MESSI WE ARE WAITING FOR YOU
JAVKIN IS NARCO
IT WILL NOT TAKE CARE OF YOU
If someone wants to know what a mafia message is like, here is a sample.
Fourteen shots at dawn and a warning with guaranteed repercussions.
Shootings, account adjustments, deaths are everyday events here in Rosario -during the same night and not far from there a man was riddled with seven shots- but the one from the Rocuzzo family's supermarket shook the moods and speeches.
The name of the captain of the team
written on that cardboard gives the case a spectacularity according to the world projection that Messi has.
The repercussions were immediate.
The newspapers, the radios and the channels are filled with interpretations, hypotheses and speculations of all kinds.
Without too much time -or desire- to think, it seems that anything can be said.
And in the networks everything is amplified.
Each one seeks
confirmation of their prejudices and their ideological bias
in the form of pre-armed responses to reality, which is frightening but not linear.
As this happens shortly after the photo of Messi, the goalkeeper Martínez and their wives together with Macri and the rejection reactions from Kirchnerism, there was no shortage of those who rushed to link the two events.
It is not a coincidence, they say, it is a warning so that no other celebrity dares to show support for Together for Change.
Some journalists in their networks join in and emphasize the connection:
"fourteen bullets for one photo."
That would speak of a very broken country.
As a counterpart, the connection with the famous image also tries to reissue a forgotten hashtag after the triumph of the national team:
#MacriMufa
(“they took a picture with him and they were shot at the supermarket”).
Accusations are also read against the opposition of using the event politically and "setting up an operetta" to discredit the government.
There are those who assure that this cardboard came to comply with a premeditated plan:
to attract cameras and microphones from the country to cover up the corruption of the police
in Santa Fe or that of the municipal government - it depends on who you like better - and their links with the narco gangs.
Links are taken for granted.
The mayor of the city, mentioned and accused in the message, almost shouts for the presence of the Governor and the President.
He remarked, this time amplified by the number of microphones in front, what he has said so many times:
provincial and national politics let go of an entire city.
That would speak of a very broken country.
The deputy chief of Regional Unit 2 of the Rosario police considered that the note "is not a threat" but rather
an act "to attract attention."
"The drug traffickers have won"
says the Minister of National Security.
There are those who are nostalgic for the heavy hand, remember the video that circulated a few days ago about the prisons in El Salvador and ask for a "Bukele-style solution."
For many people in our country -at least that is what they say-
the response to crime cannot be institutional
and framed within the rule of law.
It is suspected that the attack is linked to the statements made a month ago by the Rosario Central coach, Miguel Russo, who told about players who did not want to arrive as reinforcements for fear of insecurity;
and the mayor's response.
The shots and the message would then be the work of barrabravas.
Each of these things would speak of a very broken country.
Some local media discover that the mafia does not have codes, they say that the motives can be sports, criminal or political.
Anything can happen.
The world's newspapers headline with Messi, mention Rosario and try to understand.
They speak of "severe intimidation", reproduce the "chilling message", of the "security crisis" in the city and
some highlight the opposition trait of the Rosario mayor against the national government.
In this city - where I live and work - there are attacks and deaths on a daily basis, statistics say that there are five times more murders than in the rest of the country, so many that the prosecutor's office has a specific unit to investigate shootings.
That's where it will stop.
Meanwhile, accusations of complicity, political associations with drug traffickers, hiring hitmen continue to be exchanged.
They are all suspects.
That speaks of a very broken country.