in this story are located on the banks of the Pilcomayo River and along Provincial Route 54, in the stretch between Santa Victoria Este and Misión La Paz, the last small Argentine town before the international bridge connecting with Pozo Hondo, Paraguay. It is a rural area, with settlements scattered throughout the route. 

Reinaldo Román explained that his daughter, her cousin, the young women, and the teenager who had been with them gathered about a kilometer from the road. “Everything leading up to (her death) happened there,” he stated. He knows this, he said, because those who arrived at that point before the storm could see the marks in the ground. “From there, they dragged her to the ditch where they dumped her.” By the time the Criminalistics team from the Fiscal Investigation Corps arrived, at midnight on December 13th or 14th, these marks had been erased by the rain. 

Alcohol, drugs and violence 

Román, like other local chiefs, blames drug and alcohol use for this and other violence suffered by communities plagued by the constant smuggling of illegal substances. 

This assessment is shared by Prosecutor Gonzalo Vega. "It's a situation that's been occurring in all communities lately, and not only in the communities, but also in the cities," he stated. He explained that in "all the recent serious crimes," alcohol and drug use have always been involved. "Violence is increasingly escalating, resulting from the use of these substances. This is effectively making the cases more serious and more violent," he confirmed. 

Reinaldo Román said his daughter had already been suffering from episodes of violence, sometimes coming home crying. In statements to other media outlets, he claimed she had been threatened to prevent her from reporting this violence. 

In a conversation with Presentes, she indicated that, together with Cristina Pérez, the coordinator of the Lhaka Honhat Aboriginal Communities Association, they are organizing a meeting of local chiefs in Santa Victoria Este to "talk about the issue of drinking, alcohol, and drugs. All of those things. Things like those that happened to my daughter can no longer happen. I'm going to demand justice," she stated. 

Román highlighted the violent incidents that occurred last November in Alto La Sierra, a town located more than 70 kilometers southeast of Santa Victoria Este, where indigenous residents burned down a house used for drug sales and allegedly involved sexual abuse of minors. 

The president of the Autonomous Union of Indigenous Communities of Pilcomayo (UACOP), Abel Mendoza, also told Presentes that they are organizing a protest to demand prevention policies. He, too, linked Edith's death to drug use. 

Structural violence and Creoles

The local bosses point to the constant sale of ethyl alcohol and drugs, an activity for which they generally single out non-indigenous people, the so-called "criollos." 

"As local chiefs, we are very concerned about this sale of prohibited substances," Mendoza said. He told Presentes that he held meetings with community leaders in Tartagal, the closest city to the Chaco region of Salta, and that he will return to that area tomorrow for another meeting with communities along National Route 86. Last week, another meeting took place in La Puntana, the closest community to Bolivia. 

Santa Victoria Este is located on the tripartite border that Argentina shares with the Plurinational State of Bolivia and Paraguay. For some time now, indigenous communities have been warning about the rise in drug smuggling due to the multiple crossings between the two borders, and the resulting increase in drug use among young people and even children in the communities. 

In Santa Victoria Este, "there's a huge amount of drugs," to the point that the entire area is "no man's land," the official asserted. He said the drugs are smuggled in canoes or swam across the Pilcomayo River. "People pass through as if it were nothing," he insisted, "there's no control over anything." 

Similarly, he noted that in Santa Victoria Este, the only police detachment doesn't have its own vehicles, and they requested that it be upgraded to a police station and provided with more resources. In fact, in Edith Román's case, the police didn't arrive on the scene until 3:00 PM. The forensic team, which had to travel from the city of Orán, almost 300 kilometers away, arrived after midnight.  

"We are left out in the cold, suffering these abuses from drug trafficking," Mendoza stated. He described incidents of sexual violence that he attributed to the use of cocaine base, marijuana, cocaine, and ethyl alcohol. Faced with this, "the only thing they tell us is that there are no funds," he questioned the provincial and national governments. 

He also criticized the Salta Judiciary, which he said fails to support them when they report those who sell drugs and alcohol. "We feel abandoned by the State. It makes you feel powerless and angry," he stated before mentioning, among this series of bad news, the repeal of Law 26160, which protected communities from evictions.