Rosario lives a wave of violence: what is happening in this Argentine city?

After the focus last week on the Argentine city of Rosario, the most violent in the country, due to the attack on the supermarket owned by the in-laws of the famous soccer player Lionel Messi, new violent assaults were announced in the Los Pumitas neighborhood.

Last weekend, Máximo Jerez, an 11-year-old boy who was playing with three friends a few meters from a drug store, died after being shot by a group of four people who were passing by in a vehicle. A 13-year-old teenager was also wounded with a bullet to the chest, according to prosecutor Adrián Spelta, investigator of the case.

Speaking to Rosario’s ‘Radio 2’, Spelta said that “all limits have been crossed” and that “there is a territorial bid between a band that has been in that area for a long time and another that is not from the area, for the sale of drugs”.

During a search of a house where the attackers may have been hiding, the authorities found an old FMK machine gun with a silencer, a 9mm pistol and a motorcycle with traces of blood that could belong to the suspects, according to the prosecutor. In addition, two men and two women were taken into police custody.

The events of Saturday caused the residents of the place to loot and destroy homes of alleged drug traffickers on Monday. In addition, they tried to attack the occupants whom they held responsible for the death of Jerez.

In one of the houses, belongings were stolen and they tried to set the place on fire, for which reason the firefighters and police had to intervene, in addition to rescuing the inhabitants of the houses.

“This is a demonstration of social weariness. Here we have the death of a little boy, who was shot to death,” said Claudio Brilloni, security minister for the province of Santa Fe, who attended the police operation in the Rosariol neighborhood. He added that the violence “is exacerbated by the accessibility that drug gangs have to firearms.”

For Brilloni, Rosario, which is the largest Argentine agro-export port, “has characteristics that make it a desired location for drug-criminal organizations.”

Added to this, he affirmed that at this point “one facet, which is drug trafficking on a large scale, and the other, which is the business of ‘drug dealing’ and the confrontations that take place in neighborhoods of social vulnerability, coexist.”

For two decades, violence has increased in Rosario. In 2022 there were 22 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, some five times more than the average for the rest of the country, according to official data.

The president sends security forces to Rosario

Alberto Fernández, president of Argentina, announced on Tuesday the sending of reinforcements of state security forces to the city of Rosario, with the aim of reaching 1,400 troops and helping to dismantle drug trafficking organizations.

“I understand that Rosario needs us. I know that her security forces are insufficient to solve the problem,” Fernández said in a video message. And he added: “We are going to put an end to the criminal violence of hitmen, merchants of death. No criminal organization, no mafia network, can against the force of a united people and in defense of their land and in their community life.”

“We are making forceful decisions. Our pulse does not tremble in combating organized crime. Whoever is involved with these organizations, actively or passively, will fall under the full weight of the law,” the president asserted.

Also to try to solve the structural problem that the city afflicts decided “that the Argentine Army, through its company of engineers, participate in the urbanization of the popular settlements, accelerating tasks pending execution and that are very necessary. They are the Armed Forces of our democracy.”

Fernández mentioned that “the prison system will take extreme custody against the inmates who have been sentenced and intend from the same prison to continue controlling criminal objectives.”

The Government signed an agreement last week with the province of Santa Fe, where Rosario is located, with which the local security forces will be allowed to use the Secure Identification System, SIS, in addition to acquiring 600 cameras with facial recognition .

The chief of staff, Agustín Rossi, a native of the province of Santa Fe, said on his Twitter account: “We have an unyielding commitment to combat organized crime throughout the country and specifically drug trafficking in Rosario. We want to restore peace of mind to the people of Rosario. Regardless of the circumstances, we are not going to give up.”

The opposition accuses Fernández of acting late

Due to the spiral of violence that the city is experiencing and after the announcements by the President of the Republic, the opposition launched itself against Fernández, saying that it is a late effort that does not attack the root of the problem.

Deputy Mario Negri was forceful. “The President on Wednesday made an embarrassing State of the Nation speech. He only spoke for two seconds about Rosario (to chicanear Justice). Today he made announcements that are late. One of them has already been promised many times: the sending of national forces. Seeing is believing”, he stated on his Twitter account.

The Argentine left also reacted and rejected the sending of the military to Rosario, considering the measure as inefficient, since it does not resolve the causes of the problem.

Myriam Bregman, a candidate for the Socialist Workers Party in the Unity Left Front, questioned the president’s measures. “The Army is not needed in Rosario, with that it only seeks to wash its face and advance in the policy of introducing them into internal repression, an issue that will lead us to critical situations such as in Mexico or Colombia,” she said on Twitter.

The only person from the opposition who welcomed the measure was Patricia Bullrich who said “the solution does not have to be lukewarm. In Rosario, federal forces and the Army are needed to prevent the free circulation of drug traffickers and hit men.”

With AFP and EFE