The 40th Carabineros Police Station has a fairly particular vehicle. It is the LA-66 water launcher, a car aimed at dispersing protesters through jets of water. However, it has twice the power, with two high pressure pistons and 8×8 traction, very different from the well-known guanacos that have two pairs of wheels and a jet of water.
The value of this vehicle also does not go unnoticed: $1.3 million – about 998 million pesos – was paid to acquire this “mega guanaco”. Carabineros reported it to the medium Interference, after an application through the Transparency Act.
In the application, that medium also consulted the date on which this tank was acquired, information which – however – was not delivered, without giving any justification.
Despite this, the undersecretary of the Interior, Juan Francisco Galli, did talk about this acquisition. According to T13, galli reported last July 14 that the purchase of the La-66 was made last year on the grounds of the “modernization process” that began in October, but came later due to pandemic delays.
The same medium at that time released some technical details of this mega guanaco. First, they detailed that it has a displacement of 10,800 cubic centimeters, electronic pythons and capacity to store 12 thousand liters of water.
In April, Interference reported that between January 1 and March 19 of this year, Carabineros disbursed the amount of $6,683,246,442. The figure does not include the la-66’s nearly one billion pesos, Said Undersecretary Galli.
Within those more than 6.6 million pesos, Carabineros did not report how many cars were purchased and their models, but they did detail that $327 million was earmarked to acquire water-launching vehicles.
