Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets clashed with stick-wielding protesters throwing rocks outside Congress on Thursday, leading lawmakers to suspend debate on reining in Argentina's pensions.
Demonstrators throw rocks at police during a protest of reforms to the retirement and pension system, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Union leaders and social activists opposing the proposal said the legislation would cut pension and retirement payments as well as aid for some of poor families starting in March.
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Police firing tear gas and rubber bullets clashed with stick-wielding protesters throwing rocks outside Congress on Thursday, leading lawmakers to suspend debate on reining in Argentina's pensions.
Union leaders and social activists opposing the proposal said the legislation would cut pension and retirement payments as well as aid for some of poor families starting in March.
The measure had been scheduled to be voted on in the lower Chamber of Deputies on Thursday, but the session was suspended indefinitely as opposition and governing party lawmakers yelled at each other inside the chamber while riot police fought with protesters in nearby streets.
"If the government has a fiscal problem, it should resolve it without putting a hand in the pockets of the pensioners," opposition lawmaker said Agustin Rossi, adding that he had been engulfed by tear gas.
The bill, which already passed the Senate, is part of a series of economic changes pushed by the government of President Mauricio Macri to reduce Argentina's high deficit.
"We're convinced that this project is good and it reflects the will of the majority of the parliament," Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena later said at a news conference at the presidential palace. "We feel that this law must be passed this way."
Macri took office in December 2015 promising to cut bloated government spending and revive Argentina's struggling economy. But his ordering of job cuts, the elimination of tariffs aimed at protecting local industry and the slashing of utility subsidies have fueled labor unrest in a nation with a long tradition of generous state jobs and benefits.
"We're not willing to take this. The people are going through bad times and we don't deserve this," said Monica de Albuquerque, a retiree who joined in the protests.
Police fires tear gas at stick-wielding protesters who hauled rocks and torched several garbage bins outside Argentina’s Congress building and in nearby streets, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
The measure had been scheduled to be voted on in the lower Chamber of Deputies on Thursday, but the session was suspended indefinitely as opposition and governing party lawmakers yelled at each other inside the chamber while riot police fought with protesters in nearby streets.
Police launch tear gas canisters at stick-wielding protesters who hauled rocks and torched several garbage bins outside the Congress building and in nearby streets, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
"If the government has a fiscal problem, it should resolve it without putting a hand in the pockets of the pensioners," opposition lawmaker said Agustin Rossi, adding that he had been engulfed by tear gas.
Argentina's largest union threatened to call a general strike if the measure was approved.
Police fire tear gas at stick-wielding protesters who hauled rocks and torched several garbage bins outside the Congress building and in nearby streets, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
The bill, which already passed the Senate, is part of a series of economic changes pushed by the government of President Mauricio Macri to reduce Argentina's high deficit.
Demonstrators protest against reforms to the retirement and pension system, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
"We're convinced that this project is good and it reflects the will of the majority of the parliament," Cabinet Chief Marcos Pena later said at a news conference at the presidential palace. "We feel that this law must be passed this way."
Pedestrians take cover from tear gas launched at demonstrators protesting reforms to the retirement and pension system, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Macri took office in December 2015 promising to cut bloated government spending and revive Argentina's struggling economy. But his ordering of job cuts, the elimination of tariffs aimed at protecting local industry and the slashing of utility subsidies have fueled labor unrest in a nation with a long tradition of generous state jobs and benefits.
Demonstrators rush at police during clashes, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
"We're not willing to take this. The people are going through bad times and we don't deserve this," said Monica de Albuquerque, a retiree who joined in the protests.
Women take cover during clashes between police and demonstrators protesting reforms to the retirement and pension system, in Buenos Aires, Argentina, Thursday, Dec. 14, 2017.(AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
She said it will be a "total disaster" if Macri's government goes ahead with the pension measure as well as proposals to reduce taxes and ease labor rules companies must observe.
ROSARIO, Argentina (AP) — The order to kill came from inside a federal prison near Argentina's capital. Unwitting authorities patched a call from drug traffickers tied to one of the country's most notorious gangs to collaborators on the outside. Hiring a 15-year-old hit man, they sealed the fate of a young father they didn't even know.
At a service station on March 9 in Rosario, the picturesque hometown of soccer star Lionel Messi, 25-year-old employee Bruno Bussanich was whistling to himself and checking the day's earnings just before he was shot three times from less than a foot away, surveillance footage shows. The assailant fled without taking a peso.
It was the fourth gang-related fatal shooting in Rosario in almost as many days. Authorities called it an unprecedented rampage in Argentina, which had never witnessed the extremes of drug cartel violence afflicting some other Latin American countries.
A handwritten letter was found near Bussanich's body, addressed to officials who want to curb the power drug kingpins wield from behind bars. “We don’t want to negotiate anything. We want our rights," it says. "We will kill more innocent people.”
