In the Fisherton neighborhood of Rosario, residents can wake up to the cell phone alarm, the clock radio, the rooster that someone has in their yard, and also to shots.
Like this Wednesday at 3:30 a.m. when there was a shooting in the Donado monoblocks at 800. The shots do not always break into the peace of the early morning, they also interrupt the tranquility of the afternoon and other times they warn that it is already night and the street is dirt from no one.
With areas of popular housing where residents are victims of insecurity and drug violence, and others with traditional English-style mansions, the Fisherton neighborhood repeats the pattern that occurs throughout Rosario.
The contrast between the deaths and the wars between gangs and the picturesque and sophisticated of a cosmopolitan city.
The third in number of inhabitants in the country and the one with the highest homicide rate with
22.01 per 100 thousand
, almost eight times more than the City of Buenos Aires.
"Mza y Donado", the Fisherton neighborhood in the "rogue" code.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
A Clarín
team
arrives at the point in the Fisherton neighborhood where the shooting took place minutes ago.
There is a wall painted yellow and the inscription
"Mza y Donado"
in blue letters, the colors of Rosario Central.
The grocery store is padlocked.
"Pineapple $499", seen from outside.
In August, its owners refused to pay
an extortion of 300,000 pesos and set their business on fire
.
Next to it, a corridor with unplastered walls, discarded bottles, a semi-destroyed two-seater mattress and
silenzio stampa
.
It's not siesta time, it's just that in the Rosario neighborhoods, people are afraid of being in the street.
A staircase leads to a small apartment with a door and white bars.
The circle drawn in chalk on the third step indicates that
there was a projectile there
.
Upon reaching the first floor, there is the only witness to what happened at dawn: a garden leprechaun with a piece of his forehead fallen.
The door is half open, tied to the grate with a gray cloth, with
two holes
.
A bullet in a window of an apartment on Donado at 800, in Rosario.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
"I heard more than 10 shots. It's commonplace in this place. The police came at 5.30 because when I accompanied my son to work, there were two cell phones," says a neighbor who lives a few meters away.
And he clarifies: "
We are used to waking us up with the shots
, just like my wife was scared last night. We live in fear."
The 70-year-old man says that "in the week there are shootings twice for sure."
The desolation that he lives surrounds him.
"It's not that the police don't take care of us,
no one takes care of us
. This has been happening for 15 years and it's getting worse. We'll have to keep fighting it,
hidden, at home and without going out
," he says reluctantly.
There is almost no movement despite the fact that it is already 8.30.
A neighbor tells that 10 days ago there was another shooting in the apartment of "that family".
And he notes: "One was imprisoned in Coronda," the largest prison in Santa Fe.
The monoblocks of the Fisherton neighborhood, where shootings are common.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
Another neighbor confirms that there are "always" shots there, but she quickly cuts herself off: "I can't talk, I live here with my daughter and grandson."
She lives below the house that was shot.
"When there is silence and everything is very calm, I am afraid"
, answers a woman in her 40s, pointing to the black cardboard bag she is carrying.
Gone is the use of a portfolio due to insecurity.
Entering the halls, no one walks.
There is no noise and the curtains are closed.
The neighborhood knows much more than it says.
The good news is that this time there were no deaths or injuries.
In Rosario there are almost 3 bullet wounds per day.
In January there were 85.
At the Clemente Álvarez Hospital there is fear due to the violence and insecurity that exists in Rosario.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
Half goes to the Dr. Clemente Álvarez Municipal Emergency Hospital, better known as "HECA", which is 13 minutes away by car.
It occupies a block and has a heliport.
In the hospital it seems that there is no peace either: two patrolmen at the guard door, a control at the entrance and two other policemen who identify those who go up to the first floor.
In addition, the hospital keeps records of patient visits, has private security and a police detachment.
The latent fear is that someone will come looking for the one who entered shot to kill him.
