Rosario is going through one of its worst moments of drug violence and terror in the last decade.
The
murder of two taxi drivers and the shooting attack against a trolleybus driver
, added to the shootings against a police station and a burning taxi, all of this that occurred in less than five days, paralyzed the city.
Outside of any type of statistics on homicides in which the dead are usually members of rival gangs or people who were caught in the middle of those confrontations, the situation went to another level.
Now the gangs
directly use innocent people
to seek to spread terror.
The Government's hypothesis is that this occurs in response to the Bukele-style searches in the Piñero prison.
Until now, the only precedent there was for such a situation was the crime of Lorenzo "Jimi" Altamirano, the street artist who was killed and his body was thrown in front of the Newell's stadium with a message that would be directed to a faction of the bar. managed by the Los Monos gang, according to the judicial hypothesis.
The difference between Altamirano's crime and the latest attacks is that the messages now seem to be directed at the Government.
In all of them, it was ordinary people, with no ties to criminal organizations, who paid with their lives.
Diego Celentano: the notification of the journey of death
“
I told him to please reject it, not to make the trip.
It was late and I knew that something could happen to him
,” Cintia Lares declared when she was interviewed on Friday afternoon, after her husband was buried.
A few hours before, on Wednesday night, she asked her husband,
Diego Alejandro Celentano
(32), to please not leave her house to make the trip that she accepted on the
Radio Sur Taxis
application . Rosary beads.
The end was
death by five shots.
Diego Alejandro Celentano, taxi driver murdered in Rosario
They were arriving at their house on Lamadrid Street, in the Saladillo neighborhood, south of the city, after eating at a food cart, after 11 p.m. Then, Diego's phone received
a notification for a trip
.
However, the economic hardships in which Rosario taxi drivers live convinced Celentano to make one last trip, even though he had already finished his shift.
When he arrived at Alvear and Garmendia, ten blocks from his house,
the passenger shot him five times
with a gun that, it was later learned, had bullets from the Santa Fe Police. One hit him in the head and ended his life.
His wife, Cintia, is also a taxi driver.
They married in December 2019 and
had a four-year-old daughter
.
The two also worked at the Santa Fe casino,
City Center
, from which they were fired some time ago.
With their compensation, they bought a car and a taxi license.
In reality, Cintia was the owner.
In 2023, the Deliberative Council of Rosario launched a program of facilities for women who wanted to be taxi licensees, a source of work.
A quota of 500 drivers was foreseen, and Cintia was one of those awarded.
Cintia
had asked Diego to video call her when the trip was over
, since she couldn't convince him not to accept the trip.
The call never came, and instead it was other taxi drivers who knocked on her door a while later to inform her of her husband's outcome.
“They handed him over because the trip came out of the radio (
Su Radio Taxi
).
They will have to explain how a trip came out of the radio app for that area," she said at a press conference on Friday from the door of the Caramuto garage, where they were saying goodbye to her husband's remains. She maintains that the passenger reception area and The one at the end of the route was
marked as a red zone
, so the notification should not have arrived.
That unleashed an internal conflict in the taxi driver union, which has two representations in the city (license holders and laborers, separately), and also suspicion: Cintia's family would have connections with municipal and provincial politics, in addition to having had a position in the chamber of female taxi drivers, from which she left due to differences.
The taxi drivers see a certain bias in what Lares explains, although they understand and share the pain and anger.
“We were thinking about selling everything, about
leaving the area because of the insecurity
,” he said before the cameras.
“He was happy, mate.
We used to sing in the car, with our daughter, who four days ago turned four years old,” Lares added in front of the cameras.
Also that Celentano left for his last trip with a smile.
Héctor Raúl Figueroa: the taxi driver murdered hours before his wedding
The city of Rosario is still in convulsion because
the wave of violence is at its peak
.
On Tuesday, exactly one day before Celentano's murder, they killed
Héctor Raúl Figueroa (42)
with
16 shots
, less than thirty blocks from where Celentano was killed.
Hector Raúl Figueroa.
Figueroa was the father of two children and the partner of
a woman whom he had married on Friday
.
They lived in the Saladillo neighborhood, on 100 Sánchez de Bustamante Street, south of Rosario.
Figueroa was traveling with a passenger in the front of his car.
A third from outside shot several times at the taxi.
The nine shots that were fired at the taxi driver on Tuesday at 11:00 p.m., thirty blocks from his house, took away all the plans.
Two taxi drivers were murdered this week in Rosario.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
His partner was also a taxi driver and became a licensee in the same program that Celentano's wife did.
They earned their living driving a Fiat Cronos.
Héctor had been a bus driver for the Azul SATA company years ago, until times of pandemic.
After that job, he started as a taxi driver.
His family has not made any statements to the press.
Contacted by
Clarín
, her partner preferred to protect her stability and not delve into the memory of the man to whom she would be married at this time.
Those close to both of them take up
a collection to help the family.
Marcos Daloia, the trolleybus driver who fights for his life
The last of the cases of extreme violence against transport workers in Rosario,
Marcos Iván Daloia, 38 years old
and driver of the city's K trolleybus line.
On Friday he underwent surgery at the Clemente Álvarez Hospital for injuries to the right auricular area of the head and to a cervical vertebra, the first.
Marcos Iván Daloia, the trolleybus driver shot in Rosario
It is a neighbor to the west of the city center, an area bordering the Ludueña and Azcuénaga neighborhoods.
He has
three children
and six years of experience on the trolleybus line where he worked.
The attack he suffered was
cold-blooded
: the attacker pretended to stop the trolleybus to take it, but when the driver opened the door, he shot him in the head.
The director of the Clemente Álvarez Hospital, Andrea Becherucci, told the press that after the surgical intervention, the driver remains sedated and in intensive care, still with the bullet in his body, and trying to recover from serious injuries.
This Saturday marks
48 hours without buses in Rosario
.
Bus strike in Rosario due to the shooting of a trolleybus driver.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
This Saturday, Camila, his sister-in-law, wrote a post on Facebook to ask for strength and energy for him:
"My brother-in-law Marcos Iván Daloia is fighting for his life because someone decided to shoot him, to kill him, while he was working. It could happen to you, to your family. This time it was my brother-in-law's turn, it was our family's turn. The analysis We can discuss the political and social aspects of what is happening in our city at any time, but now the important thing is that he can get out of this."
"Whatever your belief, I ask you to send strength and good energy to Marcos. He is an incredible person and no one deserves this, but above all he does not deserve all this that is happening.
"Marquitos, I'm sure you are the strongest bus driver in all of Rosario. If anyone can get out of this, it's you.
"On Thursday your painting was celebrated and yesterday I went to a church, look if we're not going to have one more miracle...
"Come on, many Sundays await us as a family, talking about life. We are waiting for you, little brother."
Rosary beads. Special Envoy - Clarín Master's Degree / University of San Andrés
MG