Shaken residents interviewed by The Associated Press across Rosario described a sense of dread taking hold.
“Every time I go to work, I say goodbye to my father as if it were the last time,” said 21-year-old Celeste Núñez, who also works at a gas station.
The string of killings offer an early test to the security agenda of populist President Javier Milei, who has tethered his political success to saving Argentina’s tanking economy and eradicating narco-trafficking violence.
Since taking office Dec. 10, the right-wing leader has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983.
His law-and-order message has empowered the hardline governor of Santa Fe province, which includes Rosario, to clamp down on incarcerated criminal gangs that authorities say orchestrated 80% of shootings last year. Under the orders of Governor Maximiliano Pullaro, police have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits.
“We are facing a group of narco-terrorists desperate to maintain power and impunity,” Milei said after Bussanich was killed, announcing the deployment of federal forces in Rosario. “We will lock them up, isolate them, take back the streets.”
Milei won 56% of the vote in Rosario, where residents praise his focus on a problem largely neglected by his predecessors. But some worry the government's combative approach traps them in the line of fire.
Gangs started their deadly retaliations just hours after Pullaro’s security minister shared photos showing Argentine prisoners crammed together on the floor, heads pressed against each other’s bare backs — a scene reminiscent of El Salvador President Nayib Bukele’s harsh anti-gang crackdown.
“It’s a war between the state and the drug traffickers,” said Ezequiel, a 30-year-old employee at the gas station where Bussanich was killed. Ezequiel, who gave only his first name for fear of reprisals, said his mother has since begged him to quit. “We’re the ones paying the price.”
Even Milei's supporters have mixed feelings about the crackdown, including Germán Bussanich, the father of the slain gas station worker.
“They're putting on a show and we're facing the consequences," Bussanich told reporters.
A leafy city 300 kilometers (180 miles) northwest of Buenos Aires, Rosario is where revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara was born, Messi first kicked a soccer ball and the Argentine flag was first raised in 1812. But it most recently won notoriety because its homicide numbers are five times the national average.
Tucked into a bend in the Paraná River, Rosario's port morphed into Argentina's drug trafficking hub as regional crackdowns pushed the narcotics trade south and criminals started squirreling away cocaine in shipping containers spirited down the river to markets abroad. Although Rosario never suffered the car bombs and police assassinations gripping Mexico, Colombia and most recently Ecuador, the splintering of street gangs has fueled bloodshed.
“It’s not close to the violence in Mexico because we still have the deterrence capacity of the government in Argentina,” said Marcelo Bergman, a social scientist at the National University of Tres de Febrero in Argentina. “But we need to keep an eye on Rosario because the major threats come not so much from big cartels but when these groups proliferate and diversify.”
Drug traffickers keep a tight grip over Rosario's poor neighborhoods full of young men vulnerable to recruitment. One of them was Víctor Emanuel, a 17-year-old killed two years ago by rival gangsters in an area where street murals pay tribute to slain criminal leaders. No one was arrested.
“My neighbors know who’s responsible,” his mother, Gerónima Benítez, told the AP, her eyes shiny with tears. “I looked for help everywhere, I knocked on the doors of the judiciary, the government. No one answered.”
A fearful existence is all Benítez has ever known. But now, for the first time in Argentina, warring drug traffickers are banding together and terrorizing parts of the city previously considered safe.
Imprisoned gang leaders in Latin America have long run criminal enterprises remotely with the help of corrupt guards. But according to an indictment unveiled last week, incarcerated gang bosses in Argentina have been passing instructions on how to kill random civilians via family visits and video calls.
Court documents say the bosses paid underage hit men up to $450 to target four of the recent victims in Argentina’s third-largest city. The killing of Bussanich, two taxi drivers and a bus driver in less than a week in March, federal prosecutors say, “shattered the peace of an entire society."
Street emptied. Schools closed. Bus drivers picketed. People were too terrified to leave their homes.
“This violence is on another level,” 20-year-old Rodrigo Dominguez said from an intersection where a dangling banner demanded justice for another bus driver slain there weeks earlier. “You can’t go outside.”
Panic was still palpable in Rosario last week, as police swarmed the streets and normally bustling bars closed early for lack of customers. A diner managed by Messi’s family, a draw for fans, reported quiet nights and less profit. Women in one neighborhood said they carry 22‐caliber pistols. Analía Manso, 37, said she was too scared to send her children to school.
Pope Francis last month said he was praying for his countrymen in Rosario.
Assaults and public threats continue. This month, a sign appeared on a highway overpass warning Argentine Security Minister Patricia Bullrich that gangs would extend their offensive to Buenos Aires if the government doesn't back down.
