Less than two weeks after an unprecedented outbreak of violence, the return to calm in Ecuador is only relative. Dozens of people were arrested in an attempted attack on a hospital on Sunday, January 21, a new episode of violence in this country rocked by war with gangs.
Ecuadorian police announced the arrest of 68 suspected members of a criminal organization who tried to break into a hospital housing one of their own. “We have neutralized suspected terrorists who wanted to take control of the facilities of a hospital in Yaguachi”, in the province of Guayas (southwest of the country), it announced “injured member of their organization” who was admitted to this health facility early in the morning was.
Firearms and drugs were also confiscated. According to police, a secret “re-education center” where suspected members of the organization were “hiding” was also raided. Authorities have recently closed several such centers, which are essentially secret hospitals run by gangs and which authorities say lack the medical equipment needed to treat patients.
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On Sunday, around ten tons of drugs were also confiscated near the town of Vinces in Los Rios province (west), the army said on X.
Creation of an “Andean Security Network”
On the same day, an emergency meeting dedicated to Ecuador was held in Lima, Peru, undermined as never before by violence related to drug trafficking. The member countries of the Andean Community of Nations (CAN) came together. At the end of this summit, Colombia, Peru, Bolivia and Ecuador announced the creation of the first “Andean Security Network” against organized crime, according to an official statement.
This network ensures “a 24-hour service, seven days a week, to provide and receive information and/or request information from other countries (…) on the activities of criminal groups that carry out or may carry out cross-border activities. “Operations,” stated the CAN foreign, interior and defense ministers.
“We have written history, we have written a new chapter for CAN,” said Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld. “Fear paralyzes countries,” she emphasized. We have seen that fear has paralyzed Ecuador, crippling investment and increasing unemployment and migration.”
A country “at internal war”
The spread and spread of gangs operating drug trafficking and crime in Ecuador has put border areas on alert. Peru and Colombia have tightened their border controls, fearing the entry of criminals fleeing increasing repression in Ecuador.
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Ecuador, considered a relatively safe country, has been descending into violence for five years, against the backdrop of economic downturn and impoverishment following the Covid-19 pandemic: the murder rate has risen from 6 to 46 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.
Located between Colombia and Peru, the world's largest cocaine producers, Ecuador has been sheltered from drug-trafficking violence for years. But from a simple transit country it has become an operational and logistics center for the transport of cocaine to Europe. And around twenty gangs literally rule the law, especially from prisons.
Read also: Article reserved for our subscribers In Ecuador, President Daniel Noboa declares war on the gangs
A level of terror was reached on January 9 with the live attack on public television TC by heavily armed men who briefly took journalists and station employees hostage before police arrived to rescue them and thirteen attackers to arrest. Eight days later, anti-Mafia prosecutor Cesar Suarez, who was responsible for investigating this spectacular attack, was assassinated in broad daylight in the center of Guayaquil (southwest).
President Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency and declared the country an “internal war” against gangs described as “terrorists” who stationed more than 20,000 soldiers on the ground.