Two families dispute control over drug dealing, while putting the city at risk

A 27-year-old man and his three-year-old son were killed in a brutal attack in the southern area of ​​the city of Rosario, Argentina, where between the months of January and the first days of February, 24 homicides have already been recorded.

Although the motives behind this double homicide are still unknown, the incident takes place in the midst of a war that seems to have no end between two gangs fighting for drug trafficking in the neighborhoods of the southern part of the city, the Funes and the Camino. In a radius of approximately 40 blocks, there have been 41 homicides in the last eleven months.

The two victims were chatting at the front of their home when motorcycle riders opened fire on them. The man was shot in the chest and limbs; he died in the hospital. His son arrived, without vital signs, to the medical center and the cause of death were the wounds that he received in the chest.

In the last few days, there were six crimes in Rosario, where all the murders occurred with firearms and they have victims of both sides in confrontation, a situation that ignites concern about the ferocity of the attacks.

The cause of the increase in violence in the city, explains the journalist Germán de Los Santos, lies in the fight for La Tablada, a neighborhood historically made up of lower middle-class workers linked to the meat industry that in recent years; "It has become a very complex area, in which the workers and these narco groups coexist, who do not have a very complex or developed structure."

Santos, together with Hernán Lascano, wrote the book Los Monos, which tells the story of the narco family that transformed the city IGNORE INTO a complete hell and that changed their perception of security after taking over it a few years ago.

"They are bands of great lethality that are killed, for very little, by a sector of few blocks where they want to distribute drugs. They have little logistical capacity, unlike the one they had (the narco band) Los Monos ", says the Minister of Security of the province of Santa Fe, Maximiliano Pullaro, to which Rosario belongs." It is a very focused and difficult violence. to fight ", assures the minister, since it is not about crimes for robberies or other facts of insecurity but of interpersonal confrontations.

For the Santa Fe government, the murder of the child is not linked to the war between the two narco groups, but it does show the violence lodged in the territory where those who shoot do so "without measuring the consequences and regardless of who their victims are"

Rosario continues being the center for the multiplication of these criminal groups that, many times, get political protection and police complicity to grow IGNORE INTO bands. "The attractions of Rosario are the routes, which connect the city with the borders of the country where the drug enters, but mainly the ports. We have 30 ports between private and public where the grain of the Argentine Republic is exported. Undoubtedly that should be attractive for those who take or enter the country's drug”, says Pullaro at a press conference on the scourge of violence so far in 2018.

Latin American Post | Carlos Eduardo Gómez Avella

Translated from “Argentina: Violencia sin control en Rosario”