A wave of gang violence has rocked Ecuador after a powerful drug gang boss disappeared from prison. That prompted the government to declare a state of emergency as it struggles to combat a crime wave in the Andean country.
Adolfo Macías, leader of the feared Los Choneros gang, better known by his alias Fito, was first reported missing on Sunday from his cell at the regional prison complex in the violent port city of Guayaquil.
Authorities said two prison officers had been charged for their alleged involvement in a possible escape, while 3,000 police and soldiers had been deployed to the manhunt, which continued on Tuesday.
President Daniel Noboa declared a 60-day nationwide state of emergency, which includes a nighttime curfew and the authorization of soldiers to quell violence in prisons, after riots broke out in six prisons and an unknown number of guards were taken hostage following Fito's disappearance .
“We will not negotiate with terrorists,” Noboa, a 36-year-old business heir who took office in November pledging to stop the country’s worsening security crisis, said late Monday. “These narco-terrorist groups want to intimidate us into believing that we will give in to their demands.”
On Tuesday afternoon, Noboa said Ecuador was experiencing an “internal armed conflict” in an updated decree recognizing the Choneros and other gangs as terrorist groups.
Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa, who took office in November, plans to build a large maximum-security prison in the Amazon jungle © Presidencia Ecuador/AFP/Getty ImagesEcuador was once a relatively peaceful country surrounded by more violent neighbors. But it is struggling to contain a rise in crime caused by drug gangs competing to establish profitable smuggling routes and establish ties with cartels from Mexico, Albania and elsewhere. The country's per capita murder rate in 2023 – 46.5 per 100,000 residents – has increased eightfold since 2018 and is among the highest in the region.
Despite the state of emergency, the country was shaken by several violent incidents, the police said on Tuesday.
A television station in Guayaquil was stormed by masked gunmen on live television. The show showed employees sitting and lying on their stomachs as their attackers walked through the set with guns and grenades. Shouts of “no police” could be heard before the signal eventually failed. Police said a task force had been dispatched to the scene.
In the 24 hours before the raid, at least seven Ecuadorian police officers were kidnapped by criminals across the country, including in Machala, a southwestern city, and the capital Quito, where a vehicle carrying a liquefied petroleum gas station was set on fire.
Authorities said unknown attackers fired an explosive at a military truck in Cuenca, a mountain town popular with tourists. In Esmeraldas, a coastal province that has seen some of the worst violence, police reported three attacks involving explosives.
Another prison break occurred in Riobamba in the central Andes, with 32 inmates escaping, including Fabricio Colón, one of the leaders of the Los Lobos gang, the city's mayor told local website Primicias. Twenty refugees have been recaptured, although Colón remains at large.
The nation was traumatized in August when center-right presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated by gunmen ahead of early elections in November. Before his killing at a rally in Quito, Villavicencio said the Choneros had threatened him, although authorities had not linked the group to his killing.
Amid the violence, prisons come under the control of gangs, who often use them as bases for their operations and scenes of street battles. Over the past four years, more than 400 prisoners have died and numerous massacres have occurred in the regional complex where Macías was held.
Roberto Izurieta, a government spokesman, said in a television interview on Monday that the country's penal system had “completely failed” and that Macías was expected to be transferred to a high-security facility just hours before his disappearance.
Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, leader of the Los Choneros gang, under police escort in the prison complex in Guayaquil in August © Ecuadorian Armed Forces/AFP/Getty ImagesDuring the election campaign, Noboa promised to house criminals on a prison ship, and since taking office his government has said it wants to build a large maximum-security prison in the Amazon jungle.
Criminal activity began to flourish in Ecuador last decade when the leftist government of Rafael Correa took a lax stance on drug trafficking as long as violent crime was kept low.
Lenin Moreno and Guillermo Lasso, his more moderate successors, failed to prevent violence in prisons from spreading to the streets, with their faltering security policies partly responsible for their low popularity after they left office.
The Choneros gang, one of the largest in Ecuador, is heavily involved in drug trafficking and extortion and has ties to Mexico's powerful Sinaloa cartel as well as several Colombian drug trafficking groups, according to authorities. In November, a suspected leader of the powerful drug gang Los Lobos, a splinter group of the Choneros, was arrested.
Macías, who was serving a 34-year prison sentence, was convicted in 2011 of drug trafficking, organized crime and murder. He escaped from prison in February 2013 but was caught again weeks later.
Noboa's government wants to hold a referendum that would allow the extradition of citizens accused of crimes abroad and the confiscation of suspects' assets. The vote still requires approval from the country's Constitutional Court before it can be carried out.