“Roots, Bloody Roots”

In May 2024, Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich wrote on X, “We are going to lock them all up” after criminals in Rosario threatened to kill her. She issued the statement in response to random attacks by criminal organizations causing the deaths of civilians in the Argentine city of Rosario where two taxi drivers, a gas station employee and a bus driver with no apparent ties to organized crime had been murdered by hitmen.

As a criminologist specializing in criminal structures in Latin America, I see Rosario as the perfect example of a city overrun by criminal groups involved in drug-trafficking.  Argentina used to be a relatively safe country with the lowest crime rates in the region but the struggle for control of drug sales inside Rosario turned the city into a laboratory for the entry of organized crime in the country.

Recent changes in the penitentiary system carried out by the provincial government of Santa Fe, where Rosario is located, have sparked the recent wave of violence. The measures include changes in the penitentiary protocols and the creation of prison wards for high-risk detainees as well as cell inspections of those detainees suspected of running criminal activities from behind bars.

Los Monos: Courtesy of the Banda Diaria, Rosario

According to local media, Mafia groups decided to cause widespread panic through a violent response prompting bus drivers to strike, schools to cancel classes, and garbage collection to be canceled in some areas. The strategy of randomly killing people and the intimidation of public figures were focused on paralyzing the city and sending a clear message to local authorities, “In unity lies our strength and in solidarity rests our power.”

Rosario, Argentina´s third largest city, recorded 287 homicides in 2022, and 259 in 2023, according to national media statistics. For example, a famous shooting at a supermarket owned by soccer giant Lionel Messi´s wife and a school shooting in which an 11 year old boy was killed and three others injured led to the deployment of army personnel, turning the city into a war zone.

However, homicide rates have drastically decreased during the last year since the new government declared a zero tolerance policy on crime. According to information provided by the National Security Ministry, murder rates in Rosario have dropped by 62% reaching the lowest number in 17 years.

The question is how long this can last. Even now, there are signs of an upswing. Violence has escalated in Rosario during the first months of the year with shootings against shops and threats made against the Governor Maximiliano Pullaro. Apparently, the person behind these attacks is Brian Walter Bilbao, a fugitive from justice in the framework of a drug-trafficking case.

As a result of these events, enforcement policies still face extraordinary challenges since the consortium of criminal gangs has no precedents in a city like Rosario. The establishment of a formal alliance is similar to those arrangements reached between the Primeiro Comando da Capital (PCC) and the Comando Vermelho (CV) in Brazil in response to a temporary government intervention. 

A study by the National University of Rosario found that the illegal drug trade in Argentina’s third-largest city generated more than $370 million dollars a year, turning the city into one of the Southern Cone´s biggest illicit drug markets. This was facilitated by the presence of weak institutions, deep-rooted corruption and economic instability.

Plan Bandera: Courtesy of Red Boing

For example, long term factors such as income inequality, lack of employment opportunities and education have contributed to the entrenchment of crime leading to the employment of poor kids of 15- to 20-year-olds as ¨sicarios¨ and dealers. This is the strategy used by criminal clans to introduce paco, a highly addictive street drug made of residual cocaine paste, in poor neighborhoods distributing it for free to generate addiction and later using it to recruit soldiers who work as slaves in order to earn their dose. These conditions allowed organized crime to become stronger in a particular geographic area where the state was absent, failing to provide necessary economic services to society.

Organized crime in Argentina has taken the particular form of family clans shaping local criminal organizations. With roots in smaller-scale criminality, these criminal organizations have intimate structures, consisting of close relatives with a high degree of confidence and loyalty among its members. For instance, the organization known as the Monos was able to hold control of the drug market in the city for more than two decades. During the same period, two other major clans, the Funes and Camino families, were fighting for territorial control of the cocaine market in the southern region of Rosario.

Indeed, the most powerful organizations in Rosario were structured around family ties with an increasing recruitment of underprivileged teenagers. These organizations focus on micro-trafficking of small quantities of drugs for immediate sale to consumers across the city. According to a research conducted by Insight Crime, though many of their leaders were arrested, they kept operating their illegal activities from behind bars through alliances with corrupt prison officials and members of the security forces. This agreement guaranteed the control of crime by corrupt police forces regarding the regulation and participation in the drug-trafficking business.

For example, police in the city of Buenos Aires captured Juan José Raffo, a former Santa Fe police commissioner and one of the key players within the Los Monos family clan. Sources involved in the case told local newspapers that Raffo was found with navigation maps of inland rivers and waterways bordering the territory.

Consequently, the growing domestic demand of narcotics and the arrival of huge amounts of drug-related money fostered a territorial competition leading to the clans’ struggle for control of drug sales inside Rosario and giving rise to unprecedented levels of violence.

Rosario en Paz: Courtesy of Caminos Religiosos

The increasing number of drug-related deaths was a consequence of the atomization of criminal organizations and the outsourcing of violence, unleashing a bloody fight for territorial control between a large number of family clans and new criminal structures, turning the criminal landscape into a more challenging scenario. 

Nowadays, Rosario’s criminal map keeps expanding and mutating despite a temporary decline in crime as new players have emerged and joined the drug-dealing business. It is estimated that there are about 34 drug gangs operating in Rosario. Even the members of “Los Monos,” the clan that started the drug business in the 90s, don´t seem to act in a coordinated or consistent manner. The clan appears to be operating in a fragmented way resulting in the emergence of new criminal gangs within the family, without a true hierarchical ranking among their members.

For example, clan members have been transferred to different prisons in the past to cut off the lines of communication with the streets. But, this measures didn´t stop leaders of “Los Monos” from hiring contract killers to shoot and threaten judges.  In 2018, the leader of the clan, Ariel Maximo Cantero, was asked about his profession during a court hearing openly saying: “I contract hitmen to shoot judges.”

In this environment, can any decrease in crime last? Security experts suspect of a mutual agreement between the state and criminal gangs. In response to the sudden drop of violence, the former security minister of Santa Fe, Marcelo Sain, declared before the press that “there is no other policy in the world that makes homicides decrease so sharply, there was a tacit agreement.”

Despite these improvements, citizens of low income neighborhoods are skeptical. Sandra Arce, who runs a community kitchen in the low-income La Boca community, told a French wire service, “Everything remains the same, they rob you, they snatch things from you, they shoot you and murders are not on the media, but we still have them.”  

A sign of this upswing is that in January, there was one homicide every 36 hours. After a six-month period with a historic low in violent crimes, the media already reported 20 incidents within a month. Take for example the case of the killing of two women in the República de la Sexta neighborhood, ten blocks from the city center, as a result of a drug-related revenge. Antonela Echavarría, 29, and Marcela Gorosito, 55, were murdered by a hitman. Apparently, Gorosito was the mother of a member of René Unfaro´s gang, imprisoned in a federal jail outside Rosario on charges of homicide, drug trafficking, and criminal association. Antonela, on the other hand, had the bad fortune of being at the wrong place at the wrong time.

This is a wake-up call for authorities, because a broken truce between family clans can easily lead once again to an explosion in violence. As a matter of fact, shifting scenarios represent a great opportunity for organized crime to demonstrate its capacity for rapid and constant evolution. For example, authorities indicated that recent arrests of members of violent gangs linked to the drug trade is leading to a reconfiguration of power in the criminal landscape and the resurgence of violence in the streets of Rosario. At least, local authorities in Rosario were cautious stating at a press conference “This is far from being over.”