"Before they came with a bullet hole, now they come with 7 or 8"
, is how the director of HECA, Jorge Ignacio Bitar, measures the situation.
Jorge Ignacio Bitar, director of HECA in Rosario, where in January they received 40 gunshot wounded.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
"This is the hospital of high complexity and reference for traumatology, it includes those wounded by firearms. The complexity of the patients has changed, they arrive more seriously injured and this impacts the fact
that before the average hospitalization was 7 days and now it is 16
" , says Bitar.
Another change that he noticed over time is that the young adult used to be the gunshot wounded patient, but the age range has widened, starting from teenagers to older adults.
In addition to the increase in the number of female patients.
"Of 40,000 people admitted per month, only 40 are victims of firearms. Now,
of the 24 beds in the Intensive Care Unit, 7 are wounded by shots
," he says.
And he recalls that "in 2013 there was a peak of more violence, with more income, and a few years ago the trend was repeated."
In this hospital, specialized in adults, there are no indications of the date.
It is February 15, International Day of the fight against Childhood Cancer.
Not far from here, 35 blocks away, in the center of the city, the climate is different and the date is remembered.
In Pringles Square, Mayor Pablo Javkin organizes an event with singers.
"It is necessary to listen to and block communications from the imprisoned drug traffickers," asks Mayor Pablo Javkin.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
The communal chief wears a yellow bow on his white shirt and makes his way through the people who greet him.
He walks without bodyguards, despite the fact that he governs a hot city and four days ago he targeted the imprisoned drug traffickers.
"Prison cannot rule the street," he said in a meeting he held with the new Security Minister, Claudio Brilloni, over the violence.
Rosario registered
288 homicides in 2022
, the highest number since 2013. And in January there were 26 murders, almost all linked to drug traffickers.
The figure exceeds 22 femicides committed that month throughout Argentina.
So far this year, the account has already reached 43.
This led the Rosario regional prosecutor, María Eugenia Iribarren, to create
a team of prosecutors dedicated to shootings
in 2020 .
There are four prosecutors who work with two permanent employees and a team that helps them during the preparation of the trials.
The neighborhoods where there were the most crimes so far in 2023 are the same as last year:
Tablada, Ludueña, Empalme Graneros and Vía Honda,
located on the outskirts of the city.
Maria Eugenia Iribarren, the Rosario regional prosecutor.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
"We carried out urban intervention so that violence decreases in the neighborhoods. After the Public Prosecutor's Office makes raids, we demolish, open public spaces, create squares and property is deeded," says Javkin while having a soda and outside the bar they pass two policemen for the pedestrian Córdoba.
Urbanization has an impact, according to the mayor, on the reduction of violence and emphasizes that "it is not the same to sell drugs in a corridor than in a place on the street."
In his opinion, the violence is expanding "because
the police are part of the drug gangs," says Javkin
.
The report that compiles this data during his administration is in the WhatsApp chat that he shares with President Alberto Fernández.
The works will be inaugurated in March.
Javkin is clear that "the presence of the Federal Police is key because it is a control of the Provincial and intelligence inside and outside the prisons."
"It is necessary
to listen and block communications from the imprisoned drug traffickers
, that would allow us to follow the economic movements and know if they are planning attacks. 95% of the events are planned in the prisons," he maintains.
Empalme Graneros neighborhood, one of the most dangerous in Rosario. Photo Juan José García
Iribarren agrees on this from his office on the second floor in the Public Prosecution Ministry building: "What happens in the Provincial and Federal Penitentiary Service has repercussions on what happens in the city. Criminal organizations have their referents in jail, despite That's what
they manage the drug trade and violence
. We ended up demonstrating the system in the hearings."
For this reason, he demands that they "block cell phone signals if they do not limit their entry."
The drug world seems far from the center of Rosario, where adults and children walk in a noon that already reaches 33 degrees.
The pedestrian is full.
Office workers take their food rations by weight, a mother buys shoes for her daughter and the city continues.
The biggest concern in that part of town, in broad daylight, is the punguists.
