Rosario, from the capital of narco violence to a model of the fight against the rule of law

For years it was the Argentine capital of narco violence. Today the Argentine city Rosario presents itself as proof that the State can take back the territory with the instruments of the law, without shortcuts.

This - a note reports - is the underlying theme of the 38th National and International Days of Public Fiscal Ministries, which end today in the city on Paranà where, for two days, 450 general prosecutors and magistrates from all the Argentine provinces met with experts from Italy, the United States and Chile on organized crime, drug trafficking, cybercrime and new investigation techniques.

The numbers explain why the 'Rosario case' has become a reference. In 2022 the city had reached a peak of almost 290 homicides per year, and in 2026 the figure dropped to 62, while in the entire province of Santa Fe it went from 313 to 112 homicides in the same period.

The national government, said the Minister of Security, Alejandra Monteoliva, attributes much of the decline to the 'Plan Bandera', the federal plan against drug trafficking launched in 2024 together with the province, also recalling that the new Argentine anti-mafia legislation is convincingly inspired by the Italian model. "Here the violence rates have been lowered while respecting constitutional guarantees", claimed the governor Maximiliano Pullaro in turn.

The first speech of the Days was entrusted to the Italian magistrate Giovanni Tartaglia Polcini, deputy director of the European program El Paccto 2.0, financed by the European Union and implemented by the Iila. His report focused on sharing the Italian anti-mafia experience with a focus on patrimonial investigations, confiscation and reuse of assets, international judicial cooperation and the prison regime for the leaders of the organisations.

Tartaglia Polcini then defined that of Rosario as "an example of the reaction of the rule of law to the mafia threat" warning however that "the decrease in murders does not automatically correspond to the decrease in criminal power".

On the sidelines of the event, the international delegation also visited the prison complex under construction in Piñero, where an institution for high-profile prisoners will be built which is openly inspired by the 41-bis regime.

In the framework of the El Paccto 2.0 program, it was finally agreed with the Argentine Ministry of Justice to work on the creation of an inter-institutional Technical Committee for the attack on criminal assets. The Committee - concludes the note - should be born in 2027 and mark the transition from the recovery of control of the territory to that of assets removed from legality.