The wave of violence linked to drug trafficking in the city of Rosario, home town of Lionel Messi, was the subject of a tense debate in the Argentine Congress on Thursday.
Even the Minister of Security, Anibal Fernandez, made a speech in which he defended the government’s management of this particular problem.
Last year alone, 2,077 people were arrested in Rosario in connection with drug offences, said Fernandez, who stressed the need to attack the financing channels of drug trafficking, urged the deputies to pass a law against money laundering.
“The drugs that are imported to Rosario are paid for in dollars, in banknotes. That’s where it’s really going to hurt them, and we’re involved,” Fernandez declared.
He also said that a command is being set up in the Buenos Aires town of San Nicolas, in coordination with the FBI and the provinces of Buenos Aires, Entre Rios, Santa Fe and Cordoba, to obtain more information on these issues.
Sending federal and army forces to Rosario
The security minister appeared before members of parliament to address the growing wave of insecurity in Rosario, home city of Lionel Messi, where at least 65 people have been killed so far this year as a result of the war between criminal gangs fighting for control of strategic areas where they can sell drugs.
The country’s president, Alberto Fernandez, announced on Tuesday an increase in the federal forces present in this municipality. There will now be a presence of up to 1,400 new troops, as well as the dispatch of the Army Engineering Corps whose main task will be to speed up urbanization work in marginalized neighborhoods of Rosario.
At a press conference on Thursday, presidential spokesperson Gabriela Cerruti pointed out that the armed forces in the historic sense aren’t going to Rosario, but rather a division of the army that will accompany the construction of housing developments.
“We understand that it is in these neighborhoods where it is easiest for those who are looking for hired assassins for drug trafficking to insert themselves,” she stated.
“That is why they are going there, as part of the process of redevelopment of popular neighborhoods and not as part of the security process in Rosario.”
