“After that, you are going to need mental health care,” said Gaby, trying to inject some lightness into an interview with Insight Crime on life in violent and oppressed neighborhoods speaking the Argentine city of the Argentine city of Argentine city Rosario.
“(A gang war) exploded a whole wave of crimes,” said Gaby. “Many people in the slums (were murdered) … Generally, they were children in our neighborhoods.”
One of those who were killed were Gaby's brother. “You never really overcome that,” she said.
For generations, local clans have formed criminal operations in these areas. The Cantero family has created one of the most powerful criminal deductibles in the city, relying under the name of Monos. They had their hand in a number of criminal companies, but in 2004, they went all in drug trafficking. The Monos built bunkers on the outskirts and began to recruit children or “Soladaditos” (small soldiers) whose tiny hands could pass through the small holes in the walls of the bunkers to exchange drugs for money. Others, like the Alvarado clanFollowed out.
Some children ended up working on bunkers to repay parents' debts. “A 15 -year -old girl was inside a bunker because her father had (their money),” Gaby told Insight Crime. “What's left of this girl? She is locked up inside the bunker all the time-and obviously they add to the debt that parents had. And now, well, they are starting to use (drugs), and it's a chain that never ends.”
When the chief of the Monos, Claudio Ariel Cantero, alias “El Pájaro”, was murdered in 2013, his brother, Ariel Máximo Cantero, alias “Guille”, took over. And unleashed hell. Homicides jumped in 2014 in the midst of the Guille war, but violence was mainly contained in the outskirts.
Gaby's reality coexists with the government's assertion according to which he finally has one step ahead of organized crime. Since he won the elections in 2023 with a security focused platform, the provincial government has deployed a series of punitive and preventive reforms. And 2024 was, overall, Rosario The least deadly year Since Guille launched his 2014 criminal war. The murders have increased slightly this year, but they have been below any other era since 2014.
But if in the rich center of Rosario, everything seems calm, the gang wars of the periphery remain.
According to the government, the largest criminal groups have been interrupted. “We cannot speak as we did, about Alvarado on the one hand and the monos on the other,” said the under-secretary of intelligence Virginia Villar. “Now there are no organized groups, rather small groups.”
But, says Gaby: “For those of us who cross these neighborhoods, it all looks like. We hear the same shots. “
Nowhere
Where Gaby grew up, schools were the target of shootings. The children were killed by wandering bullets. There are very few clubs or places where children can avoid trouble, so many of them meet.
“Register a seven -year -old child for a club that will keep him concentrated, which he will appreciate, and he will be protected. At 12, 13, 14, there would be no need for prison,” said Gaby. “But (the government) prefers the bad part. The perverse part. Punishment.”
See also: Homicides fall into the Rosario of Argentina, but violence persists on the outskirts
“If someone commits a crime, he should pay. But we do not believe that the solution to everything is for them to die in prison, “she explained. “I will not forgive the person who murdered my brother, but I also understood that he was the victim of a perverse and exclusive system.”
Nowhere
Few jobs on the outskirts of Rosario pay a minimum wage, and many people feel trapped in informal work without protection. Unemployment is attractive. For some, tearing it off from handbags or the sale of drugs has the most economical sense.
And while the lack of work pushes some to crime, it keeps others away from justice. After Gaby's brother was murdered, she began to meet the same women in the country's judicial system, but they all worked informal jobs and struggled to find time and resources for lobbying, generate attention to cases and plead for more preventive and restorative policies.
They therefore formed the Parishion Justicia (giving birth to justice) in 2016 to organize their legal battles as a united collective. They obtained a job in the formal sector, cleaning government buildings and brought other women.
But after years of decline, unemployment started to crawl towards the end of 2023, according to At the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of Argentina (Instituto Nacional of Estadística y Censos de la REPUública Argentina – Indec). The underemployment, where people are overqualified for their employment or cannot find full-time work, have reached its highest rate in ten years in 2024. The number of women finding work through Pariendo Justicia has fallen and government cleaning contracts are dried up.
The long hours of work for mothers meant that children often returned home to empty houses, or families lost a day's salary with a visit to the doctor.
“I always say:“ I have no children; did not bring them in this area. Because today we live in something so ugly, this insecurity. Another member of Pariendo Justicia, told Insight Crime.
Even formal jobs are often not paid enough to allow people to support their family, so many are turning to the sale of drugs.
Person to help
“When children pass on motorcycles, they make these” fringes “. When this happens, people throw themselves on the ground and enter inside, “said Gaby.
Psychological research On post-traumatic stress disorder (SSPT) linked trauma to increased aggression and distrust, especially in children. He can do cyclic violence. When a victim or a witness is exposed to a crime or violence, his brain is overloaded. If they do not receive any help, it is often based on violence and aggression as a form of deterrence towards future threats.
This trauma can hinder the brain of adolescents and inhibit development, which makes even more difficult for children on the outskirts to escape via a good job or good education. Left untreated, such exposure to violence can result in an excessive reaction to the slightest perception of a threat.
This trauma cuts deeper than blowing up people when a car turns around – it causes Children to join gangs, partly in an effort to protect themselves and be the predator rather than in the prey. The gangs do not care about the results of the tests.
Trusted
If throwing people in prison has made sure that some residents of the Rosario center feel safe, they have made some on the outskirts feel chased.
“Punish punish the locking. It is punished, to punish, lock,” said Gaby.
See also: Argentine police reform stimulates the concern about the strategy
A policy of stopping and research where citizens are requested at random their identifier is a recent example. The police have excavated on the identifiers, and if the person is not wanted for a crime, they are free to leave. But many in these neighborhoods have no official identity, and some residents who spoke to Insight Crime said they often left their phone or home identity document for fear of the fear of being stolen. It is not uncommon for them to find themselves in a police station far without species or way to go home.
The government has tried to improve the police, but distrust is raised in these neighborhoods. Several residents of peripheral neighborhoods and a non -profit worker who spoke to Insight Crime, but asked to remain anonymous, said the police prepare outside the drugs.
If the government built schools and clubs in these neighborhoods, Gaby said, they would not have to spend as much money to build prisons.
