An organized criminal network managing parcels, collecting fees, maintaining control
Criminal organizations have systematically sold and rented state parcels with forged documents, collecting fees while authorities remained inactive across multiple administrations. The scheme extends beyond residential housing to include illegal businesses, service companies, and small oil firms operating on public land without authorization or utilities oversight.
- Approximately 6,000 families occupy irregular structures on state-owned land across five neighborhoods
- Criminal organizations issue forged documents and arrange illegal utility connections
- The IPVU filed a criminal complaint for usurpation and plans multiple evictions
- The scheme includes residential tenements, storage yards, small businesses, and oil service firms
Authorities prepare to evict illegal tenements built on state-owned land in Neuquén's Ruca Antú neighborhood, targeting an organized criminal network operating clandestine land sales and rentals for years.
In the Ruca Antú neighborhood of Neuquén's meseta, a system of illegal land sales has operated for years with almost no interference. Now, provincial authorities are preparing to dismantle it—starting with an eviction that officials say is only the first of many to come.
The operation targets not a desperate community seizing land for shelter, but an organized criminal enterprise that builds and rents tenements without permits, without safety inspections, and without legal claim to the ground beneath them. The scheme extends far beyond housing. Across Ruca Antú and surrounding neighborhoods—El Trébol I and II, Choconcito, San Antonio, Las Flores—roughly 6,000 families occupy irregular structures on state-owned property. But mixed among them are storage yards, small businesses, and service companies that have paid to occupy public land as if they owned it. Some of the tenants are small oil firms, part of what locals call "the backyard of Vaca Muerta," the massive shale gas development that has transformed the region.
Behind the whole apparatus sits what investigators describe as a structured criminal network. These organizations manage the parcels, collect monthly fees from residents and businesses alike, and maintain the occupations through intimidation and control. They issue forged documents that look like legitimate sales or rental agreements. They arrange illegal connections to water and gas lines. The system has survived unchanged through multiple provincial administrations, each one apparently unwilling or unable to assert control over the meseta's sprawling informal economy.
The Provincial Housing Institute, known as the IPVU, decided to break the cycle. Officials filed a criminal complaint for usurpation and backed it with cadastral records proving the state owns the land. A judge accepted the case. Now, as soon as the local police precinct receives the court order, officers will arrive to remove whoever occupies the site and hand it back to provincial control.
The eviction will not be simple. If children, adolescents, or elderly people are present, police must notify the public defender's office for minors and the Ministry of Social Development. An ambulance will stand by. The state is preparing for resistance, for tears, for the messy reality of displacing people from homes they have occupied, however illegally, for years.
But the IPVU has signaled this is just the beginning. Officials say they intend to reclaim state property across the meseta systematically, shutting down the land-trafficking network that has enriched criminal organizations while leaving thousands of families in precarious housing. Whether they can sustain that pressure—whether they can overcome the inertia that allowed the scheme to flourish for so long—remains to be seen. The first eviction will test their resolve.
Citas Notables
This eviction is the first of a series. The illegal business operating on state land in the meseta has its days numbered.— IPVU officials
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why did it take so long for authorities to move against this network? It sounds like it's been operating openly for years.
Because the system was profitable for people with power, and because the meseta is far from the capital. Bureaucracies don't move unless they're forced to. The IPVU finally decided the state's land was worth fighting for.
But 6,000 families live there. What happens to them after the eviction?
That's the question nobody has a clear answer to yet. The state says it will reclaim the land, but there's no announced plan to house those families elsewhere. The eviction solves the criminal network problem. It doesn't solve the housing problem.
So the people living there—are they victims of the criminal organizations, or complicit?
Both, probably. Most are just families who needed somewhere to live and paid what they could afford. But they're also part of a system that enriches criminals and keeps the state from controlling its own territory. It's not simple.
What about the small oil companies using the land?
They're different. They knew what they were doing. They paid to use state property without permission. When the eviction comes, they'll lose their foothold on the meseta.