Uruguay wants Argentine violence out of Punta del Este

Uruguay has taken precautions to prevent Argentine violence –chiefly the now trendy express kidnappings- from shooing travelers away from its coastlines, especially from Punta del Este, the country’s number-one beach circuit, where hundreds of thousands of Argentines and Brazilians flock to every southern summertime season.

Following a five-year draught and a yearlong crisis –the worst of all time that drained off a tenth of the country’s GNP, Uruguay is now putting its smart money on a high-peak travel season that could help shore up its downtrodden economy. That’s why the nation is determined to avoid crime at any rate and bar imported criminal activities from blurring that ideal picture.

The presence of well-heeled Argentinean and Brazilian tourists in Punta del Este –a strip of beaches some 89 miles east of Montevideo that runs for nearly 373 miles of coastlines along the Plata River and the Atlantic Ocean from the Colonia department (west) to Rocha in the east- is tempting kidnappers and criminals now operating in Argentina.

Uruguay’s Ministry of the Interior has put 1,400 cops on the beat in Punta del Este and nearby locations. In a similar effort, the chiefs of police departments in Colonia, Canelones, Montevideo, Maldonado and Rocha have traveled to Buenos Aires to coordinate joint intelligence and crackdown operations with their counterparts in the Argentinean Federal Police.

“This is a completely preemptive measure aimed at exchanging information with Argentinean law enforcement agencies in order to page down potential (Argentinean) wrongdoers in our country,” Uruguayan Interior Minister Guillermo Stirling said.

The actions taken in Uruguay do not mean “we’re going to nip problems in the bud,” Mr. Stirling went on to say. “This is just an effort to take all necessary precautions for us to be ready and prepared to cope with this kind of crime, if it ever occurred.”

So far this season, Uruguay’s law enforcement agencies have reported only one case of the so-called express kidnappings.