ReportThe third largest city in the country is marked by the settling of scores, illustrating recent developments in the illegal trade and consumption of illicit substances.
Every day, at any time, for fifteen years, Rodrigo (his first name has been changed), 33, breathed to the rhythm of cocaine. “My odd jobs were used to finance my purchases, I was a walking bag”, describes this immense brunette with alternately sweet and nervous gaze who has not finished high school and has just landed a part-time job. Away from drugs for five months, he attends his first meeting with a psychologist from Madres Territoriales, an association that supports former users, in the suburb of Rosario, 300 kilometers north of Buenos Aires. “This is where I need to heal,” he adds, patting his already graying temple. Yet the temptations are according to him ” many ” : they interfere everywhere in this disadvantaged neighborhood with low brick houses, topped with a sheet metal roof.
“The sale of drugs, especially cocaine, has become a way of life for entire poor families, who are themselves users”, deplores Betina Zubeldia, founder of the association, who observes this new dynamic “for four or five years”. “The crisis hasn’t solved anything”, she says with a sigh, while the country has been blown by three years of recession, from 2018 to 2020, and records 40% poverty. In precarious neighborhoods, “traffic generates great insecurity, the fear of leaving home paralyzes us”, she confides.
Rosario, the third largest city in the country, extended by soybean fields as far as the eye can see, adorned with an elegant historic center and a river coast which also make it its sweetness of life, has thus recently been on the front page. national media, because of the settling of accounts between narcos. A symptom city that reveals, in part, recent developments in the consumption and trafficking of illegal substances.
“We have major drug trafficking problems in Argentina, with a convergence of routes, particularly in Rosario, emphasizes Matias Edery, prosecutor in Rosario, specialist in organized crime. Here, a third of the commercial exchange of cereals is done informally, it is a gateway for drug trafficking. » From his office in the public prosecutor’s office, he depicts the route of substances: cocaine arrives mainly from Bolivia, before returning to Europe; marijuana, from Paraguay, is “more intended for national consumption”.
Infighting
Zone of passage, without own production, Rosario like Argentina do not have cartels similar to those of Mexico or Colombia, explains the prosecutor. “Historically, Rosario is a city of smuggling, because of the port”, contextualizes German de los Santos, journalist and author of Los Monos, the story of a narco family that made Rosario hell (Sudamericana, 2017, untranslated). “Los Monos” (“the monkeys”) is this local band which, until the assassination of its leader in 2013, organizes trade with the rival clan. And hold the city. There followed a vendetta and a series of arrests which disrupted the structures and now blurred the commercial codes.
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