“After this, you’re going to need some mental health care,” laughed Gaby, trying to inject some levity into an interview with InSight Crime about life in the violent and downtrodden neighborhoods skimming the Argentine city of Rosario.
“[A gang war] detonated a whole wave of crimes,” said Gaby. “A lot of people from the slums [were murdered]… generally, they were kids from our neighborhoods.”
One of those killed was Gaby’s brother. “You never really get over that,” she said.
For generations, local clans have been building up criminal operations in these areas. The Cantero family created one of the most powerful criminal franchises in the city, going by the name the Monos. They had their hand in a number of criminal enterprises, but in 2004, they went all in on drug dealing. The Monos built bunkers on the outskirts and started recruiting children or “soldaditos” (little soldiers) whose tiny hands could fit through the small holes in the bunkers’ walls to trade drugs for cash. Others, like the Alvarado Clan, followed suit.
Some children ended up working the bunkers to pay off the parents’ debts. “A 15-year-old girl was inside a bunker because her father owed [them money],” Gaby told InSight Crime. “What is left for that girl to do? She’s locked up inside the bunker all the time – and obviously they add to the debt the parents supposedly owed. And now, well they start to use [drugs], and it is a chain that never ends.”
When the leader 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 surged in 2014 amid Guille’s war, but the violence was mainly contained to the peripheries.
Gaby’s reality coexists with the government’s claim that it finally has a leg up on organized crime. Since winning the 2023 election with on a security-focused platform, the provincial government has rolled out a series of punitive and preventative reforms. And 2024 was, on the whole, Rosario’s least deadly year since Guille launched his 2014 crime war. Murders have slightly risen this year, but they remain lower than any other time since 2014.
But if in the wealthy center of Rosario, all seems calm, the gang wars in the outskirts remain.
The biggest criminal groups have been broken up, according to the government. “We can’t talk like we used to, about Alvarado on one side and the Monos on the other,” explained Undersecretary of Intelligence Virginia Villar. “Now there are not organized bands, rather small groups.”
But, says Gaby: “For those of us who walk through these neighborhoods, it all looks the same. We hear the same gunshots.”
Nowhere to Go
Where Gaby grew up, schools have been the target of shootouts. Children have been killed by stray bullets. There are very few clubs or places where kids can stay out of trouble, so many of them end up in it.
“Sign up a seven-year-old for a club that will keep him focused, that he will enjoy, and he will be protected. At 12, 13, 14 years of age, there would be no need for a prison,” said Gaby. “But [the government] prefers the bad part. The perverse part. The punishment.”
SEE ALSO: Homicides Drop in Argentina’s Rosario, but Violence Persists on the Peripheries
“If someone commits a crime, they should pay. But we don’t believe that the solution to everything is for them to die in prison,” she explained. “I’m not going to forgive the person who murdered my brother, but I also understood that he was a victim of a perverse, exclusive system.”
Nowhere to Work
Few jobs on the outskirts of Rosario pay over minimum wage, and many people feel trapped in informal work with no protections. Unemployment is rife. For some, snatching purses or selling drugs makes the most economic sense.
And while the lack of work pushes some towards crime, it pulls others away from justice. After Gaby’s brother was murdered, she began running into the same women in the country’s court system, but they were all working informal jobs and struggling to find the time and resources for lobbying, generating attention to cases, and advocating for more preventative and restorative policies.
So they formed Pariendo Justicia (Giving Birth to Justice) in 2016 to organize their legal battles as a united collective. They got jobs in the formal sector, cleaning government buildings, and brought in other women.
But after years of decline, unemployment began creeping up again around the end of 2023, according to the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses of Argentina (Instituto Nacional de Estadística y Censos de la República Argentina – INDEC). Underemployment, where people are overqualified for their jobs or cannot find full-time work, reached its highest rate in ten years during 2024. The number of women finding work through Pariendo Justicia has fallen, and government cleaning contracts are drying up.
Long working hours for mothers meant kids were often going home to empty houses, or families were losing a day’s pay with a visit to the doctor.
“I always say: ‘Don’t have children; don’t bring them into this.’ Because today we live in something so ugly, this insecurity. And we have absolutely nothing to offer.” another member of Pariendo Justicia, told InSight Crime.
Even formal jobs are often not paid well enough to allow people to provide for their families, so many turn to selling drugs.
No One to Help
“When kids pass by on motorcycles, they make those ‘bangs.’ When that happens, people throw themselves to the ground and get inside,” said Gaby.
Psychological research on post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD) has linked trauma to increased aggression and distrust, especially among children. It can make violence cyclical. When a victim or a witness is exposed to a crime or violence, their brain gets overloaded. If they do not receive any help, one often relies on violence and aggression as a form of deterrence toward future threats.
This trauma can impede adolescent brains and inhibit development, making it even harder for children on the outskirts to escape via a good job or education. Left untreated, such exposure to violence can cause one to overreact at the slightest perception of a threat.
This trauma cuts deeper than making people jump when a car backfires – it causes children to join gangs, in part in an effort to protect themselves and be the predator rather than the prey. Gangs do not care about test scores.
No One to Trust
If throwing people in jail has made some residents of Rosario’s center feel safe they have made some on the outskirts feel hunted.
“Punish chastise lockup. It is punish, chastise, lock up,” said Gaby.
SEE ALSO: Argentina Police Reform Sparks Concern Over Strategy
A stop-and-search-esque policy where citizens are randomly asked for their ID is a recent example. The police run a search on IDs, and if the person is not wanted for a crime, they are free to go. But many in these neighbourhoods do not have official IDs, and a few residents who spoke to InSight Crime said they often leave their phones or IDs at home for fear of fear of being robbed. It’s not uncommon for them to find themselves in a police station far away with no cash or way to get home.
The government has tried to improve the police, but distrust is high in these neighborhoods. Several residents of peripheral neighborhoods and a non-profit worker who spoke to InSight Crime but asked to remain anonymous reported seeing police standing guard outside drug sales points.
If the government built schools and clubs in these neighborhoods, said Gaby, they wouldn’t have to spend so much money building prisons.