"I don't go on vacation for more than three or four days," says Gabriel,
Ramos Mejía
's neighbor .
"For economic reasons?" asks
Clarín
.
"Not for that reason. I don't want to leave the house alone or crazy. They are terrible in the neighborhood."
Gabriel lives on 200 Maestra Lascano Street, in Ramos Mejía.
It is one of the “most attractive” neighborhoods – as the neighbors say – in the enormous municipality of
La Matanza
.
It is a few blocks from General Paz Avenue, which separates the Liniers neighborhood.
Gabriel is one of the neighbors who are taking extreme precautions due to the growing insecurity that afflicts the neighborhood.
He has a modern but mid-range car.
He says that when it gets dark he no longer enters the garage of his house, that he gets into it as fast as he can.
He is afraid, like the neighbors on his block and those on other blocks, that it will take longer than necessary to enter his house and that criminals will approach him and steal everything he has.
He also says that
the neighbors became speedsters in the art of entering their homes
, sometimes also distrustful.
Neighbors complain about insecurity.
Photo Maxi Failla.
"We have a group to send us alert messages if we see a person in a suspicious attitude, a car prowling the area," concludes Gabriel.
Last weekend, another resident of Ramos Mejía – who prefers not to give his name – returned home from work for lunch.
Upon arriving, he turned the key in the gate of his chalet and, as soon as the gate opened,
a small, folded white paper fell on his sneakers
.
Thus he realized that his house had been "marked."
A classic criminal modality is back this summer of 2024.
The bars are part of the landscape in Ramos Mejía.
Photo Maxi Failla.
The methodology is as simple as it is clever, so it goes unnoticed: at the changes of fortnight or long weekends, during vacation times, criminals point out certain marks (such as small papers, pieces of paper tape and also advertising brochures). ) to find out if there are people in that home.
If they return and the paper is still intact in the lock, they understand that
the house is temporarily empty and they "bust
" it: they steal everything they can, with the certainty that its inhabitants are on vacation, who will not return anytime soon.
The day after having discovered the mark on his fence, the same neighbor turns the corner and realizes that
a chalet had been robbed in this way
.
One of the areas marked by criminals to rob houses where their owners went on vacation.
Photo Maxi Failla.
"There were 12 police officers from the Federal Police. They told me that they came as support '
because there are no police in the Province
', that '
they are all working on the Coast
'. They robbed the house of a commissioner, they even took clothes. The thieves blew up the fence and the gate, knowing that no one was there. I told them that they had also put the mark on the paper in my house,"
the 67-year-old merchant tells
Clarín .
Fearful of this whole situation, the man checked the bars of the chalets throughout the block and noticed that in
at least three houses there was the same piece of paper, white and folded
.
He retraced his steps, looked for the police officer with whom he had spoken minutes before and asked him to accompany him to record those marks.
The agent removed each of the pieces of paper.
"The fear did not go away, because these police officers were not from our police station, they leave and do not return," the neighbor points out.
Broken locks and bars, rickety doors and gates, and broken or knocked-out windows form the scenes that more and more residents of Ramos Mejía encounter when they return to their homes.
The signs warn about safety, but criminals are lurking.
Photo Maxi Failla.
Once inside, the scene is the same in all cases: all the less valuable belongings and furniture mixed up;
the most valuable objects (cash, jewelry, electronics, bicycles, among others), stolen.
Gabriel, another resident of the area, has a locksmith shop in Sargento Cabral, almost on the corner of Viamonte.
Theirs is a required sector in the neighborhood: within a radius of no more than 700 meters, five other locksmiths offer their services.
The man says that other neighbors contact him daily to change locks as a preventive measure or, worse, repair after the assaults.
"Of course I have a job as a locksmith, it's commonplace.
They don't stop 'busting' houses
. One of my daughters had her home emptied this Sunday while she was having lunch at my house: when she returned, her house no longer had a direct door. Everything in broad daylight, in the middle of the afternoon," says Gabriel.
Another of his daughters had her house robbed when she left for only ten or fifteen minutes.
And they were not the only two robberies that her family suffered.
