Within the framework of its first thematic axis “Culture and drug-trafficking in Rosario,” the Centro Cultural Contraviento held a discussion meeting entitled "The scribes and their time". Referents from different disciplines talked about the oddity of writing in an era marked by uncertainty and despair, consequences of this problem.
Journalist Germán De los Santos, author, with Hernán Lascano, of the books "Los Monos y Rosario, La historia de la mafia narco que se adueñó de la ciudad" was the first to narrate his experience of approaching the theme through writing. “What we seek with these books is to tell the story of a city of Rosario with a broken soul. Not only to tell it, but to reflect on a phenomenon that is more than just a safety issue”.
Poet Eduardo D'Anna, who is exhibiting a poem on this topic at Contraviento, argued that in order to understand and write, one must first of all put a dimension on the city. “What’s going on with Rosario? Even in Buenos Aires there are places as permeated by drugs and violence as Rosario. Why do we assume the emblematic role of drug capital?”.
“Rosario's diffuse identity is key to the problem. Since it is not the capital of its province, it lacks a clear identity, because it does not feel like a city from Santa Fe nor a metropolitan city. It has always been left to its own devices. It was the city of the mafia. And when there was political will, the mafia was erased.”
Does the State truly save you?
The writer and poet Martín Rodríguez, known under the pseudonym Tintalimón, answered directly to the main question of the discussion meeting: How to write today?
“We must try to find a way to review the small setbacks, the border area of what’s accepted as natural and what is not, not only in people who lives in the margins, but who have known violence for a longer time,” he said.
“Violence is disrupting areas where Argentina usually has a circuit breaker, such as the middle layers. When things reach the middle class, without being pejorative nor critical, the circuit breaker trips. We cannot fail to notice this”.
Rodriguez emphasized the threshold of the standardization of brutal facts that included the murdering of an innocent gas station clerk, who had nothing to do with the drug-trafficking business, as happened in the city during the crime wave of early March.
“The government of the Frente de Todos political party assumed that the slogan ‘The State saves you’ was effective, but it was not, because we left with the word ‘caste.’ There couldn't be a greater contrast. They oversold something very expensive”.
He associated this idea to the fact that people no longer expect anything from the State. “In Rosario, the idea of the State is fraying. There is a criminal gang killing innocent people, whose lives are tragically taken without knowing why. That has already been assimilated, because we find a way to assimilate the sinister, but now something has fallen apart.”
