In Argentina almost everything is linked to football or is explained through it. This time it was a soccer player, Juan Cruz Komar, from Rosario Central, who best explained what is happening in the third largest city in Argentina, where in recent weeks drug gangs have spread terror about citizens: “In recent years we had an elephant in the room, we knew the problem was there, but it was looked at from the side,” said Cruz.
In other words, for a few days, the “elephant” went out through the streets stomping enormously, forcing citizens to hide in their homes and the authorities to try to stop him.
Rosario is not only a thriving port city of one million inhabitants and the homeland of Lionel Messi, is also the largest epicenter of urban violence facing the country today governed by Javier Milei.
Although the presence of criminal groups is not new, in recent weeks they crossed a line that left citizens terrified: They randomly murdered four people.
The victims were ordinary citizens, and therefore, fear spread with the speed that television showed the murders.
Without the complicity of a sector of political, police, judicial, economic and financial power it would not be possible to reach the situation in which Rosario finds itself.
The dead were a gas station worker who was shot by a hitman while working and whose video was broadcast in a loop on the news, two taxi drivers, and a bus driver who was murdered by a hitman who got into the vehicle and shot him without warning. prior notice. After the murders, The city was closed and the silence in the streets recalled those days lived in the midst of the covid-19 pandemic.
Such is the critical situation that Pope Francis spoke about this week: “Without the complicity of a sector of political, police, judicial, economic and financial power it would not be possible to reach the situation in which Rosario finds itself,” he said from the Vatican. and added that, although the “need for the presence of security forces” is understood, which is what Javier Milei's government intends, “comprehensive responses” are needed.
Argentina's temptation to imitate the Bukele model
Although the drug traffickers have directly threatened the governor of the province, Maximiliano Pullaro, and the crisis has gone through different governments. In the background, there is also the evidence that the drug groups pose to the Milei government. “It is a war declared on the State at all levels,” explains Fabricio Navone, Rosario and correspondent for La Política Online in that city.
The violence that has the city in check was unleashed after the governor's decision to reopen security pavilions in prisons where some of the leaders of the armed gangs are held.
The governor says that whoever controls the prison, controls the street and took measures such as restricting visits, bringing in food and some elements
“The governor says that whoever controls the jail, controls the street and took measures such as restricting visits, bringing in food and some items. This has been accompanied by complaints of human rights violations, as has happened in El Salvador with the decisions of (Nayib) Bukele, although the government denies it,” explains Navone.
But days before the terror unleashed in the city, the governor published a photo of prisoners in prisons, very similar to those of criminals in the prisons of the Salvadoran president, Nayib Bukele, in El Salvador.
The Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, celebrated it in X: “Congratulations, governor. “Whoever makes them, pays for them,” the official tweeted with the photo of half-naked prisoners, with their heads bowed and sitting in a row.
However, the image even caused concern among Bukele officials. According to a version of the newspaper Clarín, the security minister of El Salvador called Bullrich and told him: “The photo is a very serious mistake, they are wrong; you can only do that when the gangs are already neutralized and you have “total control of the street.”
And although Milei's response – a heavy hand and militarization – is no surprise to anyone. In fact, Bullrich announced a mega police operation with provincial and federal forces and a law so that the Armed Forces (military) can carry out security operations, among other measures; Carolina Jiménez Sandoval, president of the Washington Office for Latin American Affairs (Wola, for its acronym in English) warns of the risks of expanding that model to solve security problems throughout the region.
“It is worrying that models such as the so-called Bukele model are believed to be replicable and sustainable. They are not and the example is Ecuador (when violence broke out at the beginning of the year).”
What is the drug trafficking that operates in Rosario, Argentina like?
Just as there is a temptation to copy the Bukele model, There is also the idea of equating the drug traffickers of Rosario with those of Mexico or Colombia, although they are distant realities, especially if they are typified by cities rather than by countries.
Unlike the situation in Medellín in the 90s, with a boss like Pablo Escobar who had a scope of national terrorism, The drug violence in Rosario has to do with a series of local groups that for a decade have fought over the drug market or internal trade and neighborhoods are disputed.
Its operation, if one wanted to compare, is more similar to the urban war that is waged in ports like Buenaventura or Barranquilla. What does resemble the realities of Colombia and Mexico with that of Argentina is the corrupt alliances between gangs and police. that have allowed the existence of the business and that Pope Francis precisely spoke about.
The phenomenon of drug trafficking in Rosario can be divided into two realities: the first is international drug trafficking. Being a port city, it is desired for the transit of drugs that come from Paraguay and Bolivia and go to Europe and Asia.
The second are the gangs dedicated to drug dealing, whose war for the local market has escalated in the last 10 years.
Two names emerge from that war: Los Monos and Esteban Alvarado's gangs—the latter tried to escape in a helicopter a few years ago. But after several arrests and deaths, today the gangs are atomized.
They do not fight over exporting to the United States, but rather with the retail of those who sell three blocks away.
A source who asks not to be named explains that These are small gangs that “do not fight over exporting to the United States, but rather with the retail of those who sell three blocks away. It is street-to-street crime fueled by young people aged 13 to 14 who work as drug soldiers,” he tells EL TIEMPO.
The author of the book Los Monos y Rosario, by Germán de Los Santos, has said something similar. “These groups do not affect the much larger business of cocaine smuggling abroad. In Rosario, the “managers” of this business are international groups, but not local ones,” he told Insight Crime.
Until now, The deaths in that city—it has the highest homicide rate in Argentina, 22 per 100,000 inhabitants—were mostly due to settling scores. The danger, Los Santos has also explained, “is that these gangs that are dedicated to micro-trafficking will ever try to penetrate this larger business.”
Security of all of Argentina will depend on what happens in Rosario
What happens in Rosario will be decisive for all of Argentina although the realities are different between provinces.
The measures that Bullrich and Milei want to implement, such as using the Armed Forces in the fight against drug trafficking – something similar to Colombia and Mexico – will have to go through Congress where the president has suffered several rejections of his bills.
And what is worrying is that the participation of the military in these operations – which has already been tried in Colombia and Mexico – not only generates friction in the Legislature but within the Executive itself.
Vice President Victoria Villaruel said in an interview that she did not agree with her own government's decision. “The function of the armed forces is not to fight civilians, I think that was clear with the issue of the 70s,” she said when referring to her dictatorship in the years of Jorge Rafael Videla.
Argentina would have to adjust to the reality of the Rosario gangs
For their part, several experts insist that, in addition to the risks of human rights violations, Argentina would have to adjust to the reality of the Rosario gangs who, as El Salvador warns them, are different to those of the Central American country and, for now, they are not neutralized.
Furthermore, they remind President Milei that there were also similar police landings in another government and nothing happened. Meanwhile, the problem seems far from stopping in Rosario. AND while citizens have slowly resumed their daily lives with a greater police presence, In some areas of the city, small rudimentary posters have appeared with threats directed at the governor and his team. They tell them not to mess with them or, otherwise, “it will rain lead.”
Catalina Oquendo – Special for EL TIEMPO – Buenos Aires
#drug #traffickers #operate #Argentina #similar #Mexico #Colombia