Tag: violently

Path to Prison: Part 7

THE NARCO-BANDIT

The Chef—the protagonist of this essay—is no wet cat caught in the rain. I imagine you’ve realized that by now. His particularity is this: if he loves you, he’d be willing to go to prison for killing for you. I mean this seriously. He wouldn’t hesitate to pull a gun and let happen whatever needs to happen. But let me clarify: when an average citizen pulls a weapon, we lose all our composure. The Chef, in those moments, was the exact opposite. If he doesn’t love you, or if you are his victim, any human word is wasted.

Ever since they locked him up—given the violence of the raid and the weight of the charges—it’s clear to me that drugs were the last thing they were looking for. In fact, they seemed angry to have only found that. It’s obvious they were after many things but could only prove one. Looking back at the previous paragraph, I find only one constant: extremism. Extremism in loyalty and affection; extremism in violence.

But when I think of the Chef—his situation, his life, his suffering, and his actions—I cannot help but see a brother. Different blood, same codes. And an uncomfortable question arises: Is the only difference between him and me a personal cowardice that always held me back? Trying to answer that would be a strike against the truth. But I am sure of one thing, an irony we all face: your family, or a large part of it, will eventually cast you aside. You won’t matter to them much at some point. And in that long, sustained moment, this man—the Chef—was the one who gave me the warmest “familial” support (aside from my mother, of course). To put it better, I’ll quote Gangs of New York: “It’s a funny feeling being under the dragon’s wing.” All that extremism that drives him is motivating, encouraging. I remember him saying things like: “You don’t know what you could become,” or “You have to keep going, fight for what’s yours.” Of course, we shouldn’t expect high-flown rhetoric, but the intention was there.

EXTREMISM. I return to that when I speak of him. His father abandoned him, among other impact forces I’ve already mentioned. There was never anything or anyone to soothe that extremism that hit his life every few years. Now he’s living through another one: prison.

Make no mistake: the “narco-bandit” is a dangerous figure. Dangerous for you, for me, for everyone. He isn’t the typical stupid dealer driven by women, lacking codes, ready to snitch on anyone, letting addicts into his room. But he isn’t dangerous solely because of the violence he might exert. His danger lies in his intuition and his hidden intelligence.

Everything in the bandit’s criminal operation—even if they can barely read or write, as is the case with the Chef—has a prior intelligence. It is the crucial difference they use to categorize a rastrero (a bottom-feeder who steals a cell phone or ties an elderly couple to a chair) from a “real” bandit. The real one can pull off a handcrafted tactical hit on a higher-ranking dealer, or clear out a ranch in record time without hurting anyone, or why not, rob an armored truck and vanish with the loot. Think about it: this requires coordination, scenario forecasting, defined roles, guesstimating time, and escape planning.

I’ve seen these “plans.” I don’t know how they ended, but the planning was there. I’ve walked past them on my way to the bathroom just as they were preparing these actions in a circle, guns in hand. And following the rule of this place: I didn’t hear a thing. I didn’t even try to.

And here the question returns: that intelligence, that management of tension, that planning—what if he had seen that possibilities existed? What if another life were possible? If someone had walked him to school? If someone had asked, “What do you want to be when you grow up? A vet, an astronaut, a doctor?” Surely his life would have been different. When you talk to these “bandits,” you realize they know. Internally, they have a small fissure of pain propped up by the “What could I have been?” The eyes don’t lie. When I talk about these things with these men, that sadness is there. Because even if they can’t see the full extent of their intelligence, they notice they see much more than the rest. And I ask myself again: besides cowardice, was the difference between the Chef and me just luck?

This is where I inevitably return to the forces that push us toward different paths—real, physical forces that shape existence, regardless of whether the origin is objective or subjective. Here, the State’s irresponsibility becomes even more massive: trying to measure the complexity of existence with basic addition. It isn’t a mistake; it’s intentional. Using the best minds to prevent this would require intervention, and the State only saves itself.

How can a person without tools counteract such a trend if they have nothing to stop it? If everything they see on TV are idolized personalities talking like hitmen and dressing like hitmen (music is a point of inspiration and belonging here; it is the glorification, the “Great Why”)? It’s clear that a hollow culture is vital. Those inside the trend, heading toward crime, see nothing. And the others—the “good citizens”—see nothing either.

