Argentina has begun construction on its first maximum-security prison for drug traffickers and murderers near the city of Rosario, reigniting debate over the effectiveness of hardline security measures in a city plagued by drug-related violence.
The facility will be built on the grounds behind Penitentiary Unit No. 11 in the town of Piñero and will house the province of Santa Fe’s most dangerous inmates, including drug traffickers and hitmen. It will have the capacity to hold 1,152 people across four separate prison blocks, guarded by 24 watchtowers, and surrounded by a double perimeter wall stretching 1,800 meters.
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The location is no coincidence. “Hell,” as the provincial government has named the facility, will be located in the department of Rosario, home to Argentina’s third-largest city and the epicenter of the country’s drug violence. In 2022, Rosario reached a historic peak in its homicide rate, which soared to five times the national average.
Replicating Bukele’s Model
The creation of a mega-prison in Argentina is part of a broader trend of hardline security policies in the region due, in large part, to the apparent success of the policies of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has managed to drastically reduce homicide rates in El Salvador, in part by mass incarcerating suspected gang members in one of the world’s largest prisons. But it is unlikely that transplanting the Salvadoran security model into a country with fundamentally different conditions will yield the desired results.
Across the region, from Ecuador to Honduras and Costa Rica, efforts to emulate El Salvador’s prison policies have fallen short. In Ecuador, one of the two mega-prisons announced in early 2024 — “for all the Bukele lovers,” in the words of President Daniel Noboa — had to be relocated a year later, following local protests. The same happened in Honduras, where plans to build a facility on the remote Swan Islands were scrapped after failed bids and public backlash.
In Argentina — where violence levels remain well below the regional average — insecurity has nonetheless dominated the political agenda since President Javier Milei took office in late 2023. A central pillar of his tough-on-crime strategy is the expansion and strengthening of the prison system, as indicated by Security Minister Patricia Bullrich’s visit to El Salvador’s Terrorism Confinement Center (Centro de Confinamiento del Terrorismo – Cecot) to study its security model firsthand.
Santa Fe’s provincial government, though a different party than the Milei administration, shares this approach. Its security plan also focuses on boosting prison capacity and control through measures inspired by Bukele’s governance style.
SEE ALSO: How Rosario Became Argentina’s Drug Violence Capital
According to Lucía Masneri, Santa Fe’s secretary for penal affairs, the new prison’s restrictions will be even stricter than those currently implemented in El Salvador.
This was not the first time the provincial government implemented the “Bukele model.” On March 5, 2024, Justice and Security Minister Pablo Cococcioni posted photos on social media of a surprise search operation at the Piñero prison — where the new supermax will be built — staged in a way that mirrored El Salvador’s approach. That same day, a series of random killings brought the city to a standstill.
A Flawed Approach
Several signs suggest the new prison may not deliver its intended results. One risk stems from the recent passage of Argentina’s Antimafia Law in March 2025, which stipulates that all members of a criminal group will receive the same sentence as the most serious crime committed by the group, while expanding police powers to detain suspects. These provisions may inflate prison populations, undermining the province’s goal of isolating high-profile inmates.
Journalist and author of the book “Rosario Narco” Osvaldo Aguirre flagged another potential problem: “Everything is focused solely on the prisoners, as if guards weren’t part of the communication pipeline — even though there’s ample evidence that prison officials are involved in these kinds of crimes.” Indeed, this narrow focus may worsen the issue by ignoring the entrenched collusion between criminal groups and law enforcement, long documented in judicial investigations.
SEE ALSO: Police Corruption Blamed as Bodies Pile Up in Rosario, Argentina
Focusing primarily on punitive measures to deter crime also risks fueling autocratic tendencies. As Marcelo Bergman, director of the Latin American Center for Studies on Insecurity and Violence (Centro de Estudios Latinoamericano sobre Inseguridad y Violencia – CELIV) from the Tres de Febrero National University, told InSight Crime: “You can’t replicate the Bukele model here. Argentina has a much stronger justice system and a far more active civil society than El Salvador. Instituting a draconian regime that cuts inmates off from the outside world is simply unconstitutional.”
So the question remains: Will the creation of this supermax facility truly achieve its goal? Or will increasing police autonomy and enacting a suite of hardline laws exacerbate the problem by expanding the prison population and, more importantly, by ignoring the root cause of Rosario’s drug crisis: the deep-seated corruption among political, judicial, and law enforcement institutions that has fueled the criminal underworld from the very beginning?
Featured image: Surprise search at Piñero prison, March 5, 2024. Credit: Government of the Province of Santa Fe, Argentina.