That reality is a bubble within the uncontrolled and limitless Rosario that Javkin describes.
He says, without turning around: "Justice gives too many home prisons, like the case of 'la Chana' Susana Bustamante (she was killed this week in Tablada). Last year we had 28 deceased with temporary freedom, they go out and kill, and then they kill
them
".
Community alarm in the Tablada neighborhood, where Susana Bustamante was killed on Tuesday, February 14.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
But how is the neighborhood that everyone talks about and that everyone fears?
In Tablada at 4 pm there are no people on the street, only two neighbors chatting in a corner, while one digs a drainage well.
The other, Julio (78), has lived in the neighborhood for 50 years.
"They don't bother us if you don't get involved, but we're on the lookout.
We've gotten used to the shots
," he admits.
"We would like to move now, we raised our children in the house. Chana lived next door, I think she was shot, then she moved nearby. Yesterday they killed her," says Julio, who five minutes ago saw three gendarmes go by Viedma street in this neighborhood located south of Rosario.
For his friend,
"the Gendarmerie is in a vase, it does nothing"
in that humble neighborhood with some dirt streets and almost all the premises closed, unlike the center of the city.
On his part, one of the gendarmes explains
his work to
Clarín : "We patrol every day of the week, all day, and there are other patrols in different parts of the neighborhood."
However, no other security forces are seen in Tablada.
The Tablada neighborhood, one of the ones with the most homicides.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
In front of the gendarmes there is an open kiosk.
A teenager and her mother (37) sell the products through a small window with bars.
"At the time of a tragedy, the gendarmes are not there. They only serve to stop the workers who are on motorcycles and ask for their papers," she explains.
Their world is indoors because of fear.
"You can't wait for the bus in case you get robbed or a shootout starts.
Every day there are shootings
," they say naturally.
They also don't go out at night for fear of being robbed of the house behind the premises.
The only thing that the woman rescues is her stable.
"I know all the neighbors since I was a girl. What's screwed up are the surroundings," she says.
This is what Graciela, Sandra and Claudia say, residents of another of the most dangerous neighborhoods in the city: Empalme Graneros, located in the northwest.
A trade "on the street" to prevent thieves from getting into the business.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
As in Tablada, the women, who are with three chairs on the sidewalk selling clothes, confirm the same thing: "The gendarmes only ask for ID cards" and "the shootings are heard every night. One already got used to it."
The sisters take the clothes out on the street to prevent customers from entering the business they have had for 15 years.
30 blocks away, it was the double crime of the cantobar this weekend.
You don't see gendarmes here, but you do see four motorized policemen.
At the exit of the neighborhood, there are two Federal vans controlling the papers of the vehicles.
"The Federal Police has 150 troops, divided into three shifts of 50. For this reason, for the demographic extension that we have,
seeing 50 police officers patrolling is not an easy task
," answers the new Security Minister, Claudio Brilloni.
And he acknowledges: "We need more Federal vehicles to improve operations."
He also anticipates that cell phone signal inhibitors will be added in prisons to prevent the organization of crimes.
"We coordinate with Anmac (National Agency for Controlled Materials) a program of voluntary delivery of weapons and control of gun shops and professionals who guarantee that one has a registered weapon," explains the official who took office 10 days ago.
Poverty and children in danger.
Another Rosario postcard.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia
It's already 5:00 p.m. and a girl runs barefoot on the train tracks.
She carries a toy in her hand, on one side are the tin houses and on the other, bottles thrown on the grass.
At that same moment, 10 kilometers away, in the southwest of the city, the Gendarmerie raided 16 homes on Vía Honda for drug sales.
Weapons were seized and eight people were arrested.
It took five months for Justice to arrive that day.
Rosary beads. Special Envoy
MG
look too
Rosario: a prisoner shot a couple to steal their car during a temporary outing
Rosario: additional trout, bribes and a war between drug traffickers, the plot of the double crime of the cantobar