Asked about the “little papers,” he adds: “It is just one of the several ways in which they mark the houses:
they pass by the houses asking for money, asking for clothes, they pretend to be technicians from service companies
;
or they just pass by ringing the bells repeatedly.”
The escruches, a common modality in Ramos Mejía.
Photo Maxi Failla.
The rates that locksmiths charge are usually more expensive at night.
Gabriel says that he is frequently called by neighbors who, after the Police search their homes for hours, ask him to change locks and other security elements at night, but that he does not plan to risk his life for any price.
“Not crazy,” he says.
“No way,” he highlights.
This last modality, in which criminals ring and ring the doorbells of houses to find out if it is inhabited, is known as
“escruche”
.
Regardless of the modality, for Gabriel the problem of growing insecurity in the neighborhood has no solution.
He points out, in the company of the doorman of a building in front of his premises, the security cameras that the neighbors themselves are responsible for installing in their homes.
Together they count them: one, two, three, every neighbor who can installs one.
But they serve, the two men agree, to try to identify the thieves once they have taken everything.
Sources from the
2nd police station.
from Ramos Mejía
, with jurisdiction in the area, also specify that the types of house robberies are various, but that they are trying to increase the presence of agents in the neighborhood.
For a neighbor who makes her purchases in a warehouse in Las Heras and Viamonte, a greater police presence would help, but she also thinks that there are so many incidents of insecurity that several steps are constantly being taken behind the robberies and attempted robberies.
Some neighbors warn that they do not want to let them know that they are going on vacation so that they do not "give them up."
Photo Maxi Failla.
"All kinds of technicians, salespeople, beggars call my house... Unfortunately, one becomes distrustful. A few days ago, a young man called my house and asked me if I could collect clothes for a few days. He asked me if I could collect, specifically, clothes made with wool.
'Gather a lot of wool, a lot of wool
,' he told me."
Lana, in crime slang, means money.
A true "uncle's story", designed for another vulnerable target for thieves, in addition to empty houses: the elderly.
This age group usually has the problem that Gabriel, the first neighbor consulted by
Clarín
, wants to avoid: delay or parsimony when entering and leaving their homes, a space of advantage for criminals.
The lady who does the shopping at the store regrets having to think badly of her neighbors, but she believes that there is no other remedy.
She says that in the neighborhood
they already avoid telling acquaintances if one is going on vacation
: trust is being lost.
The neighborhood is on alert.
and They say there is no police presence.
Photo Maxi Failla.
It is not just homes that are the only targets of thieves.
Héctor is a postman for Correo Argentino and has walked the streets of Ramos Mejía every day for ten years.
Asked if the neighbors distrust him when he calls their homes (since criminals have adopted the habit of posing as technicians and other professions), he says no, because everyone already knows him.
But also that he himself has been a victim of the insecurity experienced in recent times.
"They robbed me several times while I was making the trip, but they only stole credit and debit cards that the banks sent to the residents of the area and that I had to deliver. The mail companies already realized that, and now they only make us leave notices so that the neighbors themselves can approach the mail agencies. They have never stolen anything of mine," says Héctor.
All the robberies that neighbors, merchants and workers in the area report seem to have a common pattern:
intelligence work by the thieves
.
Another neighbor, Alberto, who lives in Pizzurno and Las Heras, lacks fingers on his hands to be able to count all the assaults he has heard about in recent months, but he focuses specifically on one, which happened when he returned from his home. house and
in the house of a former commissioner
.
"They knew that it is the house of a former commissioner, who was on vacation, but they did it all without putting a piece of paper. Here is someone who is
'selling' the neighbors
, otherwise it is impossible to explain how they know so much. We distrust even the security checkpoints," says Alberto.
In Ramos Mejía there are many security checkpoints on corners and in some houses.
But the majority are not operational, they fulfill a scenic, testimonial role.
In this neighborhood, all the nouns that are accompanied by the word “security” (security doors, security cameras, private security personnel, security forces) are insufficient.
In this neighborhood,
residents lose every day to criminals
.
Clarín Master's Degree / University of San Andrés
EMJ