LETTER FROM BUENOS AIRES

For the past three weeks, the photo of 5-year-old Loan Danilo Peña, who disappeared on June 13, has been circulating on social media and TV screens across Argentina. On the 24-hour news channels, a succession of experts of all kinds gives their opinion on a judicial scandal that has been gripping the population, hanging on the slightest new development in the investigation.

In Nueve de Julio, a village of 2,500 inhabitants in the northern province of Corrientes, Loan was having lunch surrounded by family members and a handful of guests. It was Thursday, St. Anthony's Day, widely celebrated in the province, and 13 people were seated around the table in the modest house belonging to his grandmother, Catalina.

In the photo of the family gathering, which was to be widely circulated a few days later, everything suggested a lunch like any other. A few minutes after the photo was taken, shortly before 2:30 pm, the boy set off with five other children and three adults to pick oranges nearby, according to reports in the local media.

The after-lunch stroll quickly turned into a tragedy. Somewhere along the 600-meter stretch between Catalina's house and the famous orange grove, little Loan suddenly disappeared, without anyone seeming to know how. Local residents quickly combed the surrounding fields. No trace of the child was found.

The next day, the case became widely publicized. The search intensified in this rural area, which is sometimes difficult to access. An abduction alert was activated at the request of the Alameda Foundation, which specializes in supporting families who have been victims of human trafficking. Loan's photo began to be shared on social media and in the media, which gathered the first witness accounts.

As the week of several public holidays began, the investigation was slow and faltering. From procedural flaws to dubious testimony, rumors spread about the reasons for Loan's disappearance in this small village where everyone knows everyone: religious ritual, family abuse, kidnapping. As the inhabitants of Nueve de Julio gathered nightly to find Loan, the theory of a kidnapping for the benefit of a trafficking network appeared to be gaining strength.

Between 2020 and 2023 in Argentina, 5,075 victims of trafficking for sexual or labor exploitation were liberated from these rings, according to a management report by the Committee to Combat Human Trafficking. "Everything was done badly and at the wrong time [in this investigation]," said José Maria Serbin. This former delegate of the committee's management and representative of the Alameda Foundation in the province of Corrientes deplored the fact that "in the last few months [and since the arrival in power of Javier Milei in December 2023], the management of the Anti-Trafficking Committee, which coordinates the action of various ministries and organizations in the prevention and fight against trafficking, has been completely dismantled."

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