When I say I feel the Chef is my brother, I am telling the truth. And I want to highlight something about the codes: they are real. They even keep you out of certain things. Once, because I needed more economic stability, I proposed using my technical skills to start encrypting their communication network—both for his “soldiers” and his bosses. He wouldn’t let me in. Today I see it was a way to protect me. This sector I call “bandits” protects and respects the “good people”; it doesn’t want to drag them down the same path.

As for the codes: in the nearly four years I’ve lived here, the police and prosecutors have taken away about fifteen people from the neighboring lots. How do you tell a bandit from a coward? I’ve seen people who bragged about their “mafia” status only to snitch on everyone to save their own necks, trembling before a prosecutor. The real ones don’t snitch. If someone gets caught with drugs and gets out quickly, I guarantee they sold out all their “friends.” It makes me think: the word of a “bandit” has more value than that of your own coworker who would sell you out just to earn an extra 200 dollars a month. Which one is the true ethics?

Everything in the Chef is extreme. The first extreme blow was his father’s abandonment, then the abuse of his siblings. And I wonder: if the father had stayed, if there were a penal punishment for those who wash their hands of their children, would this Chef be the same? I am convinced he would be different. Which leads me to conclude that the first criminal is the father who abandons. The only real criminal is him—the one who unleashed the chain of events.

Path to Prison: Part 4

THE DRUG ECONOMY

The citizen who does not walk these streets and alleys—who only glimpses these places through social media news or press releases from a prosecutor’s office—might think that the street-level dealer leads a strong, vibrant, and prosperous economic life. Nothing could be further from the truth. At most, their economy is anchored to a mid-range income, perhaps between $600 and $1,000 USD a month. When compared to the astronomical figures the State spends to extract these individuals from their daily lives, the disparity is staggering.

Now, let us think a bit deeper and try to see why a kid ends up in that world. I will ignore the statistical data; I consider it mathematically elementary, as it is merely a count and not a measurement of operating forces. Statistics cannot measure movement while it is happening, nor the forces acting on a person before an action takes shape. Only differential calculus can do that.

Exceptions arise the same way matter does: seemingly from nothing. There are cases where one enters not out of necessity, addiction, or culture, but for pleasure, a desire to belong, or simple convenience. However, the case I consider the rule—the one that led me to write this text—is the following:

A boy or girl in a poor childhood, marked by abuse from parents or caregivers. A childhood where, by age 7 or 8, they already know the city by roaming it alone like a curious cat. Situations of abuse, whether against them or their siblings—physical violence or sexual abuse—with no one to report it, out of complicity or fear. In their pre-adolescence (12 or 13 years old), schooling has been nonexistent for a couple of years. Their body is already weighed down by informal, poorly paid labor—odd jobs done as a “favor” or through family ties. A premature encounter with alcohol, cigarettes, marijuana, cocaine, and excess. Throughout their entire development, they never hear the word of an adult who managed to establish themselves; no advice or hand reaching out to correct their course. Above all, there is a total ignorance of any other possible way of life beyond what TV, social media, or the internet might show. By age 17, the trajectory is irreversible. Only then will they face the police and the full weight of the criminal system, waiting to be unloaded onto them.

This long chain of experiences forms a mass that cannot be diverted without a force of equal magnitude in the opposite direction. No one can stop someone who is ready to earn $600 a month by dealing, because they know no other way to live. Consider this: situations cannot be explained with words when there is a total ignorance of most words. How can a reflection be born—one sufficient to choose a better path—if that word does not exist within them, nor in anyone they know, have known, or will ever know? Even the local evangelical pastor cannot know them, blinded by the idea of resisting misery for a prosperous paradise. We are demanding too much from someone incapable of giving it. Language is the limit of thought, and everything that cannot be processed by it becomes a symptom of various kinds.

The economy of the street-level dealer is secondary. The kid enters it because they know nothing else.

But I want to make a distinction here. I have noticed an intelligence in many of these kids that, with some instruction, would allow them to surpass anyone. I have seen it in addicts who have no chairs, tables, stoves, or gas tanks in their homes. I have seen intelligence even in those who are completely illiterate. And that is where the “narco-bandit” emerges—someone perhaps more dangerous for society because they possess the physical and intellectual capacity to plan actions that the common transa never could. I will explain this later… along with the differential mathematics of the matter.

