Ecuador
There is an eerie silence in Guayaquil as armed forces patrol after a stunning wave of arsons, bombings and prison riots that have killed up to 15 people
Thu, January 11, 2024, 7:15 p.m. GMT
Ecuador's largest city has been turned into a virtual ghost town by a stunning wave of criminal violence that prompted the South American country's recently elected president to declare his country was in a “state of war.”
The streets of Guayaquil – a normally bustling port city of about 3 million people – remained eerily quiet on Thursday after a series of arson attacks, car bombings, shootings and prison riots in various parts of the country left up to 15 people dead.
Street corners filled with piles of trash after garbage collectors – such as schools, universities and government offices – suspended operations. Many of the city's normally congested streets were nearly free of traffic – and those who ventured out drove at high speeds to avoid putting themselves in danger. Most shops and businesses remained closed, including outside the nationwide 11pm to 5am curfew introduced in response to this week's violence. After dark on Wednesday, there was hardly a soul to be seen.
“Guayaquil is a desert,” said José Luis Calderón, a local television journalist who was taken hostage on live television Tuesday when more than a dozen gunmen stormed his station's headquarters in the city.
Shortly after this brazen attack on the broadcaster TC Televisión, Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict”. “We are in a state of war and we cannot give in to these terrorists,” Noboa said on Wednesday as security forces fought to regain control of Ecuador's streets and prisons, the government said 178 guards and workers were still held hostage of gangsters with ties to Mexican drug cartels.
During a patrol at the Caraguay fish market on Guayaquil's riverfront, a navy spokesman, Marcelo Gutiérrez, insisted that authorities would fight back and prevail.
“These criminals can be sure that we will not hesitate for a second when it comes to protecting our citizens… If we have to give our lives to defend the population, we will do it,” Gutiérrez, 38, vowed his troops marched through the market with assault rifles.
The navy spokesman claimed the situation in Guayaquil had been brought under control and the port city was gradually returning to normal, although Guardian reporters saw few signs of security forces on the city's streets on Wednesday and Thursday.
The starting point for this week's violence is La Regional, a maximum-security prison on the northern outskirts of Guayaquil that until recently held one of Ecuador's most notorious criminals, José Adolfo Macías Villamar.
Members of the army's elite troops inspect men and verify their identities during a patrol in the streets of Carapungo, a popular neighborhood in northern Quito. Photo: AFP/Getty Images
Macías, the leader of Los Choneros – a powerful gang linked to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel – reportedly disappeared peacefully from his cell to the core over the weekend.
After Macías, whose nickname is “Fito,” disappeared, inmates took numerous prison guards hostage. Videos of the killing of security officials, some of which appeared to be fake, spread like wildfire on social media. On Tuesday, at the height of the violence, at least eight people were killed and two injured as a daily newspaper dubbed Guayaquil's “Day of Terror.”
“Tuesday was ugly. It was like an earthquake or a tsunami or some kind of natural disaster,” said Marco Flores, a 43-year-old newspaper seller, as he stood outside the regional prison on Thursday lunchtime, flanked by soldiers with rifles.
The tabloid Extra, promoted by Flores, offered a chilling snapshot of the violence in Ecuador, where the murder rate has skyrocketed in the past five years as the country plays an increasingly important role in international cocaine smuggling between South America and Europe.
A wanted poster for José Adolfo Macías Villamar, leader of the Los Choneros gang. Photo: AP
One story tells of a heroic security guard who rushed a bleeding schoolgirl to the hospital on Tuesday after she was hit by a stray bullet. Another described how 35 special forces police officers had successfully recaptured the TC Televisión studios and freed the journalists. A third article claimed that vigilantes armed with machetes and baseball bats were challenging the gangs in the capital, Quito. A fourth told how shopkeepers in both Guayaquil and Quito had gone out of business to avoid looting – or worse. “We’re safe, but we’re screwed,” one frustrated trader was quoted as saying.
An editorial in the same newspaper urged Ecuador's nearly 18 million residents to support Noboa, elected just last October, in his steadfast quest to defeat more than 20 “terrorist” gangs, including the Latin Wolves Kings , the Chone Killers and another called AK47. “Now, more than at any other time in our history, it is critical for all of Ecuadorian society to unite to advance this unprecedented war,” Extra said, concluding: “We have reached the breaking point and there is no other option “To save our country.”
Human rights and security experts fear Noboa's campaign to “neutralize” the gangs could cause more bloodshed, not less. “The short-term reaction is [going to be] a massive crackdown,” predicted Chris Dalby, the director of World of Crime, an investigative journalism group that focuses on organized crime. “I think He [Noboa] will increase the number of deaths and in the election campaign he has to do that, [even though] I wouldn’t agree with that.”
Dalby believed this week's attacks were a calculated attempt by gang leaders to intimidate Noboa, Ecuador's youngest-ever president, after the 36-year-old suggested he would pursue a tough approach inspired by El Salvador's authoritarian President Nayib Bukele .
“I think it was a shared feeling: 'We're going to show this guy what we can do and we're going to knock him down,'” Dalby said.
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