Rosario is the most violent city in Argentina. Its homicide rate, of 22 per 100,000 inhabitants, is five times the national average.
More than half of the city's homicides are centered in the southern, western and northern areas. The choice of Rosario as a base of operations has to do with geostrategic reasons, writes Agnes Poirier-Gonzalez. The organizations in charge of this international trafficking are atomized and low profile, she says. The expansion of violence from marginal neighborhoods to the center has been progressive and has gone with the hand of the provincial government.