Maximiliano Lautaro Joel Maturano I was 18 years old. The last known images of him, recorded by a security camera, are chilling: two men got him out of a car handcuffed and with a bag on his head, threw him to the ground and executed him. It all happened in broad daylight at the entrance of a club Billinghurst, party of Saint Martin. The autopsy determined that he had been tortured. His face had cigarette burns. It soon became known that the Justice was looking for him for a homicide that occurred in 2021 and the investigators believe that it was a settling of scores.
The case is far from being an exception. It is enough to review the police news of the last two months to observe that the violence in the Greater Buenos Aires is stark.
In Villa Hidalgo, two weeks ago, there was a triple murder commission. Shortly before, in a “tumber wake”, four young people were arrested for firing into the air with machine guns; the group was firing a 17-year-old teenager who was shot during a gang adjustment in Billinghurst. In Merlo, Justice investigates a mysterious homicide: a 32-year-old man was shot in the temple when they were traveling in his vehicle, which appeared in a ditch. In Isidro Casanova, a Buenos Aires Police officer who was suspended for alleged links to drug dealers was shot in the face. In González Catán, the head of the Laferrere bar, Fabricio Martínez, He was traveling in his VW Vento when two gunmen caught up with him; they fired more than 40 times in the center. In Ciudad Evita, a man was surprised when he arrived at his house by two others who shot and killed him; They were associated with different gangs. The list is endless.
All these episodes share characteristics: they are not homicides in the context of robberies, for example, but they respond to patterns of organized crime. And, while Rosario is in the news every day due to the brutal violence of the gangs that dispute territory, in the Conurbano these crimes have their own characteristics.
looks. The figures for this type of crime are not easy to track and, in fact, sources from the Ministry of Security of the province of Buenos Aires assured NOTICIAS that this is not a wild phenomenon, but rather “isolated episodes fueled by the press”. In fact, they maintained that crime in Buenos Aires territory is on the decline, although they did not refer to any study that proves it. Marcelo Saín is a teacher and researcher at the National University of Quilmes and was Minister of Security of Santa Fe. According to him, “it is impossible to have a crime management policy if you don’t measure it, and here nobody measures it or has statistics”.
One of the latest studies is that of the Provincial Narcotics Office and reports an increase in cases. According to the document, which is based on the files initiated, the most complicated judicial districts in terms of the growth of criminal gangs are Hills of Zamora, Quilmes and San Martin.
From the ministry that leads Sergio Berni rule out any resemblance between Conurbano and Rosario. However, for Esteban Rodríguez Azueta, the situation is comparable. The expert, a researcher at the University of Quilmes, director of the Cuestiones Criminales magazine and the Laboratory of Social and Cultural Studies on Urban Violence (LESyC), assured: “They are urban conglomerates 300 kilometers away with similar social realities. The transa universe, with all its kitchens, is not Rosario’s heritage. In the Conurbano they are also found and proof of this is the resaca that is smoked, the base paste that is scratched from the bottom of the pot to be sold among the poorest, while the best quality portion is left for export or destined for to users with another wallet.”
And he added: “Violence begins to be the grammar to resolve conflicts or accumulate respect. Why? Because, now, in addition, there is more circulation of weapons. Now, what we are seeing is that the Buenos Aires is no longer a leviathan blue, it is a piece of junk, it has been fragmented. Therefore, the question we ask ourselves is: what capacity for regulation will this police have? Rodríguez Azueta points out that the drop in intentional homicides is real but clarifies that “it is already known that today they are not a criterion for thinking about the circulation of highly damaging violence.”
Saín agrees but considers that there are different characteristics. For him, the hitman in the Conurbano is a reality but, unlike what happens in Rosario, in Buenos Aires territory it is still a little more “professional.” “San Martín is the example of a phenomenon that we see more and more. About five years ago, the balance that existed in that area was broken thanks to a kind of agreement established between the criminal world and the police. ‘Mameluco’ Villalba, for example, had organized a cocaine distribution system knowing that violence is not so useful because it brings the eyes of the press and makes politicians nervous”, assured the expert.
However, since the leaders began to fall, the criminal map began to transform and disputes over territorial hegemony brought more violence. The big problem in Rosario, according to Saín, is that the leaders of the gangs are not willing to hand over command and “delegate all the tasks to little soldiers and inexperienced youths who do not know how to negotiate or agree with the police.”
In the province of Buenos Aires, the change of power occurs in other terms and the fall of characters like “Mameluco” enabled the arrival of others like “El Rengo” Pacheco or “Alicho”, who are far from being little soldiers. “In many places in the Conurbano, a war broke out because the gangs began to fragment and, when the criminal world fragments, so does the police, who do not know who to answer to. The underlying problem is that no one is in charge,” said Saín.
Rodríguez Azueta added another factor: “The problem is that we have a Justice that is on another planet and that looks at the problems through the keyhole, that cuts out and decontextualizes the conflicts. The way Justice works is a way that favors the expansion of illegal markets”, he added.
