On a daily basis, people all over Latin America are victims of “express kidnapping”—they are taken and held hostage for an hour or several hours, while the kidnappers take their credit cards for a shopping spree, extort their families for money, and the like.
While kidnapping comes in various forms—including bride kidnapping, child abductions in custody disputes, or politically motivated kidnappings–in most cases kidnapping is about extortion. Simply put, most kidnappers are looking for money.
Kidnapping high-profile victims for large ransoms has long been a problem in many Latin American countries. But in more recent decades, criminal elements have found a new, highly profitable, and far less risky trade in express kidnapping.
Brazil, Colombia, Mexico, and Venezuela are four countries that are grappling most with this new scourge that affects both locals and foreigners.
Brazil
In the 1990s, before express kidnapping emerged, there was a significant number of extended-period kidnapping cases in Rio de Janeiro. Frustrated with the situation, citizens—particularly from the business community, which was at greatest risk—applied pressure on authorities to address the problem.
As a result, government policies were delineated, harsher laws were passed, and law-enforcement did its job. Following in Rio’s footsteps, other states implemented similar policies to combat the crime. Many kidnapping rings were busted and the “kidnapping industry” was to a large extent broken.
By the end of the 1990s, there was a significant reduction in the number of kidnappings, at least the traditional form of kidnapping in which people are held for days with families forced to raise large sums of money for ransom.
As law-enforcement improved, going after high-profile targets became far more risky; kidnappers were often quickly caught and served severe punishments.
So the crime world evolved. Criminals started to avoid forming large groups to elude detection, and began looking for more common and easier targets—the middle class, small-business owners, or anyone with easily accessible money.
A case in Brazil’s largest city, São Paulo, exemplifies how common express kidnapping by individual criminals or smaller groups has become. A couple was arrested for express kidnapping. The police published their photo around the neighborhood where they were caught, and the next day 11 other victims showed up at the police station to give testimony of their own experiences of express kidnapping at the hands of the couple.
