It is still a mystery who threatened Lionel Messi in his hometown, Rosario.
A day and a half has passed since, early Thursday morning, two hooded men fired 14 shots at the supermarket belonging to his mother-in-law, José Roccuzzo, and left a mafia message against him.
Investigators track any clue that allows them to identify them and thus pull the thread to find out the motive for the attack.
Meanwhile, politicians fight among themselves over the most appropriate security policy to curb violence in Argentina's most dangerous city, with a homicide rate that is almost five times the country's average.
Nine months after the elections, the people of Rosario listen between anger and despair to the promises of the candidates and ask for urgent measures.
The prosecution suspects that the intimidating message — “Messi, we are waiting for you.
Javkin is a drug trafficker, he's not going to take care of you—was not addressed to the captain of the Argentine national team but rather sought to profit from his popularity.
"Clearly, the first objective of those who did this was for the whole world to find out," the prosecutor in charge of the investigation, Federico Rébola, told the media.
"There is nothing to indicate that they wanted to intimidate or demand something from the Roccuzzo family," he added.
The mayor of Rosario, Pablo Javkin, goes a step further and even doubts that those responsible are associated with drug crime.
"Although the hypothesis of the gangs cannot be ruled out, the fact has nothing to do with the procedure, neither by the form nor by the content, with the previous shootings," Javkin assured El PAÍS.
"It cannot be ruled out that it is a fact of another type," he continues, without specifying.
There are those who believe that it could be a warning from a sector of the police forces against the mayor or an internal fight between violent soccer fans, but for now there is no evidence to support any of these theses.
The violence that hits Rosario began more than two decades ago in the peripheral neighborhoods of the city, linked to the territorial dispute between drug gangs.
In recent years it has spread to middle-class neighborhoods through extortion of merchants.
Criminals ask them for money in exchange for protection.
The main drug lords from Rosario are behind bars, but from there they control a business so lucrative that it has allowed them to infiltrate the police forces and justice.
Rosario police officers block traffic around the José Rocuzzo supermarket, this Thursday. Sebastián López Brach
“Rosario does not manufacture drugs or weapons.
They come to her from places that should be guarded by the security forces, ”Javkin denounces.
“We are fed up that a city that works, that creates, that has an enormous cultural and sports life makes headlines for these things.
We are fed up that they do not give us a security floor so that more do not happen ”, he adds.
In his opinion, the two most urgent measures to stop terror in the streets are "control in prisons and police presence in the streets."
He has been demanding them for years, but only now, after a shooting that has had worldwide resonance, do they seem to be heard.
This Friday, the justice ordered to raid the cells that house some of the Rosario drug lords, such as Ariel
Guille
Cantero, leader of the Los Monos gang, and keep them isolated from other detainees for crimes related to organized crime.
In the operation they seized documentation and cell phones, prohibited by law.
From the Argentine Ministry of the Interior they have shown themselves in favor of "putting all the resources" available to reverse the bloodbath in the streets of Rosario, where 58 people have been murdered so far this year.
They have announced that they will finance the purchase of 600 surveillance cameras with facial recognition for the city and will enable the use of the Secure Identification System, a technology developed to recognize fugitives or people with criminal records.
The Legislative Branch, for its part, seeks to speed up the appointments of pending prosecutors and judges in the province of Santa Fe.
A police officer from Rosario shot at the supermarket on March 2. Sebastián López Brach
Politic campaign
The shooting against Messi's in-laws has placed the problem of insecurity at the center of the political agenda at the start of this electoral year.
It is an uncomfortable issue for the ruling Frente de Todos, which is divided, but one of the battle rams for the conservative opposition, which aspires to return to power in December.
The mayor of Buenos Aires, Horacio Rodríguez Larreta, a candidate for president of Together for Change, requested through social networks the sending of 3,000 gendarmes (military police) to "recover the street" of Rosario.
His rival within the coalition, former Security Minister Patricia Bullrich, replied that it is not enough and the Army must be mobilized.
Diego Santilli, an opposition candidate for governor of the province of Buenos Aires, traveled to Rosario to express his solidarity with Javkin, denounce the inaction of the national government and ask that laws be approved to financially strangle criminal gangs.
“Santilli was the first but they will all come.
Rosario this year will be the capital of political tourism,” says Héctor, a 54-year-old vendor from the city center with some irony.
He says that two armed men assaulted him four months ago and since then he has attended with the door locked and double bars.
“Everyone promises a lot but then they forget.
Rosario is going from bad to worse, ”he says.
The people of Rosario have gotten used to not using their mobile phones on the street —and they warn any foreigner who does— and to look twice before entering or leaving their home or car to avoid robbery at any time of day.
A feeling of tiredness and impotence prevails in the face of a violence that they see growing year by year.
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