Before finishing this segment, I want to destroy the State’s statistics once and for all and explain how, conceptually, the State steals resources by seeking applause through four different paths:

If governments stopped using statistics and turned to differential calculus, they could see the dynamic forces at play, intervene in time, and avoid sentences, criminal acts, and recidivism. But the State does not seek to intervene; it only seeks to perpetuate itself. Thus, it intentionally commits four economic crimes under the banner of justice:

  1. The prevention scam: All taxpayer money that should be used for prevention (which a dynamic differential model would allow them to see) is never used. Every security budget is simply a hoarding of resources for actions with a single goal: ensuring the State’s own existence and obtaining oblivious applause. You keep applauding, but you are being swindled.
  2. The cost of the hunt: The cost of hunting down a criminal who earns a maximum of $1,000 from their illicit activity is at least 50 times larger.
  3. Paying to imprison him: You, the TV-voting citizen, must continue to pay to keep the condemned in prison.
  4. The cycle: The condemned, once their sentence is served, will return to the same cycle. YES, IT IS LIKE PAYING FOR YOUR OWN HITMAN.

Path to Prison: Part 3

THE WHOLE WORLD AND CHILDHOOD

Ever since the raid came for the Chef—even though we all got swept up in the dragnet and ended up with a submachine gun pointed at our heads and a boot crushing our chests against the floor—I suspected, and still suspect, they were going to get him one way or another. His sentence was the minimum for what they managed to find (had they raided on a different day, the sentence would have easily been double digits). However, in my own hierarchy of crimes, he doesn’t fit; he is still innocent. I may not be right, and I don’t have to be, but it’s a necessary scale.

After four years of living here, the things that used to be done in secret or hidden from the eyes of my mother, my partner, or myself, stopped being hidden. They were simply done in the yard. Yes, I’ve seen bricks of marijuana stacked up while I was heading to the bathroom (the bathroom was, and still is, shared, located at the back of the lot). I’ve seen guns. I’ve talked to—and some even worked for my cleaning company before I closed it—guys who were responsible for shootings, threats, or drug-related debt settlements. I knew all the secrets; I saw them because it’s inevitable when you live on the same lot. Even if you don’t participate, you step out to the yard and find a group of guys handling exactly what I mentioned.

What would you do, “good citizen”? Would you call the police, you, the paragon of virtue? Would you report them? Those guys willing to “battle” for you? The Chef, who would answer for you if you hit a rough patch and had nothing to eat, who would lend you money or bring you food without expecting favors in return or rushing you to pay him back? Someone who would invite you to his table for Christmas and New Year’s, even if you don’t like it or don’t want to be a part of it. If you report someone like that while living on his land, let me tell you: you probably no longer have a soul or a reason to justify your existence as a human being, as a species. Though, of course, the System would be delighted with you.

Knowing everything also led the Chef to open up to me, and his wife to open up to my mother. That’s how we learned about the Chef’s childhood (remember that when we moved here, they were both 21 years old with a child). If we look at his life, we see a boy who was probably abused (though he never said it explicitly). But his sister, as a child, was raped by her stepfather, as was his brother. As if that weren’t enough to ruin any future—having to keep living with the rapist—his mother, starting when the Chef was six years old, forced him to stand at traffic lights to beg for coins. He had to come back with money, or the punishment was a beating. Later, at thirteen, when he could no longer get money at the lights so easily, he became “useless” and was kicked out onto the street. What I’ve told you so far is more than enough to manufacture a ruthless killer. Instead, we have a man with the sensibilities I’ve already mentioned.

After living on the street for a while, the State did not take him in; it never even knew he existed until he decided to become a criminal. As if that were something one simply “decides.” Regardless, the only social circle that gave him shelter was some poorly organized, precarious gang. He was a “cook”—of drugs first. And then, who knows out of what curiosity, he wanted to be a Chef. A suffering, helpless child, cooking cocaine, wanting to be a Chef in a restaurant. A situation that is, at the very least, interesting to witness. And even more curious: he actually became a Chef. He managed to graduate. So, there was effort and capability. Of course, all that ended when he decided to pull an “inside job” at the restaurant where he worked (no one suspected him). I don’t judge that action; it feels like an inevitable act. There was no foundation, no control, no chosen path other than his own.

Later, he began butchering whatever field animals crossed his path; that’s how he fed himself and lived for a couple of years. Meanwhile—listen to this, “honest” citizen—according to what he told me, and later confirmed by other testimonies: he cooked for the Gendarmerie (Border Patrol) and was in charge of keeping the business’s books. All of it endorsed by the police, the gendarmes, and a prosecutor. I don’t know if a judge was involved too, so they’re off the hook for now. Of course, I cannot give names.

