Neighbors of the Los Pumitas neighborhood, in Rosario (Argentina), looted the house of an alleged drug trafficker, on January 6. Rodrigo Abd (AP)
The security crisis that the city of Rosario is going through, in the province of Santa Fe, has escalated these days to the first page of the Argentine political agenda.
The president, Alberto Fernández, has announced this Tuesday that he will increase the number of federal forces to 1,400 and, for the first time, will add the Army, although in non-police tasks.
"The fight against organized crime, despite the efforts made, has not achieved the results we expected," he admitted in a recorded message.
Fernández has said that he will set up an office of the Financial Intelligence Unit in Rosario that will investigate money laundering.
And regarding the role of the Army, which by law is prohibited from participating in activities to control internal order, he clarified that it will participate in "the urbanization of the popular neighborhoods" of the city.
"They are the Armed Forces of our democracy," said the president, knowing that the participation of the military is a novelty that raises doubts and fears.
The decision comes a day after the country saw live and on television how the wake for a 12-year-old boy turned into an uprising by the residents of a marginal neighborhood in Rosario against the drug traffickers who intimidate them.
Máximo Jerez had died from a shot to the chest this Sunday, after a group of hitmen shot at him and his cousins, also minors.
After the wake, the neighbors destroyed and looted the house of the alleged murderer, whom they tried to lynch.
The live broadcast of the
TN
news channel showed the abandonment of the residents: the patrols that came to control the situation fired rubber bullets at the residents and left the neighborhood as soon as they could take the suspect away.
“I understand that Rosario needs us.
I know that his security forces are insufficient to face the solution of the problem” said the president.
The city will receive more officers from the gendarmerie (the militarized police) this week to reinforce the presence of federal forces and is now awaiting the arrival of the company of Army engineers to work in the informal settlements of the city.
The president has announced that this group will be in charge of "the urbanization of popular neighborhoods, accelerating tasks pending execution that are very necessary", without giving further details.
The measure opens the door for the military to the shantytowns, the informal neighborhoods that in all the country's big cities mix the life of precarious workers with the lack of basic services and the presence of criminals and drug dealers.
The president has not yet clarified what specific tasks the mobilized military will have, but he has defended that the presence of the Army will be given "in the same exemplary way as they acted in the pandemic and the fires."
The country, reluctant to involve the Armed Forces in civilian tasks since the last military dictatorship, has recently changed its image of the military.
According to the latest survey by the Image and Political Management Consultant, the Armed Forces are the institution in which Argentines trust the most, although this positive image barely reaches 23%.
Argentina has entered a presidential election year and the politicians have already chosen their first agenda item.
Violence has bled Rosario for 20 years, but the armed attack last week against the supermarket belonging to Lionel Messi's in-laws has brought all the spotlights to the city.
While the Peronist government enters unknown territory with the mobilization of Army engineers, the hardest right has described the decision as "lukewarm."
"In Rosario, federal forces and the Army are needed to prevent the free movement of drug traffickers and hitmen," criticized one of former President Mauricio Macri's favorites, Patricia Bullrich.
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