“Let's call a spade a spade:
in Rosario there were terrorist attacks
.
They seek to sow terror in people, nothing else,” says Horacio Yanotti from the other end of the phone.
The cell phone through which the conversation with
Clarín
takes place is that of Julián, a taxi driver from Rosario.
It is after 9 pm and the weather fluctuates between drizzle and hail: there are few people on the street.
Driving a taxi in this Santa Fe city became a high-risk job.
Yanotti is the secretary of the Rosario Taxi Workers Union and one more of the late nights who have hardly slept since Tuesday: taxi driver delegates, commissioners, prosecutors and other judicial and Security Ministries officials.
In two days they killed two taxi drivers without intending to rob them, at night.
On February 13 and 16, they killed two others.
A trolley bus driver was shot in the neck on Thursday.
—Why taxi drivers?
—They want to intimidate. You have to think about it this way: if you kill a bus driver, you have 50 witnesses around; If you kill a taxi driver, there are no witnesses. Besides, we are very vulnerable: you don't know who you are boarding as a passenger and you have them behind your back all the time.
Julián has been a taxi driver for thirty years, and has always been a night shift driver.
As he drives his Renault Logan, he says he's never seen anything like it.
He clarifies that unfortunately the people of Rosario have become accustomed to insecurity, but not to the edges that he had this week, convulsive if any.
At the first traffic light of the journey that he began with
Clarín
, he remembers some episodes of similar violence, through which organized crime leaves messages, as he says.
A few hours ago, a police station was shot up.
In 2023, the target was
schools
.
Other years before, they shot up businesses or houses, including those of a former governor, Bonfatti.
Clarín went out to explore Rosario in a taxi at the same time that two drivers were murdered days ago.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
He also comments that there are 24 safe corridors in which, supposedly,
there should be patrol cars and operations
mounted to monitor taxi passengers.
But this is not an extraordinary or urgent measure, but was taken at the beginning of Maximiliano Pullaro's administration.
Name some addresses where these operatives should be stationed throughout the city.
Then there are, or should be, those of
"Operation Flag"
, carried out by federal security forces (Gendarmerie, Naval Prefecture and Airport Security Police).
“But with this rain…” he concludes.
It heads towards the south of Rosario, from the center of the city.
First destination: Tablada neighborhood, one of the hottest areas.
On the way, Julián asks:
“Do you see any patrol cars in operation?”
.
He answers only
no
.
Ayolas and Necochea, the first patrol vehicle stationed on a five-kilometer route so far.
There are no patrol cars on San Martín Avenue, on Oroño, 27 de Febrero and Seguí boulevards.
Some neighbors walk through the streets, few and protected with umbrellas, they focus on daily tasks in their minimum expression: shopping and that's it.
"We are very vulnerable: you don't know who you are boarding as a passenger and you have them behind your back all the time," says Julián on board his taxi.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
The driver's phone rings.
It is Yanotti, who tells
Clarín
: “This is not Rosario: she is the image to which these events lead.
For us, who were born, grew up and are going to die here,
it is very painful
.”
Julián adds, after the call, that this is like everywhere: “The city is very nice and quiet, with 99% of people who work and another 1% who are dedicated to screwing citizens.”
It's a war between gangs, he adds.
Alien to people.
Battle y Ordóñez and San Martín, next to the tracks and the Rosario Sur station:
“There should be a control here: it is not there
. ”
He continues counting with the fingers of his hand: the second hand already reaches the number of corners through which the route passed and the patrol cars that the list of preventive patrols of the safe corridors reports that there are are not there.
He heads towards Flammarion Street, parallel to the tracks.
He points with his index finger to the horizon that opens onto the street for the next thousand meters.
“
Here they killed the penultimate taxi driver
on Tuesday.
I passed by as soon as I found out and saw his body as he was being taken out of the car.
On the side, the sneaker,” he says when Flammarion crosses Lamadrid, in the Tiro Suizo neighborhood.
—And why the shoe?
—And what do they hang on the cables in the places where drugs are sold? A sneaker. If you want more clarity, we make a drawing.
It now enters the Las Delicias neighborhood, on Flammarion Street itself.
If at first there was darkness in the surroundings, after Lamadrid Street a panorama of humble squares and houses opens up.
