“All-Out Against the Mafias.” Optics-Based Governance of the Security Issue in the Cambiemos Administration in Argentina (2015–19)

The electoral victory of Cambiemos in 2015 constituted a political novelty, as it implied a shift in the balance of power in favour of the dominant classes and the reinstatement of a neoliberal cycle in Argentina. In this paper, we propose to investigate one of the singularities of the Cambiemos administration: the framing of “mafias” as a security problem. More clearly, we will show that, during this period, governing security issues entailed constructing and making visible “mafias” as a matter of primary importance in relation to security. From a perspective that incorporates elements of Latin American and Latin Foucauldian critical criminology, the analysis of state discourses on “La Salada mafia” will allow us to point out that the problematization of “mafias” involves the deployment of a doubly selective visibility framework: when discussing “mafias”, the focus is on the illegal markets in the territories inhabited or frequented by the working class, rather than the territories of the middle and upper classes. Similarly, the grammar of “mafias” illuminates only a part of the criminal network specifically its weakest link: the one that has popular sectors as its protagonists.