Sebastian Fest Buenos Aires

Buenos Aires

Updated Saturday, March 9, 2024-18:10

  • Violence They shoot at a premises belonging to Messi's family and the mayor does not rule out that there are police officers involved

In 2023 it was the threat to Lionel Messi's political family, and this year, the

murder of taxi drivers and bus drivers

as a mafia message: drug trafficking and violence are so entrenched in Rosario, Argentina's second city, that stimuli are needed powerful to return its tragic story to the forefront of news.

This Sunday it happened again.

The story is more than powerful.

Patricia Bullrich

, Minister of Security, announced that she will apply the anti-terrorist law to combat drug violence in Rosario and throughout the province of Santa Fe. To do so, she will call on the five federal security forces and will add the support of the Armed Forces in specific tasks. .

"If we do not put an

urgent stop

, the violence will continue to escalate," Bullrich said in a letter sent to the media and reproduced on his social networks.

"

Rosario is bleeding

. And she doesn't need a simple tourniquet to get better. She needs a definitive cure. That's why we are going to go deep. Firmly, without our pulse shaking," he added.

"We are going to take the necessary measures so that any act of violence perpetrated on public roads or inside public places is initially considered an attempt to terrorize the population or condition the authorities and, therefore, will be reported as an act of terrorism. We also plan

to request the support of the Armed Forces

, always within the terms of the Internal Security Law," said the minister.

Bullrich was already Mauricio Macri's Minister of Security

between 2015 and 2019

, and is seen by an important sector of Argentines as a woman who brings "order" to an increasingly complex issue, that of citizen security in the face of drug crime.

Her ambition was to be president, but after finishing third in the 2023 elections, she starred in a lightning reconciliation with the current president,

Javier Milei

, who, from accusing her of being a terrorist who planted bombs in kindergartens, went on to become her great defender.

Thus,

three months after the Milei-Bullrich alliance

, the Argentine government faces a crossroads in the hottest area of ​​the country.

Rosario is a thriving city, with a port from which a good part of the agricultural production of the Pampa Húmeda is exported.

That port, on the Paraná River, connects with Bolivia, Paraguay and Brazil and is coveted by drug traffickers, both as a drug export platform and as a terminal for the growing domestic consumer market.

Admiration for Bukele

Two weeks ago, Bullrich met in the United States with the president of El Salvador,

Nayib Bukele

, known worldwide for having drastically reduced crime in a country that was close to being a failed state.

He did it with enormous success, to the point that he recently won re-election in a landslide, although also violating constitutional guarantees and filling the prisons with innocent people.

Bullrich is an admirer of Bukele, whom she congratulated at that meeting in Washington DC for

having "saved the lives of millions of people"

, quite an exaggeration for a country of only 6.3 million inhabitants such as the Central American nation.

Maximiliano Pullaro

has been the new governor of Santa Fé since December.

Pullaro belongs to the Unión Cívica Radical (UCR), the social democratic party led in the '80s by Raúl Alfonsín, who in the current democratic stage had never governed what is one of the three most important provinces in the country, almost always dominated by the Peronism.

Pullaro, a young and dynamic politician, found himself in a disastrous security situation, with criminals ruling the prisons and

ordering robberies and murders from there.

Days ago, an image circulated: the prisoners were exhaustively searched, and what was seen seemed to be copied from that "Bukele method" that went around the world.

The narco revenge did not take long to arrive.

Murders of taxi drivers began to accumulate at night.

and when the taxi drivers went on strike as a sign of protest and help, the bullets were directed at a city bus driver.

Bullets that, it was later confirmed, belonged to the

Santa Fe Police, a body suspected of active collusion with drug traffickers

.

Hence, Bullrich wants to install federal forces in that province.

"Today the finger is undeniably being put on the sore spot, which is the prison system," said

Pablo Javkin

, mayor of Rosario, of radical origin and also belonging to a social democratic force.

"You can't go back."

Javkin, ignored in his desperation during the four years of the government of Peronist

Alberto Fernández

, asked for help: "If we are going to put more pressure on the prison, we also have to have more deployment on the streets to take care of the citizens. Because the victims we had this week they were people who worked in the city.