How Rosario, Lionel Messi's Birth Place Became A Drug-Trafficking hub (image@Pixabay)Streets are empty, schools closed and people are terrified to death. Argentina’s Rosario once was well-known as the birth place of revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara and football prodigy Lionel Messi. Unfortunately, in recent years, the river port city has grown into a notorious drug hub as homicide figures escalate to five times the national average.
On March 9th, at a service station in Rosario, a 25-year-old employee named Bruno Bussanich was checking the day’s earnings by whistling to himself just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away. The attacker fled the scene without bothering to take a peso (unit of money used in Latin American countries like Argentina).
Bussanich’s was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in the city in less than a week. Authorities called it as an unprecedented rampage in the country. A hand-written note was found near the 25-year-old’s body that read, “we don’t want to negotiate anything, We want our rights…we will kill more innocent people”, as quoted by AP. The note was addressed to officials who desire to curb the power drug bigwigs control from behind the bars.
After Bussanich was killed, the country’s President Javier Milei said “we are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity…we will lock them up, isolate them, take back the streets”.
The Rosario residents are shaken to the core. “Every time I go to work, I say goodbye to my father as if it were the last time”, told 21-year-old Celeste Núñez who also works at a gas station, to AP.
The homicide pose as an early test to the security agendas of the newly elected President of the country, Javier Milei, who equated his political success with saving Argentina’s tanking economy and in clearing off the narco-trafficking violence of the country. After taking office in December 10, 2023, Milei promised to persecute gang leaders and members as terrorists and change law that would allow army into the crime-ridden streets, which would be a first for the Latin American country after its brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983.
The law-and-order from Milei has empowered the governor Maximiliano Pullaro, of Santa Fe province which also include Rosario, to crackdown on criminal gangs which authorities say orchestrated 80 percent of the shooting last year. Under Pullaro’s order, police raid prisons and seized thousands of smuggled mobile phones and restricted visits.
Residents say that they are paying the price for the a war between the state and the drug traffickers. Even the supporters of Milei have mixed feelings regarding the crackdown, including German Bussanic, father of the slain gas station employee. “They are putting on a show and we are facing the consequences”, he told reporters.
Rosario has turned into the drug trafficking hub of Argentina as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south, Criminals started to trade away cocaine in shipping containers to markets abroad. Though Rosario has not suffered the car bombs and police assassinations like it has been in Mexico, Columbia and Ecuador, bloodshed seems to increase a lot.
Reportedly, the imprisoned gang leaders of Latin America have long run criminal enterprises with the help of corrupt police guards. But, as per the indictment released last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions to how to kill random civilians through family visits and video calls.
As per the court document, the gang leaders paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Rosario, the third largest city of Argentina.
Threats and public assault continue. In April, a sign was appeared on a highway overpass. The sign warned the country’s Security Minister Patricia Bullrich that the criminal gangs would extend their offensive if the government does not back down. Authorities try to reassure the public by sending hundreds of federal agents into Rosario. However, experts are skeptical that a “tough-on-crime” approach will ease out the drug traffickers from buying over Argentina’s police and prisons.
(With inputs from AP)