A lethal location

IN AUGUST 2014 Enrique Bertini was arriving home in Echesortu, a middle-class neighbourhood of Rosario, Argentina’s third-largest city. While he was preparing to park his pickup truck, Mariano, his 22-year-old son, came downstairs to open the garage from the inside. As soon as he opened the door two armed men drew up on a motorbike. One approached the car while the other forced his way into the garage. In the ensuing struggle Enrique was shot in the thigh and pelvis, and Mariano in the head, fatally. The older man still struggles to make sense of the attack: “This kind of tragedy robs you of your daily life. You lose your north and your south. You have to start all over again.”

Rosario and its 1.3m residents have in recent years been notorious for a nasty reason: a crime rate that far exceeds that of other Argentine cities (see chart). The frequency of murders is nearly triple the national average; 137 people have been killed so far this year. On August 25th more than 20,000 Rosarinos marched through the streets demanding action. Half of residents surveyed in a recent poll said they or a family member had been a victim of crime in the past year.