The homicide rate in this city is five times the national average. An emblematic case occurred in 2020 when a pastor, former councilor and social leader recognized for his fight in the search for justice for the murder of two of his children at the hands of drug traffickers was killed.
By Flavia Campeis – Jorgelina Tomasin
Journalist FORO HUMANOS
Rosario is the most violent city in Argentina, with the homicide rate quintupling nationwide. According to official data, more than 70% of intentional homicides in this city are associated with criminal organizations and almost 75% were planned and not spontaneous, even planned by drug traffickers from prison.
Intentional homicides, as those committed with the intention of killing are called, have been growing for several years in this city in the south of the province of Santa Fe.
The year 2022 ended with the highest number of the last eight years, 287 homicides were committed, according to official data. Last year Rosario had a homicide rate of 22.1 per 100,000 inhabitants.
With more than 1 million 300 thousand inhabitants, this city is located in the center of the country, on the banks of the imposing Paraná River, where the most important agro-export port in Argentina is located. This city, known for being the birthplace of the flag, of artists such as Fito Paez, Roberto Fontanarrosa, the world champions Lionel Messi and Ángel Di María and where Ernesto “Che” Guevara was also born, in recent years has been in the national news and international for being the most violent region in the country.
Rosario, under a worrying reality
Violence and mafias take over the streets, not only in the peripheral and poorer neighborhoods, but violence also breaks out in the center and in different parts of the city, regardless of area or time. According to a report conducted by the Center for Latin American Studies on Insecurity and Violence (CELIV), Argentina has an average of five homicides per 100 thousand inhabitants, ranking well below other countries in the region, such as Brazil, which reaches an index of 21, but far above countries in the European Community, whose homicide rate is barely 1 every 100,000 inhabitants.
In this context, Rosario multiplied the national rate almost fivefold and it is not in vain that it holds the title of being the most violent city in the country. Rosario residents live with hitmen and criminals who are part of organized crime gangs, dedicated to drug trafficking, drug dealing and crimes linked to them. The fact of having the port through which international ships circulate makes the region have favorable characteristics for the exchange of cargo that can circulate without state control.
Killing in democracy
Although the latest data released in 2022 show 287 homicides in Rosario, during the pandemic deaths due to violence were no exception and in 2020 there were 214 murders.
One of them was the crime of Pastor Eduardo Trasante, an emblematic case because he was a former Rosario councilor, a social activist and a leader in the fight against drug trafficking and violence, after the death of two of his children at the hands of drug traffickers.
Trasante was murdered on July 14, 2020 at 2:40 p.m. That day, two men knocked on the door of his home in the southern area of Rosario. One of his youngest daughters attended to them and when his wife arrived at the door, the hitmen entered the house, under threat of weapons. Trasante appeared seconds later and was attacked with two devastating shots: one in the right arm and another in the skull.
Statistics indicate that the majority of crimes in Rosario occur with firearms and near the victims’ homes – in the case of Trasante inside his own house – according to the CELIV investigation, in the homicides in Rosario the use prevails. of firearms in 90% of cases.
Crimes just a few meters from home
One fact that stands out is that more than half of the victims die less than 500 meters from their homes and more than 70% are murdered just 15 blocks from their homes. This shows that victims and perpetrators coexist in the same neighborhoods. Thus, different factors converge that can explain this reality, such as the growing poverty rate, the increase in organized crime and drug crime, mafia logic and a factor linked to institutional violence and the lack of speed in justice.
Trasante’s crime occurred in his own home, in broad daylight, and he was executed by hitmen, under the order issued by the renowned drug trafficker, Julio Andrés «Peruvian» Rodríguez Granthon, from inside the prison.
Both he and three other people arrived at the trial that began in November 2023, indicated as necessary participants in the homicide, although three years later, the perpetrators of the shooting were not identified.
They kill poor hearts
The ages of the victims show that in the Rosario department the majority are young people from the poorest neighborhoods of the city. More than half of the victims (52.5%) were between 15 and 29 years old at the time of their death.
Precisely, that was Eduardo Trasante’s fight: against the death of poor young people, among whom were two of his children.
Trasante became visible a decade ago when Jeremías, his 17-year-old son, was murdered along with two of his friends, Claudio “Mono” Suárez and Adrián “Patón” Rodríguez, on January 1, 2012 on a neighborhood soccer field. in what is known as the Villa Moreno triple crime.
That first day of the year, at dawn, a gang dedicated to drug dealing that is part of the brava group of Newell’s Old Boys, one of the most important soccer clubs in the city, mistook the boys for members of a rival group and They shot. They were killed on the spot.
From that moment on, the pastor became visible in different marches and mobilizations demanding justice for his son and other murdered young people. Two years later, in 2014, they killed Jairo, another of his 17-year-old sons, outside a bar located in the center of the city.

