On Friday, soccer superstar Lionel Messi will be married there to Antonella Roccuzzo at a lavish celebration bringing together some of the world’s best-paid soccer players, just up the street from one of the city’s poorest and most dangerous neighborhoods.

Some 21 members of the hugely popular FC Barcelona team, including Luis Suarez and Neymar, as well as stars like Gerard Pique — accompanied by partner Shakira, perhaps more popular than the Catalan defender himself — will be flying into this port city 180 miles (300 kilometers) north of Buenos Aires.

The luxurious City Center casino-hotel complex, where guests will stay and the ceremony is expected to take place, borders a poor neighborhood known as the birthplace of the bloody drug gang Los Monos.

«Messi’s marriage — like the casino’s presence in the neighborhood — is a metaphor for inequality,» provincial official Carlos Del Frade, author of several books on Rosario’s exploding drug trade, told AFP.

A mere 400 yards (meters) from the bright lights and neon of City Center, two people on a motorcycle opened fire June 17 on four women belonging to Los Monos. The attack claimed the life of Petrona Cantero, 56, the sister of Ariel Cantero, the historic leader of Los Monos, who is now serving a prison sentence.

Drug gang-linked violence has claimed more than 1,000 lives in the past five years in this gritty port city, Del Frade said.

Last year, the homicide rate in Rosario was double the national average of seven per 100,000 inhabitants, according to a report from the Ministry of Security of Santa Fe province, which includes Rosario.

In the Las Flores neighborhood, just behind the City Center complex, Los Monos holds virtually total power, according to Del Frade, who said the gang amounts to the «de facto government» there.

‘He feels comfortable here’

Historically, Rosario has long had a strong working class, and today’s violence stems largely from widespread unemployment, political scientists and economists say.

Messi’s father, a metalworker here in the 1990s, emigrated with his family to Barcelona in 2000, amid the grave economic crisis then facing Argentina.

Today, the government in Rosario says it feels confident the safety of the illustrious visitor and his guests can be assured, regardless of the high crime rate.

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