Since the threats against Maximiliano Pullarohis family doesn’t spend more than a week in the same place. The governor asked them to leave Rosario and they toured different locations in the province of Buenos Aires., so that there are no drug attacks on their children. It is, in this first month of administration, what bothers the governor of Santa Fe the most: “You see them suffer and endure this situation,” he tells NOTICIAS. And he adds: “I have no choice, I have to assume all the risks involved in the political decisions I make.”
At this point in his government, Pullaro has an average of more than one drug threat per week. The last one was the most serious: On January 15, hitmen murdered a man and left an intimidating note next to the body that alluded to the governor. A horror scene.
The battle.
Pullaro, with a past as Minister of Security in Santa Fe, knew that the first measures he planned to put into practice after taking office on December 10, would have consequences. “The decisions that were made are the correct ones.”. That is why the responses came from different criminal groups that were upset,” he explains to this magazine.
The first thing the man from Santa Fe did was try to regain control of the prisons, the place from where crime is organized, and It began with the separation of high-profile detainees. Narcos and hitmen paraded towards special pavilions where they lost freedoms. The second: began to reorganize the investigative police to focus on what the Government defines as “urgent causes”: microtrafficking, violence and qualified robbery. Finally, reorganize the police. The three measures made criminal organizations uncomfortable.
“From a personal point of view, the threats are distressing and worrying. But even more so from the institutional point of view. The most important issue is that they are not threatening Pullaro, but rather the governor’s investiture, with what that means.”account.
The threats accumulated in such a way that on the same morning, in mid-January, two were found in Rosario. Messages appeared in public administration headquarters, hospitals, banks and other settings. At Government House they receive each of the intimidations and evaluate them in terms of dangerousness. The greater the violence, of course, the greater the concern. That is why an alarm signal went off with the note left next to the murdered man in the rubber shop, west of Rosario.
In any case, they warn that they are not going to give up. “We are not going to back down,” is the message that the governor sent to his Cabinet. “The criminal organizations were not prepared for the blow that was to come. They believed it was only going to be something discursive,” he explains to NOTICIAS. In fact, security specialists consider that, by demonstrating that intimidation has no effect, it would decrease until it disappears.
Care.
There is no great security deployment around Pullaro. He says that it would not be useful due to his way of governing: if he had assigned custody, he would not be able to attend any massive event or greet neighbors on public roads. “We can put bodyguards on him, but he is going to break the protocol to greet people on the street. It would be using resources in vain, a contradiction,” says one of its officials. of the Ministry of Security.
The only precautions he takes are to travel in an armored car and drive with the same driver: a police officer with whom he already worked in his previous administration, as Minister of Miguel Lifschitz. “I am prepared to assume all the risks involved in the political decisions I make. More in terms of security,” he challenges.
A week after the change of government, the Legislature passed the drug dealing law, which transferred the prosecution of micro-trafficking to the local Justice Department. Almost a month later, the first bunker was demolished and that once again generated a reaction: an intimidating note appeared alluding to it. “We ask the Nation for help, but we are going to take responsibility. The problem belongs to our province and we are going to provide resources to solve it,” concludes Pullaro. He is willing to go all out in the fight against criminal organizations.
Bullrich. Request to the Nation.
Every day, since the administration began, Security Minister Patricia Bullrich and Governor Maximiliano Pullaro exchange at least one message. “She is my friend and I value her a lot,” says the man from Santa Fe. The official presented the Bandera Plan to fight against drug trafficking, but in the province They believe that many more resources from the Nation should still arrive, taking into account that it is a federal crime. It is not the only complaint that comes from Santa Fe: it is that The provincial government asked to take charge of the federal prison being built in Coronda and that it would be 90 percent complete. They offered to finish it and put their own resources into it to start working and decompress the local penitentiaries, but the complaint is still going around. Although Bullrich approved the idea, administrative issues do not allow progress with the speed they demand. The harmony between the governments is good, but it needs to be refined, which is why they met again on Friday the 19th. “We continue to move forward,” they said after the meeting at the Ministry of Security.
