The conflict in Santa Fe, far from being a local problem, has become an alarm signal for a national government that is dragging tensions with its own federal forces. Córdoba, 2013 On December 3, 2013, a majority sector of the Córdoba Police abandoned the streets. It is the federal authority, and with the 2013 lesson etched in fire, it acted quickly: it added 30 mobile units to the 70 of the Plan Bandera that were already operating in Santa Fe territory, incorporated investigation brigades and other detachments, and ordered that “all units be on the street”. The federal forces arrived when the province had already closed its own agreement with the police and order was beginning to be restored. The lack of aid finally broke the bond between kirchnerism and Córdoba for good, a political divorce that still endures. Twelve years earlier, in another province and in another position, a police barracks mobilization was activated, leaving her facing looting that terrorized Córdoba and cost her her job just 88 days after having been sworn in as provincial minister. The difference is that this time the national intervention was immediate: there were no unanswered phones, no deliberate delays, no speculation with the intervention of the province. There were patrol cars on the street. But the rapid response does not solve the underlying problem. The police salary conflict is not an Argentine novelty nor a Santa Fe phenomenon: it is a national constant that erupts cyclically, changing scenarios but maintaining the same logic. Now she is the federal authority, and the libertarian government does not want to repeat the kirchnerist error in Córdoba. The low incomes of the security and defense forces are a structural problem in Argentina that no government has resolved from its roots. Last week, the Government split the IOFSA social work in two, a decision that worsened internal discontent. Poorly paid forces that accumulate frustration, provincial governments that postpone negotiations, and a Nation that ends up putting out fires with federal resources and emergency deployments. At that time, the national government of Cristina Kirchner avoided immediate assistance. Now history returns a similar scene, but with amplified variables: it is no longer a newcomer to a provincial cabinet, but the head of security for the entire country. Monteoliva, who had assumed as provincial Security Minister just three months earlier—designated by Governor José Manuel de la Sota as a technical profile, the first woman to head that portfolio in Córdoba—found herself at the center of the storm. Her academic background, her time at the Observatory of Crime and Violence, and her data-based and strategic planning approach were not enough to contain a police force with structural problems accumulated over years: depressed salaries, internal corruption, command conflicts, and a corporate culture that bordered on self-governance. The negotiation failed, the institutional channels broke. The national government of Cristina Fernández de Kirchner did not collaborate either. The claim was salary-related, but the consequence was devastating: a liberated zone, a chain of looting, two dead, hundreds injured, and over a thousand businesses destroyed. Buenos Aires, February 11 (NA)– When on Monday night the first images of patrol cars parked and police with arms crossed began to circulate from Santa Fe, the Minister of National Security, Alejandra Monteoliva, did not need anyone to explain what was happening. She had lived it firsthand. According to data from the Ministry of National Security itself, of the 200 provincial patrol cars usually deployed in Rosario, only 30 were circulating on Monday and 50 on Tuesday, figures that the provincial minister Pablo Cococcioni tried to downplay at a press conference, assuring that the night service was not affected. But this time Monteoliva is not the overwhelmed minister of a province in flames. The provincial police, the federal forces—PFA, PSA, Prefecture, Gendarmería—and the Armed Forces drag chronic salary claims. And the most alarming data: more than 18,000 uniformed members of the Armed Forces requested their discharge since December 2023, an unprecedented exodus that hits the Army particularly hard. The most recent precedent is already in the Government's own files: in 2024, a police and teachers' uprising in Misiones forced the Nation to intervene with a Treasury Contribution of 9,000 million pesos, despite Patricia Bullrich having promised not to get involved. For Monteoliva, this crisis has a density that transcends the operational. The slogan is clear: there cannot be blind spots, there cannot be a liberated zone. The ghost of contagion What worries the most in the Casa Rosada is not Santa Fe itself, but what Santa Fe can ignite. The former head of the Córdoba cabinet, Oscar González, even declared in a judicial hearing that “no national official answered the phone” and that the President delayed the sending of Gendarmería. Santafesino uniformed personnel from different localities joined a protest for salary improvements. Monteoliva resigned six days after the barracks mutiny. Santa Fe, 2026. More than a decade later, the circumstances rhyme. In 2013, the lack of a federal response left her alone before the disaster.
