28/07/2026

A Decisive Week for Argentina: Milei Pushes a Bill That Weakens the Country's Borders

Illegal Markets, Territorial Sovereignty, and National Security.

Border regions have historically occupied a strategic place in the development of economic activity. They are where goods, people, capital, and commercial opportunities converge. Precisely for this reason, borders also constitute privileged spaces for the development of illegal markets. Wherever regulatory differences exist between countries, state controls are imperfect, and vast territories are difficult to monitor, opportunities emerge that criminal organizations exploit to move illicit goods, people, and money.

This point deserves an important clarification. The expansion of organized crime is not driven solely by the existence of particularly sophisticated criminal organizations. Rather, it is driven by the existence of highly profitable markets. It is the economic opportunities offered by these markets that create incentives for individuals and organizations to invest resources, develop new capabilities, and build increasingly complex structures. In other words, illegal markets generate criminal organizations in much the same way that legal markets generate businesses: both respond to incentives, opportunities, and expectations of profit.

From this perspective, borders represent one of the most valuable assets within the criminal economy. They are not merely corridors for drug trafficking. They are spaces where operating costs are reduced, the storage and processing of illicit goods are facilitated, smuggling and money laundering activities are carried out, and logistical networks are built that can later diversify into other illegal economies, such as illegal mining, human trafficking, organized theft, smuggling, or the trade in counterfeit goods.

Argentina possesses several characteristics that increase this vulnerability. It has thousands of kilometers of land borders that are difficult to control and occupies a strategically important geographic position within international drug trafficking routes. A significant share of the cocaine produced in the region passes through Argentine territory en route to Europe, Oceania, and other international markets. The central strategic challenge is to prevent the country from evolving from merely a transit territory into a place where criminal organizations consolidate, gaining the capacity to control markets, recruit members, and export violence.

Recent experience in Latin America offers important lessons. Over the past decade, Ecuador has undergone a profound transformation as local organizations became integrated with international drug trafficking networks. The result was not simply an increase in drug trafficking, but also a rapid expansion of homicidal violence, corruption, and territorial control by criminal groups. Chile, historically one of the safest countries in the region, now faces growing challenges along its northern border as a consequence of intensified illicit flows from Bolivia and Peru. In both cases, border regions ceased to be mere transit zones and became platforms from which criminal organizations expanded their operations.

Comparative research shows that organized crime thrives when it succeeds in appropriating assets that increase the profitability of illegal markets. Among these assets, territorial control occupies a central place. Having control over territory reduces risks, facilitates logistics, protects illicit investments, and enables the exercise of informal forms of regulation over competitors and local communities. The ultimate objective is not to control territory for military or symbolic reasons, but rather to increase the economic efficiency of illegal activities.

For this reason, any modification to the legal framework governing border areas should also be analyzed from the perspective of the political economy of organized crime. A possible relaxation of restrictions on the acquisition of land in strategic areas may create unforeseen opportunities for actors whose financial capacity derives precisely from illicit markets. The difficulty of tracing the origin of such resources, together with the use of shell companies or front men, constitutes a well-documented mechanism through which criminal organizations consolidate territorial positions without necessarily resorting to violence.

This is not to suggest that foreign investment in border regions is inherently problematic. Nor does it imply that every land acquisition represents a security threat. The challenge lies in recognizing that certain regulatory changes may alter the incentives and opportunities available to highly adaptive criminal organizations whose primary objective is to maximize profits while minimizing risks.

Modern criminal organizations increasingly operate like business conglomerates. They diversify their activities, reinvest profits, establish international alliances, and seek to control strategic assets that enhance their profitability. From this perspective, public security depends not only on prosecuting offenders or increasing penalties, but also on limiting the economic conditions that enable the expansion of illegal markets.

Latin America's experience demonstrates that security crises do not emerge suddenly. They are the result of gradual processes through which economic and territorial power accumulates. Once these processes become consolidated, reversing them is extraordinarily costly for the state. Consequently, policies governing border regions should be conceived not only as instruments of economic development or property regulation, but also as fundamental components of a broader strategy to prevent the expansion of organized crime.

Ultimately, the debate over borders is not solely about land ownership. Above all, it concerns the state's capacity to prevent increasingly profitable illegal markets from finding in these territories the conditions necessary to consolidate. Comparative experience shows that preventing such consolidation is far less costly than attempting to dismantle it once criminal power has become institutionalized.

Marcelo Bergman is Director of the Latin American Center for the Study of Insecurity and Violence at the National University of Tres de Febrero (UNTREF), Argentina.