Authorities have sought to reassure the public by sending hundreds of federal agents into Rosario. The AP spent a night with police last week as officers patrolled neighborhoods logging suspicious activity and setting up checkpoints.
Georgina Wilke, a 45-year-old Rosario officer in the explosives squad, said she welcomes federal intervention, including the military, to get crime under control. “We've been hit very hard,” Wilke said.
Omar Pereira, the provincial secretary of public security, promised the efforts represent a shift from failed tactics of the past.
“There were always pacts, implicit or explicit, between the state and criminals,” Pereira said, describing how authorities long looked the other way. “What’s the idea of this government? There is no pact."
But experts are skeptical a tough-on-crime approach will stop drug traffickers from buying control over Argentina’s police and prisons.
“Unless the government fixes its problems with corruption, the crackdown on prisons is unlikely to have any long-term effect,” said Christopher Newton, an investigator at Colombia-based research organization InSight Crime.
For years, Rosario's 1.3 million residents have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go while the violence endures.
“It’s like a cancer that grows and grows,” said Benítez from her home, its windows protected by wrought-iron bars.
“We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.”
A chain lock reinforces the locked door of a gas station that started closing shop at night after the killing of a worker at a nearby station a few weeks before, in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The order to kill came from inside Ezeiza Prison from gang leaders who hired a 15-year-old hitman to kill gas station worker Bruno Bussanich on March 9. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Prison guards stand inside the Pinero jail complex in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. President Javier Milei has called for harsher penalties against drug traffickers and military intervention. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
An inmate looks out from a window at Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Authorities have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Inmates play soccer at Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Authorities have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
The Pinero jail complex stands in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. President Javier Milei’s tough-on-crime message has empowered hardline governor Maximiliano Pullaro’s efforts to clamp down on incarcerated criminal groups, which he said planned 80% of shootings in Rosario last year. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A police officer stands guard on a street in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. President Javier Milei has promised to prosecute gang members as terrorists and change the law to allow the army into crime-ridden streets for the first time since Argentina's brutal military dictatorship ended in 1983. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Prison guards stand behind the entrance to Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Authorities have ramped up prison raids, seized thousands of smuggled cellphones and restricted visits. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A banner hangs over a bus stop asking for justice regarding the murder of bus driver Cesar Roldan in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Geronima Benitez wipes her eyes as she speaks about her son Victor Emanuel, 17, who was murdered by drug traffickers who were never arrested two years ago, during an interview at her home in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Benítez said her son’s killer still lives down her street and is not convinced a prison sentence would make a difference. “We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.” (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Geronima Benitez holds a photograph of her son Victor Emanuel, 17, who was murdered by drug traffickers who were never arrested two years ago, at her home in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Benítez said her son’s killer still lives down her street and is not convinced a prison sentence would make a difference. “We, on the outside, live in prison,” she said. “Those inside have everything.” (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Police patrol the streets of Rosario, Argentina, as a family that collects disposed cardboard to resell pushes their children in a shopping cart, late Monday, April 8, 2024. Agents fanned out across hardscrabble areas, spending hours logging neighborhood activity and setting up checkpoints on major thoroughfares. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A mural of Claudio Ariel Cantero covers a wall alongside a supportive message of him written by his family, in Rosario, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. Cantero, known as “El Pajaro,” or The Bird, was the leader of the criminal organization called “Los Monos,” or The Monkeys, and was shot to death at a bowling alley on May 26, 2013 in Santa Fe. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A resident who did not want to be identified shows the gun she keeps at her home for self-defense as she poses for a photo in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The homicide rate is five times the national average in Rosario. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
People hang out at a park in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The birthplace of Lionel Messi and revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara morphed about a decade ago into the country’s drug trafficking hub, as regional crackdowns pushed the trade south. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
Police officer Georgina Wilke drives her patrol car in Rosario, Argentina, late Monday, April 8, 2024. Agents fanned out across hardscrabble areas, spending hours logging neighborhood activity and setting up checkpoints on major thoroughfares. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A child rides a bicycle past a mural of Gabriel Ignacio Romero, a resident who was murdered on the sidewalk outside his home the previous year, in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. For the past decade, the 1.3 million residents of Rosario have watched warily as presidents and their promises come and go. What endures, they say, is violence. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A mural of soccer player Lionel Messi covers a building in Rosario, Argentina, Monday, April 8, 2024. The birthplace of Messi and revolutionary Ernesto “Che” Guevara morphed about a decade ago into the country’s drug trafficking hub, as regional crackdowns pushed the trade south. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
A prison guard sits in a watchtower at the Pinero jail in Pinero, Argentina, Tuesday, April 9, 2024. President Javier Milei has called for harsher penalties against drug traffickers and military intervention. (AP Photo/Natacha Pisarenko)
