The city of Rosario, located 300 kilometers northwest of Buenos Aires, in the province of Santa Fe, is the third largest in Argentina and for decades it was known for being the birthplace of some of the most prominent figures in Argentine history, from Che Guevara to Lionel Messi.
It is also a place of important patriotic symbolism, since there is the Flag Monument, in the place where Manuel Belgrano raised it for the first time.
But in recent years Rosario was leaving behind its illustrious fame to become the city known for being the most dangerous in the country.
A violence that has increased in recent days with the cold-blooded murders of a young gas station worker, two taxi drivers and a bus driver, all shot dead, and at random, by hitmen.
There are several reports that show that Rosario has the highest homicide rate from Argentina.
In 2023, the Center for Latin American Studies on Insecurity and Violence at the University of Tres de Febrero determined that in 2020 there were 16.4 people murdered per 100,000 inhabitants.
This is a higher rate than that of the most dangerous “slum” in Buenos Aires, Villa 31 in Retiro, where the number of violent deaths was 12.9 the same year.
According to the Security Observatory of the Verisure company, last year Rosario was also the city that recorded the most criminal acts in the country.
Behind these painful figures hides a scourge that has turned the lives of many Rosario residents into a nightmare: drug trafficking.
La Nación journalist Germán de los Santos explained to BBC Mundo that Rosario has “a homicide rate four times higher than the national average” due to “a fight between gangs for control of drug trafficking in the city”.
A violent “drug dealing” business generated by the fact that Rosario – Argentina’s main agro-export port – is strategically located on one of the country’s main transportation channels, the Paraguay-Paraná Waterwaywhich, in addition to transporting soybeans and other goods, is also used to smuggle drugs, particularly cocaine, to Europe and Oceania.
“There is more of 30 ports in the area, which has turned Rosario into a city where drugs can circulate widely. And that has fueled the fight for traffic control for internal sales,” said De los Santos.
But its location is not the only reason that explains why Rosario has a much more serious drug trafficking problem than other Argentine cities, including the poorest suburbs of the province of Buenos Aires, the most populated area in the country.
According to the Clarín newspaper journalist, Virginia Messi, it is not due to the “volume of drugs that move on the street.”
For Messi, Rosario is “a narco anomaly” due to the “extreme violence” carried out by those who distribute the micro-trafficking, and “the lack of control” that exists, with “more than 30 bands” operating and extorting, despite the fact that their leaders were arrested.
“Each and every one of the drug bosses in the city – with Ariel “Guille” Cantero (35), Esteban Lindor Alvarado (44), and Julio Andrés Rodríguez Granthon (30) at the head – They have been imprisoned for years“Details the journalist, naming the leader of the largest gang in Rosario, Los Monos, and two of his rivals.
“Their second and even third lines also fell, as did the leaders of other clans such as the Ungaro, the Funes or the Pillines.”
However, as is happening with criminal gangs in other countries, such as the famous Red Command and First Capital Command of Brazil, drug bosses have continued to give orders from prison, protected by corrupt police and justice forces.
Meanwhile, Rosario has plunged into a “chaotic” turf battle between gangs that, atomized due to the lack of large hegemonic organizations, fight to control a neighborhood or a specific area for microtrafficking, as established by an investigation carried out by the Public Prosecutor’s Office of Santa Fe in 2022.
It is these clashes that have multiplied deaths, the report states.
Flag Plan
But this dynamic that prevailed for years has changed with the arrival to power of the current governor of Santa Fe, Maximiliano Pullaroand President Javier Milei, who appointed his former political rival as his Minister of Security Patricia Bullrich (who had already held that position during the government of Mauricio Macri).
After taking office in December, both provincial and national authorities implemented a series of measures to end drug violence.
Pullaro announced – on the same day of his inauguration – “an operational contingency and emergency plan, which will focus all available resources on street prevention.”
“We are going to progressively intervene in eight neighborhoods in Rosario and four in Santa Fe, through concerted state action aimed at reducing violence, attacking drug sales and restoring social peace,” he stated.
He also said he would no longer allow gang bosses to operate from prisons. “We are going to end the ‘home office’ of criminals from places of detention“he promised.
A few days later, in mid-December, he accompanied Bullrich at the launch of the so-called Flag Planan operation in which federal forces work alongside provincial forces to combat organized crime.
The Plan also provides for the creation of maximum security pavilions to separate “hitmen and drug traffickers” from “common prisoners”, and isolation cells for the most dangerous prisoners, and includes periodic checks in prisons in search of clandestine cell phones.
In early March, the governor Pullaro released images that showed a surprise search. The photos – which referred to images of El Salvador prisons under the Bukele government – showed prisoners with bare torsos, tied to the ground, looking down and surrounded by armed police.
Pullaro – who in January had reported that he had to move his family due to the repeated death threats they received – published the images with the caption: “They are going to have it worse and worse“.
It was these actions – which have been questioned as excessive by some – that would have led the gangs to order the random murders of recent weeks.
A handwritten message left with one of the victims threatened to “kill more innocents” if the prisoners were not allowed to leave their isolation. “We want our rights. See our children and family,” the note said.
Despite the escalation of violence, the authorities assure that their measures are proving successful.
At the end of February, Bullrich reported that two months after the start of the Bandera Plan, the homicides committed on public roads in Rosario fell 57%.
Military dispatch
After the latest incidents, this week the national government launched a crisis committee and announced the sending to Rosario of the Armed Forces to be logistical and tactical support of all federal forces that are already operating (including the police, the prefecture and the gendarmerie).
“Today we are already talking about narcoterrorism,” said the Minister of Security when presenting the plan.
Under Argentine law, the military can provide logistical aid within its borders but can only actively intervene in the event of external threats.
On Tuesday, President Milei revealed that analyzes expanding the powers of the army in Rosario.
“We are evaluating sending (to Congress) a new Internal Security Law that allows the Armed Forces to take some additional actions“, he said during an interview with Crónica TV.
Although Pullaro was in favor of this option, and the rest of the governors expressed through a letter strong support for the actions that the provincial and national governments have been carrying out in Rosario, the possibility of adding to the army – if the bill- will generate controversy.
On the one hand, there are those who are concerned that the military is once again exercising force within the country, after the human rights violations committed by many of its members during the “years of lead” in the 70s and 80s (crimes that are still being judged today).
But, according to local media, also the troops themselves would have expressed objections before the possibility of intervening in Rosario, due to the fear that eventually could face charges if it is considered that they acted badly.
In that sense, this Wednesday Minister Bullrich announced the implementation of a general regulation for the use of weapons by members of the Federal Security Forces.
According to a government statement, the minister specified that the new regulations provide that “weapons may be used in situations of imminent danger of death of the agent himself or of citizens in the face of an attack, to prevent the commission of a crime when it is particularly serious.” , when a criminal resists authority or to prevent him from escaping.”
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