Violence has surged this year in Rosario, the capital of the north-eastern province of Santa Fe, and the third largest city in Argentina. Responding to a popular outcry President Alberto Fernández announced on 7 March that he was sending in extra federal forces, including an army unit. Opinions are divided, with some arguing that sending in the army is a major mistake.
In recent weeks Rosario has been in the news for all the wrong reasons. A battle for territory between the Los Monos drug trafficking organisation and rival cartels has been in full swing, pushing up the number of homicides in the first two months of this year to 65, an increase of around 9% on last year’s average.
Adding to media interest, in the early hours of 2 March shots were fired and a warning message was left at a supermarket targeting Rosario’s most famous celebrity, football super star Lionel Messi. The message said “Messi, we are waiting for you, [Rosario mayor Pablo] Javkin is also a narco, he’s not going to take care of you”. The supermarket is owned by the family of Messi’s wife, the Roccuzzos.
The day before the presidential announcement viewers of Todo Noticias (TN), a sensationalist television news channel, were able to see live coverage of the funeral of a 12-year old boy who had been caught in crossfire, followed by local residents of a poor neighbourhood attacking and looting the home of one of his alleged killers.
Facing these developments and perhaps with the coming electoral campaign on his mind, President Fernández said he was sending additional federal police and gendarmes into the city, to raise their strength to 1,400. The army was also being sent in.
However, given sensitivities over army involvement in domestic security, Fernández said that he would be sending an unarmed company of army engineers whose job would be to improve roads and amenities in poor parts of the city. He likened this to the humanitarian role the army had played during the coronavirus (Covid-19) pandemic.
- Military role
In reaction to the Argentine army’s involvement in mass disappearances and human rights violations during the 1970s and 1980s, current legislation says the military must focus on defence from external attack, not on domestic security. Some analysts also argue that the army lacks the specialised training and skills needed to tackle criminal cartels.
Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, the mayor of the city of Buenos Aires and a potential presidential candidate for the centre-right opposition Juntos por el Cambio (JxC), had earlier criticised the idea of sending in the military, saying the gendarmes (militarised police) were better trained for the job in hand. But former security minister Patricia Bullrich, a right-of-centre rival for the presidential nomination, struck a more gung-ho style. “They took their time, but they recognised the problem,” she said, referring to the Fernández administration. “In Rosario, federal forces and the army are needed to stop free circulation of narcos and paid killers. Building houses is not a priority, the priority is to avoid Rosario’s citizens getting killed,” she said.