The morning in Mariano Moreno School of San Cristóbal, Santa Fewas marked as a border. Until that day, school violence in Argentina could seem like a scattered sum of episodes such as filmed fights, threats on networks, harassment in the hallways or knives found in backpacks. But when a 15-year-old student opened fire inside the establishment and killed Ian Cabrera, 13the country witnessed a scene that until recently was believed to be foreign: the outbreak of terror in the heart of the school.
Since then, what was an alarm became a warning system. In recent weeks, at least twenty schools in different provinces activated protocols due to threats of shootings. The messages appeared on bathrooms, walls and notebooks without euphemisms: “shots tomorrow”, “bullets are raining”dates indicated as if it were a countdown. hThere were cases in the City of Buenos Aires, Córdoba, Mendoza, Tucumán and Santa Fe. For its part, in Salta more than 100 complaints were made known and 17 people have already been identified by the Police. In many schools, classes were suspended and attendance even dropped due to the decision of families.
The vintage postcard has an unprecedented rawness. In some establishments, students stopped carrying backpacks and attended with transparent plastic bags to facilitate entry controls. In others, management personnel searched belongings and surveillance was reinforced in coordination with security forces. Thus, the school, a historical symbol of protection, began to incorporate routines typical of crisis scenarios.
Authorized voice. Andrea Kaplan, specialist and author of the book “Violence in Schools” (Editorial El Ateneo)consulted by NOTICIAS, proposes a less impulsive and more profound look: “The first thing we must repeat is that the violence that breaks out in schools is, above all, social”. And he warns that reducing these events to “kids’ things” or, at the opposite extreme, “giving in to collective panic,” prevents understanding a complex problem. “The school,” he says, “functions as a sounding board for a society crossed by inequality, helplessness, aggressive speeches and fascination with weapons.”
The diagnosis of Kaplan points to a cultural change: “We do not conceive that schools and children are associated with violence of such magnitude”. However, the border between what happens outside and inside the classroom became porous. Social networks amplify threats, replicate viral challenges and turn local intimidation into a national phenomenon in a matter of hours. An anonymous message in a bathroom can end in hundreds of screenshots, WhatsApp chains and parents removing their children before the dismissal bell.
That happened in several Buenos Aires schools. In it Carlos Pellegrini and at the Vélez Sarsfield Institute, intimidating graffiti forced protocols to be activatedsummon the Police and work with specialized prosecutors’ offices. Parents consulted described “traumatizing” days, with chats exploited by rumors and contradictory versions. The anguish is no longer limited to the student, it also reaches families and teachers, trapped between prudence and uncertainty.
Placebos. The province of Buenos Aires moved forward with specific guidelines for situations of violence and carrying knives or intimidating elements. The official slogan is to first preserve students and staff, isolate the aggressor if possible, give immediate intervention to the authorities and then institutionally work on the consequences. Other jurisdictions reinforced police presence at the entrances and announced financial sanctions to families of minors responsible for false threats for the cost of the operations.
Another recent episode that completes the map occurred in San Martín, where A teenager was stabbed in the neck by a classmate after leaving school. In other provinces there were also raids on minors due to threats spread on networks. Mendoza reported hundreds of preventive activations in a few days. It is not a single criminal modality, but rather an ecosystem of attacks where physical violence, symbolic intimidation, digital exhibition and imitative contagion coexist.
One of the determining factors is the spread of the event. Before, a school fight was confined within four walls. Today it is filmed, shared, commented on and, what is worse, imitated or taken as an option. The aesthetics of the threat also changed. Weapons displayed in WhatsApp statuses, messages copied from series and video games or performative language of fear. The position of adults also changed, often overwhelmed by youth codes that circulate faster than any institutional response.
Kaplan insists that urgency should not overshadow what is essential, noting: “Improvisation and minimization are not possible options.”
Once the critical moment has passed, a deeper and probably less spectacular time comes: that of working on what happened. Name the fear, put it into words, restore trust and review the signs that may have escaped to prevent in the future. It is clear that the school, like any other social institution, cannot promise “zero risk”, but what it can and must do is promise that it will not turn a deaf ear to what happens, that its focus will be prevention and that it will not leave the children and their teachers helpless.
For Kaplan, the solution “requires a firm alliance between schools, families and the State.” “Monitor networks, do not viralize rumors, pay attention to sudden changes in behavior and maintain an adult presence. School alone cannot do it, but there is something fundamental and that is that without school it is impossible.” A forceful statement that summarizes a dramatic panorama of the time.
After Saint Christopher, no one claims naivety. The shot that killed Ian Cabrera pierced the certainty that the classrooms were safe from everything. The question now is whether the training institutions are prepared to stop the violence.
