Residents of Argentina’s Rosario pay with blood as state moves against cartels
A leafy city 300 km northwest of Argentina’s capital Buenos Aires, Rosario is where revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born, Lionel Messi rst kicked a football and the Argentine ag was rst raised in 1812. But it most recently won notoriety because its homicide numbers are ve times the national average.
Tucked into a bend in the Paraná River, Rosario’s port morphed into Argentina’s drug tra¬cking hub as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south and criminals started squirreling away cocaine in shipping containers spirited down the river to markets abroad. Although Rosario never suffered the car bombs and police assassinations gripping Mexico, Colombia and most recently Ecuador, the splintering of street gangs has fueled bloodshed.
At a service station in Rosario on March 9, 25year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in the city in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence a¯icting some other Latin American countries.
A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich’s body, addressed to ofcials who want to curb the power wielded by drug kingpins from behind bars. “We don’t want to negotiate anything. We want our rights,” it says. “We will kill more innocent people.”
Drug tra¬ckers keep a tight grip over Rosario’s poor neighbourhoods full of young men vulnerable to recruitment. One of them was Víctor Emanuel, a 17-year-old killed two years ago by rival gangsters in an area where street murals pay tribute to slain criminal leaders. No one was arrested.
‘Fearful existence’
“My neighbours know who is responsible,” his mother, Gerónima Benítez, said. A fearful existence is all Ms. Benítez has ever known. But now, for the rst time in Argentina, warring drug tra¬ckers are banding together and terrorising parts of the city previously considered safe.
Imprisoned gang leaders in Latin America have long run criminal enterprises remotely with the help of corrupt guards. But according to an indictment unveiled last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions on how to kill random civilians via family visits and video calls.
Court documents say the bosses paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Argentina’s thirdlargest city.
The string of killings oer an early test to the security agenda of populist President Javier Milei, who has tethered his political success to saving Argentina’s tanking economy and eradicating narco-tra¬cking violence.
Since taking o¬ce on December 10, 2023, the right-wing leader has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the Army into crime-ridden streets for the rst time since Argentina’s brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983.
His law-and-order message has empowered Maximiliano Pullaro, the hardline Governor of Santa Fe province which includes Rosario, to clamp down on incarcerated criminal gangs that authorities say orchestrated 80% of shootings last year. Under orders of the Governor, the police have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. “We are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity,” Mr. Milei said after Bussanich was killed, announcing the deployment of federal forces in Rosario.
“It’s a war between the state and the drug tra¬ckers,” said Ezequiel, a 30year-old employee at the gas station where Bussanich was killed. “We are the ones paying the price,” he added.