Ariel “Guille” Cantero, leader of “Los Monos”, felt confronted.
Justice had ordered something that, for him, was intolerable: the transfer to a federal prison in Resistencia, in Chaco.
That decision distanced him from Santa Fe. From his environment, but also from his business.
And he was willing to resist.
On May 30, 2018, hours before they put him in a van to take him to his new place of detention, he began a plan to intimidate the judiciary.
He ordered his hitmen to shoot down official offices and private homes linked to different magistrates.
Lead was not the only thing he used
.
The challenge had to be made clear and messages written on paper or cardboard began to spread.
Messy and intimidating.
"
You don't fuck with the mafia
," could be read on one that was thrown at the entrance of a home related to one of the judges from Santa Fe who sentenced the organization for the first time.
The sign they left next to the body of the moneylender Lucio Maldonado, in Rosario.
The same sentence was left in another attack.
In a third, within a raid carried out between May and August 2018, the letter said: "
Stop putting kids in jail because it's going to be worse
."
Thus, a new criminal habit was inaugurated in Rosario.
That he was mutating and that, at times, it is brutal: the phrases, the writings, for a long time, are often left next to a corpse.
So that death is more shocking, more terrifying and, at the same time, directed.
“
In few places in Argentina they mark crimes with posters
.
It is a particularity that began with the attack on the judges”, sums up the prosecutor Luis Schiappa Pietra, in dialogue with
Clarín
.
The prosecutor is one of those who has been in charge of investigating, for example, "Guille" Cantero (34) and Esteban Lindor Alvarado (43), two of the most influential criminals in Rosario, rivals and main actors in the disputes. narco.
Intimate enemies: Rosario drug lords Ariel "Guille" Cantero and Esteban Lindor Alvarado.
The use of posters, they explain in the Public Ministry of the Rosario Indictment, seeks from the gangs
to leave warnings, provoke terror, send a message to their rivals
.
But it is also often used to divert an investigation.
To confuse or hinder a track.
Spreading the phrase "
You don't fuck with the mafia
" after multiple attacks committed by order of Cantero, the Alvarado gang carried out criminal actions in which he left the same phrase seeking to transfer responsibility to his rivals.
He did it with an attack on the provincial courts of Rosario and with the crime that would end up sealing Alvarado's fate: that of a moneylender who was executed in November 2018 and who was found with a poster among his clothes.
In both cases, the already characteristic “
No se jode con la mafia
” was repeated.
The moneylender Lucio Maldonado, assassinated in Rosario.
"The tenor of the posters must be taken with measure, because
many times they are used to throw the facts to another gang
," explained prosecutor Matías Edery, another of those in charge of working on the most bloody criminal organizations, in the context of complex investigations. .
The cartel, by itself, rarely helps solve a case, the researchers explain.
A cabinet collects the evidence at the crime scene or at the scene of an attack.
The forensic laboratory determines, in a first analysis, if it is possible to obtain genetic material on paper or cardboard.
Many times that evidence is wet, dirty, or passed through several hands before being lifted, making it difficult for experts to obtain reliable traces on it.
When a fingerprint is achieved, Justice finds a second stumbling block: a scarce data bank that, many times, does not allow for in-depth comparison.
Rosario prosecutors Luis Schiappa Pietra and Matías Edery.
Photo: JUAN JOSE GARCIA.
There are cases in which identifying a print makes it possible to conduct an investigation, find a person or, on the contrary, rule out another person about whom there was some suspicion.
The official handwriting experts provided by the Supreme Court of Santa Fe establish some parameters, but rarely do their conclusions have a decisive weight in the investigations.
“There are many ways to mislead when making a poster and there are many people capable of doing them.
It is almost impossible to know who is behind a P with a particular shape or an I without the point”, comment those in charge of analyzing this material.
Finding matches, finding someone who has written another threat, is
very complex
.
Almost impossible.
A key task then begins: the investigators' criminal intelligence work.
Mayor Pablo Javkin.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia.
A job that is gaining more and more weight with the collection of information and that allows us to interpret who may be behind the making of the cartel, looking for what effect and as part of what criminal plan.
There are work teams within the prosecutor's offices that deal with this task: connecting the dots, inferring what is hidden behind the writing.
“It is difficult to find someone for what is written.
There are many people who can do it and many ways to disorient in the making.
But that's what all the intelligence work itself is for,” explains Schiappa Pietra.
An element that was not noticed at the beginning and that began to be repeated over time is
the care taken by criminals to avoid leaving traces
.
The use of gloves is increasingly widespread.
This is the case of the shooting at the supermarket belonging to Lionel Messi's in-laws.
A sign was left there that said: “
Messi, we are waiting for you.
Javkin is a narco.
He's not going to take care of you
."
