Los Monos and Newell’s: the story of blood and drugs that mourns Rosario

The crime of Lorenzo Altamirano at the door of the Newell’s stadium and the mafia note attached in one of his pockets addressed to two bar bosses who are in prison and who are the right hand of Ariel Guille Cantero once again brought to the fore the influence of Los Monos on soccer in Rosario in general and the rojinegra tribune in particular. A story that has been going on for 15 years now, which left more than 40 dead along the way and which links drug trafficking, common crime and soccer like few other places on the planet.

To understand the common thread, we must go back to the second half of the 2000s, when Claudius the Songbird he took the reins of the Los Monos family clan that his father, Ariel Máximo alias el Viejo, had built since 2003, after winning the territory after a bloody fight against another criminal organization called Los Garompas. El Pájaro understood that to make the structure grow, allying with the bars of Central and Newell’s would be a profitable business. and little by little he was coopting them. That of the Scoundrel, through Oscar Paco Mono Ferreyra, the henchman at the time of the historic leader of Gigante de Arroyito, Andrés Pillín Bracamonte. The one of the Leprosy with the entrance to the paravalanchas of Daniel Teto Vázquez, a close friend of his stepbrother Ramón Monchi Machuca. The growth of both bars was explosive and while the leaders kept the field business with the protection of Los Monos, they used their followers to sell cocaine in the bunkers that they spread throughout the area and also participated in the big businesses of the soccer, like getting into the world of the Inferior Leagues and managing the careers of many players, including some who later went to Europe.

That irruption made rival gangs also want to expand into soccer and have generated an all-out war throughout the city in the past decade. In Central Pillín Bracamonte always ended up triumphing, but in Newell’s since the fall of the historic Roberto Pimpi Camino, murdered in 2010, there were battles with the Paz, Funes and Bassi families until Los Monos ended up prevailing, although on the way they lost their commander, the Pájaro Cantero, assassinated in 2013, which brought his brother, the bloodthirsty Guille, to the dome.

He tried to take the stage with different names, all linked to violence and drug trafficking, and the leaders and the dead followed one another. First, Diego el Panadero Ochoa, an opponent of Los Monos, ruled until he was imprisoned in 2013 accused of instigating a double homicide. He was succeeded by Nelson el Chivo Saravia, who in the middle had to face another drug group led by Marcelo Coto Medrano and Matías Pera, who wanted to get a foot in the stands. He endured four failed attacks until they ended up killing him in 2021, when they had already thrown him out of the center of the popular. Meanwhile, the war was unleashed below him to succeed him, which in 2016 claimed four lives in a month, including those of Maximiliano Larroca and Cuatrero Franchetti, who have the dubious honor of having led the bar just a week each before. to be killed. The one who tried to take the place was another criminal linked to drug trafficking, Ariel Teletubi Acosta, considered in the Justice a hitman for whatever he likes to command, who also ended up in prison. There, another heavyweight of the criminal underworld, Emiliano Jija Avejera, believed that it was his time but ended up outside and convicted with six homicides to his credit.

In the same way, there were too many signs for El Chivo that his future was underground and even more so when the unequivocal message reached him that he had lost the trust of Guille Cantero, who at that time had four gangsters in prison who were in charge of managing the business of the Newell’s popular: Leandro el Pollo Vinardi, Damián el Toro Escobar, Pablo Nicolás Camino and Marcos el Pato Mc Caddon. They ended up making an agreement with Pillín Bracamonte to put someone they could control, manage the business and give the Colossus peace. And there Marcelo then crowned the Pipi Arriola whose service record gave for that place: he had eight criminal records of all kinds. It was 2017 and under his mandate there were three years of tense calm with Los Monos controlling everything from jail. But the pandemic came, business shrank, Arriola wanted to postpone payments to his bosses and they then took him out of the game and put Aldo el Gatito Sosa in his place, a close friend of Pato McCaddon who also had an additional advantage: he worked in the Santa Fe Ombudsman’s Office, which allowed him all kinds of ties. Unusual.

When this came to light in 2021, the Kitten went down in history and in his place Guillermo Ojitos Sosa agreed, nominated by Pollo Vinardi, with Alejandro el Rengo Ficcadenti as henchman. It was then that El Chivo Saravia thought that he could return if he allied himself with other narco groups from Rosario that were facing Los Monos, who were under judicial crossfire. He miscalculated: First they sent a crown to his house to make him reflect, since this did not happen and they saw that he continued to gather soldiers from other drug groups such as those of the Ungaro and Alvarado families, they directly went and in October 2021 they murdered him after entering which commando group at dawn to his house and shoot him in front of his partner and his underage son. Sosa and Ficcadenti would not get this homicide for free: after a patient investigation in mid-2022, the Complex Crimes Prosecutor’s Office led by Dr. Matías Edery managed to gather the evidence of their participation and send them to prison.

It was then that, towards the end of the tournament last year, according to the records of the judicial investigation, a covert man took over as leader: Walter Matías Maciel, who was seen more as a ticket facilitator than anything else. But becoming the head of the paravalanche transforms you and Walter White was adding power. So much so that he became a threat to Pollo Vinardi and Toro Escobar, who saw from prison how his influence in the bar could diminish. And on January 27 at dawn, when Maciel was leaving the club in an Audi A 5, he was riddled with nine bullets from a motorcycle, two of which hit his body and he was admitted in a reserved state at the Clemente Emergency Hospital. Alvarez.

For Justice, this event happened two days before Newell’s debut in the Professional League against Platense as a visitor, was the trigger for what came next: the crime of Lorenzo Altamirano on Thursday morning, for which the case is still being investigated. disturbing hypothesis of whether it was broadcast, as his friends or family maintain, or there is some kind of binding glass. And added to this, at the same time as the crime, there was a shooting at the Villa Gobernador Gálvez police station, an area where Vinardi is present. In both events a disturbing mafia message appeared: “Damián Escobar, Leandro Vinardi, stop taking boys out of the club to shoot.” Something that, reviewing the history of the Newell’s bar, unfortunately does not seem to be going to happen.

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