There is violence these days in Ecuador, a country that until five years ago was one of the safest in the region. President Daniel Noboa, the son of the country's richest businessman, 36 years old and only 50 days in office, is facing an unprecedented crisis. Using prisons as their center of operations, organized crime has killed police and prison officers and attempted to attack hospitals and police stations in the last 72 hours. Noboa has sent the army onto the streets and asked them to shoot down criminals he believes are terrorists. “We are at war,” the president said.
There are scenes of violence throughout the country, but especially in Guayaquil, the most dangerous city. Citizens are protecting themselves from street shootings and looting that take place in malls and street-level stores. Criminals disguised as police officers set up roadblocks and murder or kidnap the occupants of the cars. The country saw how 13 hooded young people attacked the set of a public media company, TC Televisión, live and threatened journalists with weapons, grenades and what looked like dynamite for half an hour, during which the broadcast was not interrupted . The barbarism became a reality show.
Ecuadorian gangs linked to the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), both Mexican, have infiltrated the state by buying off police chiefs, generals, judges and prosecutors. Their key leaders, from prisons converted into luxury suites with bars and swimming pools, control the drug routes leading into the United States and major ports and borders. They have officers in key positions on their payroll and those who do not live at risk of being murdered. One way or another, they end up being in control.
Noboa has shown no signs of strong leadership so far. His role was secondary, leaving the spotlight at news conferences to senior Army officials. His biggest coup was to declare an “internal armed conflict” and impose a curfew, something other presidents had introduced in the past. In an interview on Radio Canela on Wednesday, he pointed out that the state is faced with “terrorist groups” made up of more than 20,000 people. “We will not give in, we will not let society slowly die,” he added.
During the election campaign, he asserted that he had a plan to regain control of the prisons. This also includes accommodating the most dangerous prisoners on barges on the high seas, 120 kilometers from the coast. The plan has not yet been implemented at this time and no further details are known about it. José Adolfo Macías Villamar alias Fito, considered the most dangerous criminal in Ecuador, leader of the gang known as Los Choneros, and Fabricio Colón Pico, a member of Los Lobos, took advantage of this vacuum of authority to escape from prison. The prison doors were thrown wide open to them without the prison governors lifting a finger. The former are associated with drug traffickers from Sinaloa, the latter with those from Jalisco. The subterfuges of these two important leaders led to a wave of confrontations in the streets.
Bring back 1,500 Colombian prisoners
The president says he is prepared to pardon the key leaders of these organizations so that they can directly confront the deployed military officers. “They don’t dare,” he believes. He says the target is the officials who are paid through crime and are also considered terrorists, who face a prison sentence of between 10 and 13 years. To give one example, a judge had ordered Fito's release six times, even though there was no reason for it. Noboa has inherited an immense debt from former President Guillermo Lasso, which forces him hand and foot to carry out a major operation. Of course he says he has the support of Israel and the United States. Also towards Colombian President Gustavo Petro, to whom he did not react too politely. He has proposed sending back the 1,500 Colombian prisoners serving sentences in Ecuadorian prisons, the vast majority for drug trafficking. If he refuses to take them in, he says he will release them at the border.
Ecuadorians are witnessing frightening scenes these days. In a video uploaded to Instagram, three masked men can be seen asking the president to start a dialogue with the organized gangs. At his feet, humiliated, nine prison officers, face down and with their hands behind their heads. “[Si no se producen esas conversaciones] “We will kill all officials inside and outside the prisons,” says one of the criminals. He then grabs one of the nine at random and hangs it with a rope hanging from the ceiling and tied to an iron door. As the man dies, another official stands up and speaks into the camera: “Mr. President, do not allow this massacre to continue here.” In the background, the hanged man's corpse swings like a pendulum.
Experts fear that the fight against criminal structures will take on an authoritarian tendency, as happened in El Salvador. “We are dealing with criminals who use terrorist tactics, but that does not mean that they are terrorist groups,” agrees Luis Carlos Córdova, an analyst specializing in security. As early as April of the previous year, Lasso identified terrorism as an enemy, a measure that, according to the expert, “can be described as desperate and can get out of control”. In his opinion, this declaration of internal conflict can lead to the commission of false positives, a term coined in Colombia to describe the murder of innocent people posed as criminals.
For Córdova, the fact that drug traffickers have infiltrated and integrated into the state makes the army's presence useless. At least one general, a handful of colonels and 13 officers are known to have worked for Los Lobos. “In the end, it could be criminal structures that protect the security plan itself, leading to the emergence of an authoritarian state, a terrorist regime,” he concludes.
Meanwhile, chaos continues to reign in Ecuador. This represents a greater challenge for the state than other countries such as Colombia and Mexico. The prisons remain in the hands of the gangs that control the main sources of power, including politics, as evidenced by the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. The collapse of institutions continues, threatening to create a drug state in a country that until recently seemed immune to the difficulties of its neighbors. The nation faces a challenge of biblical proportions.
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