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14 shots against Messi's dream of returning to Rosario

2023-03-03T10:54:06.418Z


A shooting at the supermarket of the in-laws of the captain of the Argentine team has brought to the world the violence that bleeds his city


On Wednesday night there were several shootings in Rosario.

Also on Tuesday, as on Monday and almost every day in the most violent city in Argentina, where 56 homicides have been recorded so far this year.

The 14 shots fired against a supermarket on Wednesday would have gone unnoticed in the midst of the war between drug gangs that is being waged in these streets.

But one role changed everything.

"Messi, we are waiting for you.

[The mayor, Pablo] Javkin is a narco, he is not going to take care of you, ”said the threat that the assailants left next to the holed glass.

That message made the escalation of violence break a new limit: hitting the greatest idol of the city, the captain of the Argentine soccer team.

The 14 shots did not cause fatalities, but they killed the dream of Rosario to recover Messi as a neighbor and watch him play in the town from which he emigrated to Barcelona at the age of 13.

The careful choice of target, a supermarket owned by Messi's father-in-law, José Roccuzzo, also shattered the anonymity in which Messi's parents and those of Antonela Roccuzzo, his wife, move through the city, and brought the crisis of insecurity to the media around the world.

The marks made by the experts in the place where the bullet casings that impacted the business were found. Sebastián López Brach

Bullet impact outside the supermarket with a mark made by the experts. Sebastián López Brach

Rosario police officers block traffic at the scene while the experts carry out the investigations. Sebastián López Brach

Rosario police work at the scene. Sebastián López Brach

“The only thing different about this attack from the others we see every day is that it says 'Messi'.

But they stepped on an anthill, because as it is about Messi, he will not go unpunished like many others", predicts Esther Marín at the gates of the governorate in Rosario, where she also recounts that her son, Lautaro Aranda, was assassinated in 2021 "by mistake, in the house of a relative whom a drug hitman was looking for to kill.”

At his side is Elisabeth Luna, who lost her 27-year-old son along with her daughter-in-law and her six-year-old granddaughter in a fierce shooting that occurred in the La Tablada neighborhood.

The girl was shot six times.

“The violence is out of control.

We live in fear.

Last week, I went out at noon to do some paperwork and I was attacked by two on a motorcycle.

They grabbed me, kicked me, and took my bag with everything,” says Luna, who lives just seven blocks from the supermarket that was attacked this morning.

"No matter who you are, it can touch all of us," warns this member of the group of Relatives and Victims of Insecurity who has mobilized this Thursday along with other mothers to demand urgent measures from the Government against a problem that is becoming more and more acute .

In 2022, 288 murders were registered in Rosario, a record number.

Until now, the bullets of organized crime had gone through judicial offices, police stations and residences of politicians and judges.

Nobody imagined that they would not even respect the family of the player who lifted a World Cup after a 36-year drought in the World Cups.

A bullet impact in the windows of the supermarket. Sebastián López Brach

"We never moved with custody, we lead a normal life," Messi's mother, Celia Cuccittini, told the Intruders

television program

, where she said that they are fine.

It is not known if they will be able to continue the same from now on, nor if Messi will escape to Rosario when he arrives in Buenos Aires at the end of the month to play two friendlies with the Albiceleste.

In front of the shot supermarket, the workers assure that the life of the footballer's father-in-law is not out of the ordinary either.

"José comes every day, he is like one more employee," says the store manager who is in front of the business.

In this middle-class neighborhood, the owners of the nearby businesses agree with the portrait of the Roccuzzos.

“They are extraordinary people.

The family has been here all their lives, three generations.

Grandma started it, it was a small store and with a lot of work it grew”, recalls María Teresa, owner of a diaper shop next to the supermarket.

Early in the morning, neighbors and merchants looked with surprise and concern at the police deployed in front of the premises.

Leaning out the door, they exchanged opinions and told journalists that they had never imagined something like this.

But the daily coexistence of Rosario with violence made the confusion ephemeral.

Before noon, the broken windows had been replaced with new ones and the supermarket was operating normally, like the other businesses.

A light pole decorated with the colors of the albiceleste and the number of its captain, in a street in Rosario. Sebastián López Brach

Neither the mayor of Rosario nor the prosecutor's office nor the police have so far answered the question that the city's inhabitants have repeated throughout the day: who wants to attack Messi and why?

“It is so treacherous that I doubt everything.

Even if they are criminal gangs," Mayor Pablo Javkin, the second recipient of the handwritten message, told the press.

“It is very clear that it is easy to hurt Rosario and that there is no concrete help.

How far is the president from here, half an hour?

I am the mayor of the city, I do not manage the security forces and when I asked they did not let me, ”he added.

The current police forces are insufficient to combat the growing presence of drug traffickers in Rosario and its periphery.

But there is an even bigger problem: in their ranks there are accomplices of the criminals.

The latest case came to light this week.

A 23-year-old man was arrested Tuesday along with his police officer's mother.

He was a hit man and she gave him information from the 12th police station that made it easier for him to find her victims.

The lack of official responses has turned the cafes and squares of Argentina's second city into the setting for multiple debates and the exchange of hypotheses.

Some believe that there are political motives behind the attack, fueled by the proximity of the elections.

For others, the background is a battle between Javkin and the police.

A third option links what happened to football.

“Notice that the paper is yellow and is written in blue ink, they are the colors of [Rosario] Central.

The barrabravas did it so that he wouldn't play at Newell's”, a man tells another in the square in front of the Government House.

A cell phone with the note left by those responsible for the shots: "Messi, we are waiting for you." Sebastián López Brach

This hypothesis is fed by one of the few dreams that Messi has left to fulfill.

“We always talk about it with Antonela: we have everything here.

There is my family and hers too.

In Rosario we have everything.

I lived a little in Argentina, I left when I was 13 years old.

And I have yet to play in Argentine soccer and at Newell's, which was where I grew up.

I would love it and it is something pending because it was my dream as a child ”, Messi declared in an interview with Argentine television some time ago.

His contract with Paris Saint-Germain expires in the middle of the year and many lepers wanted to believe that the time had come to have the world star on their team.

14 bullets and a piece of paper have broken that hope.

A mural of Lionel Messi on a building in Rosario, his hometown and the most violent in Argentina. Sebastián López Brach

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Source: elparis

All news articles on 2023-03-03

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