Two boys wring out their shirts, although it is still raining and it is nine or so at night.
Nobody else is around.
Clarín took a taxi in Rosario at night.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
While passing through other neighborhoods, closer to the center of the city and what is called Macrocentro, Julián could mention, from memory, where
kiosks, or drug stands
, operate .
In these areas, there are no bunkers and, instead, the corners are the favorite place.
But he points out that the layout of the drug sales places is not a matter of geography and class, but rather that
the business took over the entire city.
Police interns, adjustments between gangs and other herbs
Averaging the twelve kilometers of travel, and while in the car they talk about the non-sighting of
any "Operativo Bandera" post and the few safe corridors
, the issue of the arrest of twelve people related to the attack on the trolleybus driver and the more than twenty related to the murders of taxi drivers, and, more specifically, one of the details of these murders: both taxi drivers murdered this week were executed with the same gun and with
bullets that have the signature of the Santa Fe Police
.
This was determined by the investigation that five prosecutors are carrying out together with the regional prosecutor Iribarren.
Patrolman of one of Rosario's safe corridors.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
“It is an internal one,” says Julián, “between the local police and the security forces that intervene.
The same thing happened in 2016, with Macri: they brought in gendarmes who, by their presence, ruin the business of some police officers here who are involved with the gangs.”
Hours before, at the headquarters of the Santa Fe Governorate in Rosario, a source from the province's Ministry of Justice and Security referred to this aspect when asked about the coincidence of the weapon and the bullets in the latest cases.
“From the provincial government we are clear: we are going to go to the bottom of the matter because we want the people of Rosario to be able to live in peace.
And if there is any uniformed person who is in collusion with the crime, he will be judged as a criminal who is in uniform.
In 2023, there were
200 reports of theft of regulatory weapons
from members of the security forces, which resulted in 60 cases that continue to be investigated: in all cases, those involved were removed from the forces,” says this source.
Clarín
reported on three hypotheses that are being considered in the investigation into the cases of the taxi drivers murdered during the last week.
One of them, although marginal, is also mentioned by this source: both murdered taxi drivers
worked for the same company
, one of the best known.
The owner of that company would be the owner of the property where Emanuel “Pimpi” Sandoval died in 2019, in the La Florida neighborhood.
Some taxi drivers go further with this hypothesis and
involve a city judge and another criminal gang
, although they are more afraid to say it openly than certainties to accuse.
But that line is also being weighed by the authorities.
Hours before receiving
Clarín
at the Government, this source participated in a meeting with municipal, provincial and national officials, including Governor Pullaro.
It was decided to create a crisis committee due to the situation.
The exception in Rosario became the rule: there is already a Special Unit for Extortion, Threats and Shootings of the Criminal Investigation Agency (AIC), in which police and prosecutors work only on intimidation crimes.
Kiss the card and cross your fingers
At a traffic light on Boulevard Seguí heading west, Julián kisses a small image of San Expedito.
He has that custom, generally after dropping off a passenger at his destination, but he says that other colleagues kiss thousands of little cards, cross more than two fingers, pray to more than one saint.
On the journey with
Clarín
, which at 10 o'clock covers more than 17 kilometers, he recognizes that sometimes he is guilty of being handsome, of not being afraid of something happening to him.
He lives in a dark neighborhood, in the España and Hospitales neighborhood, one of middle-class workers.
A patrol car from one of the safe corridors.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
In the Tablada neighborhood, in Ayolas and Necochea, the safe corridor patrol car has two police officers inside.
It's raining outside.
The Clarín
team
comes to ask about what the operations are like.
“In reality, more than stopping the cars, we must be attentive to whether a driver
activated the anti-panic button
in the area and then intervene.
Taxi drivers already know where we are and usually pass nearby.
Sometimes, they leave passengers not at the destination, but close to where we are, for greater security.”
Julián kissing a little card of San Expedito to ask for protection.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
And passenger safety?
“We all live like this,” says the accompanying police officer: “we are two more citizens.”
Less than ten blocks away, a taxi driver from the city of San Lorenzo and his passenger were killed in February.
Julián points out, in Chacabuco and Centeno, the ochava where they were executed.
Seven blocks from that corner, on Uriburu and Alem, an operative in the safe corridor did not notice the
flash of lights
that Julián gave him, as a recreation of a request for help in a possible emergency situation.