The poster of the threat in the super of the in-laws of Lionel Messi.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia.
The perpetrators of the attack used gloves and carefully protected the details.
Among others, hiding from what the cameras could record.
The case is still being investigated, but it does not appear as one of the typical actions promoted by local criminal gangs.
For the local mayor Pablo Javkin, mentioned in the note, the participation of actors willing to cause a commotion should not be ruled out – the case had international repercussions due to the mention of the star of the National Team – social and political, such as sectors of the Police.
The method of notes was extended to intimidate not only judges, politicians and even the most famous Argentine.
Criminals, merchants, the press, trade union organizations or departments linked to security were the targets of these attacks.
“
If they continue to torture the family of high profiles, the next time we are going against the family of service employees.
He who warns does not betray
”, read a note thrown under the door of the offices of the Provincial Penitentiary Service.
Three days later there was a shooting.
Lionel Messi's family supermarket was attacked by bullets.
Photo Juan Jose Garcia.
In the case of extortion messages, those that seek to obtain an economic return by guaranteeing the threatened certain "protection" -episodes that usually do not end in crimes-, there is another curiosity that prosecutors use to achieve progress in the investigation: it is usual that with the threat leaves
a telephone number
for the intimidated person to contact to reach an arrangement.
“In most cases, when we work on that number, we realize that
the antennas have an impact on the prisons
.
Piñero or Coronda, mainly," a prosecutor who works on these types of cases
tells
Clarín .
"
Silver or lead
", together with telephone contact, is the generic message.
“It is very difficult to know who wrote it.
Many times the earth, a neighbor who lifts it up, the wind, make preservation difficult.
But, furthermore, in most cases what was written does not serve to clarify the cases.
An expertise is done, it can be a complementary test, but the phone they leave for us to call them is more useful, ”explains that same prosecutor.
“Two or three years ago this did not exist.
Extortion became widespread as a new business
.
And it does not have major risks: you need a soldier, a weapon, a motorcycle and distribute posters.
And shoot one from time to time to scare the rest of the merchants who are in the neighborhood ”, they point out in the Rosario Justice with resignation.
Songs, interns and a messenger corpse
The multiplication of cases led to the introduction of hit men with elements of popular culture, a new macabre code.
“
Pa' los giles rafagazos
”, could be read next to the body of a 20-year-old murdered in the south of Rosario, last year.
The phrase belongs to Callejero Fino.
The lyrics of the same singer were used three months before that murder, in the same area, after a 27-year-old man was shot to death.
"
Let them fight.
If not, let them run
”, could be read on a piece of paper.
The phrase is part of the song "
Pide
" by the cumbia singer RKT.
Lorenzo Altamirano was murdered in Rosario: he was killed in front of one of the entrances to the Newell's stadium.
Other posters spoke of "
The band of millions
", in reference to another song by the Buenos Aires musician.
Over time, another mafia modality began to spread, that of mentioning rivals in conflict.
With first and last name.
“
Esteban Alvarado, Morocho Mansilla, Alan and Lamparita Funes stop working with the prosecutors and with the AIC (Criminal Investigation Agency) because we are going to kill a police officer every day.
Stop confining the kids in the pavilions.
You don't screw with the mafia
”, could be read in some pamphlets thrown after an attack on the door of
Televisión Litoral
, a local multimedia.
Claudio "Morocho" Mansilla.
This detail began to be seen even more frequently after a threat against the president of Newell's, Ignacio Astore, in a sanatorium where he works as a traumatologist.
There began a cross between two factions that investigators link to the club's bar, but also to a bloody inmate inside "Los Monos."
"From there the crossed posters began," says Schiappa Pietra.
The warring parties dared to use
a body as a messenger, a criminal form never seen in Rosario
.
On February 1, street artist Lorenzo “Jimi” Altamirano was kidnapped, brought to the door of Newell's, and executed.
Next to the body they left a note: "
Damián Escobar, Leandro Vinardi and Gerardo Gómez stop taking boys out of the club to shoot in Rosario
."
The people mentioned have a direct link with the Cantero clan.
The message behind the crime of "Jimi" Altamirano.
Photo: JUAN JOSE GARCIA.
The 28-year-old victim was chosen at random.
She had no connection to the world of crime.
She was taken from the street, as could have been the case with anyone in the area.
“They sought to generate a very large public noise”, concludes Schiappa Pietra.
Altamirano was used as a messenger corpse.
An atrocious and hitherto unprecedented way in Rosario to deliver a threat.
A macabre leap into a new kind of abyss.
EMJ
look too
Rosario: Javkin spoke of "police apathy" to fight drug traffickers and asked that federal forces stay
The messenger corpse in Rosario, a month later: no one in prison and the shadow of Los Monos