Eduardo Trasante: a legacy of resistance in Rosario
Journalist Carlos Del Frade, today a provincial deputy, in his role as an investigator, has followed drug trafficking and crime cases throughout the region for decades and met Trasante shortly after the murder of his son Jeremías.
Regarding the pastor’s crime, Del Frade considered that the case was extremely serious: «I think it is a mafia-style political message. Beyond the particularities of the case, the consequence is this political impact that only recognizes antecedents in the murder of the former provincial deputy Mario Armas, at the beginning of democracy and with the attack on the home of the governor of Santa Fe, Antonio Bonfatti» and stressed that “in recent history there are no counselors or former councilors murdered in democracy in the region.”
According to Del Frade, the message was for both politics and religious militancy: “on the one hand, Trasante meant the pastoral ministry committed to fighting kid by kid so that they stop being little soldiers, exploited for twelve hours inside a closed drug kiosk.” from outside. And from a political point of view it shows that a former councilor can be killed, at any time and at any time.”

Crime and justice
The trial for the Trasante crime began at the end of November and the alleged material or intellectual authors of the crime did not attend the oral debate, who until now could not be identified in the investigation by the Public Prosecutor’s Office.
Those accused in the judicial investigation are the Peruvian civilian pilot, convicted in two cases of drug trafficking, Julio Rodríguez Granthon, Alejo Leiva, Facundo Sebastián López and Brian Nahuel Álvarez. They were charged with the crime of «homicide doubly qualified by price or promise of remuneration and with the premeditated participation of two or more people, aggravated by the use of a firearm» as necessary participants and both the complaint and the prosecution hope to obtain a life sentence.

Violence and democracy
Faced with the growing violence that in recent years has Rosario at the epicenter of what is happening in terms of crimes and offenses linked to drug trafficking in the country, in 2023 from the national government of then president Alberto Fernández, in a video recorded and published on their social networks, announced the “reinforcement of the federal forces until reaching at this stage the 1,400 troops available for the city of Rosario” and
ordered that “the Argentine Army, through its engineering company, participate in the urbanization of popular neighborhoods,announcing the installation of 600 surveillance cameras with facial recognition; greater prison control of convicted inmates, among other measures.
The failure of anti-crime measures in Rosario
All state measures seemed ineffective in Rosario, crime in 2023 continued to grow, throughout the year shootings at judicial and police buildings increased, one of the cases that had the greatest media impact was the shootings and threats suffered by the supermarket in Rosario. the family of Antonela Rocuzzo, wife of Lionel Messi.
Last November they killed a police officer who was working as a guard at the Rosario Provincial Hospital and December began with the murder of an urban passenger line bus driver, who was shot several times while on duty.
In the midst of the increase in mafia crimes, the growth of the gap of social difference, of crimes linked to drug trafficking, where young people often find in drug dealing an economic solution to the labor crisis, in Argentina, requests for “strong hand”, more police and military presence and led to the last presidential election with the triumph of the liberal, far-right candidate, Javier Milei.
Meanwhile, in Rosario, as Fito Páez says in one of his best-known songs, “they kill poor hearts.”