After the third flash of lights, he said exasperatedly:
“We are helpless, brother.”
Chacabuco and Centeno, where one of the taxi drivers murdered in February was killed.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
Suddenly, he remembers an audio that a fellow taxi driver sent on Tuesday night, after the death of the first of the two taxi drivers, Héctor Figueroa, became known.
This woman's audio was intended for another female taxi driver, but it soon spread among the drivers.
“I'm going to tell you something Elena. I have had my brother in jail for years, who called me yesterday and told me: 'Please don't go out at night anymore. I ask you please. Here in prison they already said it:
one a day they are going to kill, for a month
. '
He asked me not to go out to work, but how do I do it?
“Oh, and he told me that it is because of the issue of privileges
. ”
The end of the audio refers to the searches at the Piñero prison, where several high-profile prisoners are housed.
Specifically, the Bukele-style operation that Pullaro and his Security Minister, Pablo Cococcioni, ordered for the Piñero prison on Tuesday morning.
In the afternoon, the first of the taxi drivers died.
Bukele-style searches in Santa Fe against drug trafficking prisoners.
After the audio of just over a minute ends, Julián points to the odometer of his taxi, which already shows that he has been with
Clarín
for more than 20 kilometers.
Avellaneda Boulevard, almost Córdoba: a few blocks to the northwest, less than twenty, the Ludueña neighborhood, one of those monitored by "Operativo Bandera."
“But did you see how many patrol cars
stop cars or motorcycles
at this hour?
“We have one hand to count.”
And there is truth in his question, which is rhetorical: there was no search in sight.
Regarding the odometer, and knowing part of the route taken by his murdered colleagues, he intuits that they were killed in very short distances.
“They killed them for some mangoes, less than two thousand.”
And, furthermore, due to competition from Uber, work is scarce.
The murdered taxi drivers Diego Alejandro Celentano and Héctor Raúl Figueroa and the shot trolley bus driver Marcos Iván Daiola.
Julián continues: “This is a clear mafia message, but the outlook is not the best.
The police can't cope, because with the intervention of the federals and all the ball, you would have to fill the street with patrol cars and there are other things that cannot be neglected.
But the government, which is determined to end this, has to take into account that they kill us, the common people.
We have the city under siege
.”
He also understands the Police: “If things continue like this, they are going to have to search a million and a half inhabitants one by one.
“A madness.”
A police officer who was guarding one of the entrances to the Santa Fe Government building in Rosario explained hours before to
Clarín
: “This is simple: you kill the owner of a farm and no one is going to give you any trouble;
You kill a taxi driver, a bus driver or someone from some public service and you have everyone in suspense.
They managed to stop the city:
Friday, bus strike, Thursday, taxi strike.
Last year, some schools did not open because they were being shot at or for fear that they would be shot..."
"When did Rosario get screwed?"
José Iantosca, treasurer of the Rosario Chamber of Taxi License Holders (CATILTAR), received Clarín on Friday afternoon
in
the institution's office, in the company of José Tornambé, the secretary of that institution, the highest authority.
They told about the situation they are experiencing and that distresses them.
In the middle, these two men who have spent almost a century as taxi drivers between them, asked themselves a question: “When did Rosario get screwed?”
They did calculations whose results were surnames and names of gangs: the Garompa, the Funes, the Monos... “Alvarado was the one who broke the codes,” they said in unison.
Esteban Alvarado was the one who, they stated, broke the matrix of organized crime that, until a decade ago, was a monopoly of Los Monos.
They say the Canteros have gone to that same office some time ago to talk.
Why would that clan or another want to have taxis?
“To go unnoticed all the traffic that moves from here to there in the city,” they said, also in unison.
Julián charges for his trip and then kisses his stampit.
Photo Fernando de la Orden / Special Envoy
Friday night is ironing out, it's after 10 pm and the sky is clearing.
Julián arrives at the center of the city and points to the odometer, 27 and a half kilometers.
The tour cost almost
15 thousand pesos
.
While the chronicler pays, Julián kisses his little card of Saint Expedite.
“Do you see how many crumbs we are risking our lives for?”
Rosary beads. Special Envoy - Clarín Master's Degree / University of San Andrés
MG