Who would be the guilty party in this case? The Chef, who struggles to read, or all those with formal education who are part of that criminal ring? If we put the blame on the dark-skinned Chef who looks exactly like what society calls a criminal, there is something seriously wrong with our heads.

Later, when all of that had to stop due to changes in government, prosecutors, and officials—and others were going to take over that part (make no mistake, that dirty State business never stops; don’t be naive)—his path in street-level drug dealing began.

Zine “All-Out War”. #06 The Raid

June 19, 2025. It was 7:07 PM. I saw a circle of intense white light through the window. I heard shouts: “Police! On the ground! On the ground! Police raid!”

Those shouts weren’t in my room yet. I lived—and still live (January 2026)—on a plot of land with six crude shacks, in a neighborhood that could be considered the edge of a shantytown, or what people here call a villa.

Going back to the shouts: I first thought they were coming from the lot next door. But no, the circle of powerful light was coming from our yard.

I was sitting in my electronics lab, repairing cell phones. Of course, I understood instantly what was happening. I dropped what I was doing and turned to my mother, who was on the phone.

“Stay calm,” I said. “It’s a raid.”

“No!” she barely got out.

A second later, an officer in tactical gear violently kicked the door open, repeating the shouts.

“Hands, hands, put your hands up!” he yelled at me, pointing a submachine gun at my head. After I raised my arms, he continued: “Kneel.” I did. “Lie face down, do it!” I lay on the floor. I felt him plant his foot on my back, pressing his weapon against the side of my head. Then another officer came in, pointed his gun at my mother’s head, and did the exact same thing.

That day I was handcuffed for the first time, but I will never forget the submachine gun pointing at my mother. Why? We were calm because we knew beforehand that all this circus and show of force wasn’t for us. But… Is this the investigative power of the federal forces?

That night, they kept me handcuffed until 3 AM, and then took me to the precinct until 5 AM.

In the midst of it all, they took a neighbor who lived on the same plot of land where I rent. This neighbor was sentenced to 4 years in prison in a plea bargain for possession of 800g of marijuana. I won’t speak more of him for now, as I am writing another text specifically about his life and what leads a man to prison.

What I never expected was that, simply for living in a marginal neighborhood, in a rudimentary room, they would take away all my effort. “Just in case,” they confiscated my entire workshop and all the equipment they found. Guilty by association, to the justice system, I was a criminal.

They stripped me of absolutely everything I worked with and left me with a massive debt, as I had to replace brand-new equipment for countless clients. From one day to the next, I found myself with nothing: no purpose, no tools, in debt, and under criminal investigation. Just for living on the same plot of land.

I remember the chat with the officer at the precinct:”You do coke?””No.””Smoke weed?””No.””So tell me, Peralta [calling me by the wrong name]… what the hell are you doing there?””My name is Diego Fernández. I don’t know who you are confusing me with.”

I gave a faint smirk and said nothing else. The silence dragged on as the guy typed on his computer.

“Get out of here, kid.”

As a frequent reader, one understands that these things happen. You know about police and judicial impunity, about the violence with which kids, families, and children are treated (yes, because several children were trampled when the officers stormed the yard). But living it up close, in your own flesh, awakens nothing but revenge, hatred, and violence.

At least, initially.

THE DEPRESSION

Before that happened, I used to think I was occasionally depressed. But that was when I truly discovered depression. Not showering for two months, not being able to go out to the yard, not thinking, barely eating, sleeping and sleeping. Losing my dreams, goals, and the tools to achieve them—even my own phone to communicate with clients, losing hundreds of contacts built over a year and a half of work.

I remember that during one of the hearings for my neighbor, the prosecutor included my entire workshop, and all my clients’ devices, as “payment for drugs,” stating that the sheer amount of electronics irrefutably showed criminal activity.

I was dumbfounded. Not only were they never going to return absolutely anything, but they were using it as incriminating evidence against my neighbor. Argentine justice.

What could I do? I was broke from paying for all the cell phones, notebooks, video cards, and power supplies of my clients.

Any attempt at a new physical venture ran, and still runs, the exact same risk: confiscation “just in case.”

I thought: “Whatever I do, it has to be mental, intellectual, something they can never take away from me.”

The conclusion: keep writing, find my voice again, and create not just art, but fire.