"The Border That Shifts": Prosecutor Castro Bekios's Reading of the Evolution of Organized Crime

During his participation in the Macrozona Norte 2026 Conference of the Public Prosecutor's Office, held in La Serena, the regional prosecutor of Antofagasta, Juan Castro Bekios, analyzed the evolution of criminal organizations, their new forms of operation, and the challenges the State faces in confronting them, in a presentation he titled "The Shifting Border." In that context, he insisted that the response to these threats requires "anticipation, intelligence, coordination, and sustained action." Likewise, the prosecutor, who has been dubbed Chile's "anti-drug czar," called for addressing the entire north of the country as a single scenario for the prosecution of organized crime. Castro Bekios argued that organized crime has been transcending administrative borders between regions, articulating routes, structures, and illicit economies that extend across different territories. "The macrozone is a single theater of organized crime; it must also be a single theater of the response," the prosecutor stated before prosecutors, analysts, police chiefs, and representatives of services and specialized agencies working in the area, proposing that institutional coordination must stay ahead of criminal groups and adopt a supraterritorial perspective. The head of the Public Prosecutor's Office in the Antofagasta region highlighted that the magnitude of the phenomenon is also reflected in drug seizures. According to the figures presented, between October 2023 and September 2026, 125.8 tons of illicit substances have been seized in the Antofagasta Region. Between January and July of this year, the six regions that make up the Macrozona Norte accounted for 80.7% of all drugs seized in the country. Castro Bekios explained that these figures must be analyzed alongside the transformation of criminal economies, which are no longer limited to drug trafficking but now incorporate activities such as vehicle theft, smuggling, copper theft, and other forms of asset generation and laundering. In his presentation, he also proposed strengthening international cooperation and establishing permanent mechanisms to combat these crimes. "Organized crime adapts, shifts, and seeks to exploit existing gaps between institutions and territories. That is why our response must be on an equivalent scale," he asserted. Along those lines, he maintained that "it is not enough to have the legal tools; they must be used with a logic of coordination and a macro-regional scale." In the final part of his presentation, the prosecutor argued that criminal prosecution must move beyond a logic focused exclusively on drug seizures toward a strategy that makes it possible to dismantle structures, target their assets, and close off the operating spaces they use across different territories. "The border is no longer just a line; it is an economic, logistical, and cognitive network," he noted.