Charles Darwin described it as the desolate of the Galápagos Islands, an almost alien outpost full of giant tortoises and marine iguanas found nowhere else in the world, where smoke rises from volcanic craters and black lava oozes.
Currently, more than 100,000 tourists visit the white sandy beaches of Isabela. Anyone arriving by plane lands at José de Villamil Airport, a lonely runway surrounded by bushes. During the day, the modest facility is run by a single employee. At night everything is dark. There are no surveillance cameras, no lights and no one guarding the entrance to one of the most protected reserves in the world.
There, one night in early 2021, shortly after dark, the 53yearold airport employee was startled by a noise: the hum of a small plane landing on the runway without warning.
In a panic, he jumped on his motorcycle and rushed to the police station. But by the time authorities arrived on the scene, the Cessna Conquest II had already been abandoned. Whoever had piloted it had fled, leaving behind eight fuel containers, five of them full.
The authorities suspected drug traffickers from the start.
The mystery offers a glimpse into the growing criminal threat to the Galápagos Islands, the beloved UNESCO World Heritage Site, which is drawn into the growing drug trade that is engulfing much of Latin America.
An Ecuadorian Coast Guard crew tasked with intercepting drug traffickers in the Galápagos Islands brings the Coast Guard vessel Darwin Island back to San Cristóbal Island. Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington PostPresident of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, visits the television station TC Television, which was attacked by drug traffickers in Guayaquil, Ecuador Photo: César Muñoz/AP
On the mainland of Ecuador, 600 miles away, Mexican and Albanian drug traffickers unleashed a wave of gang violence unprecedented in the country's history.
On Tuesday, gunmen terrorized the country with a series of apparently coordinated attacks: car bombs, prison riots, kidnappings of police officers. A group took control of a television station during a live broadcast and held employees at gunpoint. President Daniel Noboa took the extraordinary step of declaring an internal armed conflict in the country: “We are in a state of war.”
The growing global demand for cocaine is driving this tide of violence. International criminal organizations work with local gangs to transport the drug from South America to the United States and Europe. In order to begin the journey, smugglers need gasoline. So they made the Galapagos Islands their secret refueling point. A secret gas station in the Pacific.
In Isabela, the only airport employee feared that the cartels had arrived. The Cessna was towed to the edge of the runway and left there.
One morning, two months later, the employee arrived at the airport to start work and had another surprise.
“I went to wash my face to see if what I saw was true,” he told authorities.
The ghost plane was gone.
The lucrative business of gasoline smuggling
Because of Ecuador's location the country lies between Colombia and Peru, the world's two largest cocaine producers it became a transit point for drug traffickers transporting drugs north to Central America.
But the authorities began to intensify military patrols. In 2021, they seized a record 176 tons of cocaine, compared to 92 the previous year.
To avoid the authorities, many smugglers now take a detour that leads around the southern and western Galapagos Islands. They call this route across the empty, open sea the “Desert Route.” Using speedboats or submersibles, traffickers can travel for up to 14 days without docking, Ecuadorian navy officials say, scratching their skin if necessary to stay awake.
In 2023, the Navy seized nearly 25 tons of cocaine in the Galapagos Islands nine tons in November alone a 150% increase from 2022. In 2019, the Navy seized just 1 ton.
For years, the artisanal fishermen here have received government subsidies for fuel to secure their precarious existence. Many now use statesubsidized fuel to engage in the lucrative business of gas smuggling. Instead of using discounted, legally purchased gasoline for their daily catch, fishermen are saving their supply for the tugboats, Navy officials say.
“I was offered $6,000 to $7,000 for a trip,” said one fisherman. The man, in his early 40s, spoke on condition of anonymity to discuss his experiences smuggling gas years ago. Using a satellite phone and tracking GPS coordinates, he said he found four masked men on a speedboat. Two drove, he said; Two guarded the cocaine at gunpoint.
Isabela Plane Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Pos
“A lot of people have become millionaires because of it,” the man said. Navy officials say gas smugglers can earn up to $30,000 per job.
Cocaine seizures in the Galapagos Islands have increased in recent months. But it's no longer just gasoline and drugs that are being smuggled across the islands: at the end of November, the Navy found 112 rifles and 48 pistols on a speedboat about 150 miles south of the island of San Cristóbal. Investigators suspect the weapons were on their way to arm Ecuadorian gangs fighting for control of drug routes.
Pablo Ramírez, who led the national police's antinarcotics efforts until November, said the Pacific smuggling route was the most difficult for authorities to control and the waters around the Galápagos Islands were particularly at risk. Ramírez, who previously headed the country's prison system, was one of about two dozen police officers and judges arrested in December for alleged criminal activity on behalf of an imprisoned drug trafficker. He denies the allegations and has not yet been formally charged.
Ecuador is responsible for monitoring more than 490,000 square miles of ocean area five times the country's land area. The more than 24,000 boats registered for artisanal fishing dock in more than 120 ports and on many other beaches, most of which are not monitored by authorities. The U.S. presence on this coast is minimal; In 2009, thenleftist President Rafael Correa expelled American forces from a military base in the port city of Manta.
Victor John Coronado and two Coast Guard comrades board and inspect a boat in San Cristóbal that they suspect of gas smuggling. Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post
Capt. Patricio Rivas, naval commander in the Galapagos, said the islands had become a major source of gasoline for smugglers. He said authorities would work to track and limit fuel consumption by artisanal fishermen.
Interviews with dozens of local leaders, intelligence officials, residents, activists and fishermen show an archipelago increasingly gripped by the drug trade. They describe a place where everyone knows everyone, where fishermen seem to get rich overnight and where a dollarbased, cashbased local economy creates ideal conditions for money laundering.
Airports and port facilities, especially in Isabela, have little or no security. There are no surveillance cameras, nor do naval officers monitor who leaves or arrives at night. Port officials on mainland Ecuador say containers en route to the islands are rarely checked for contraband.
One of the few shipping companies transporting food and supplies to the Galapagos Islands requested authorities in March 2022 for a permanent police presence in the cargo receiving yard. The government did not respond to the request. The company ceased operations in December.
A team of intelligence officials who traveled to the Galapagos Islands in October 2022 to investigate allegations of naval corruption reported evidence that sailors were accepting bribes to allow unauthorized boats to enter and leave ports.
For years, islanders have found packages of cocaine washed up on beaches. But on Isabela, an island with about 3,000 residents, many are afraid to report their findings. Some say they heard unauthorized planes flying over the island. Navy intelligence investigates rumors of secret airstrips hidden in uninhabited corners of the island.
“Here in the islands, everyone is family,” Rivas said. “There are a lot of things that people keep secret. They may know who is involved, but they won’t say anything.”
Tourists take photos on Bartolomé Island, Ecuador Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post
Hilda Moscoso Espinoza was born and raised in Isabela. In the 1940s and 50s the island was a penal colony. His father was one of the last Guardians. She remembers the time before tourists, when only about 100 people lived in the city. Meals were eaten together.
Now, the 58yearold says she sees how the flow of drugs has affected the community. A family member struggled with addiction to cocaine and other drugs for years. Moscoso called on local authorities to set up a rehabilitation or psychiatric center to deal with the rise in drug use on the island.
“Little by little, drugs are taking over the island,” she said. “And there is no help.”
Ecuadorian Coast Guard officers patrol the Darwin Islands. Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post
The airport manager was very afraid to return to work.
He called on the police to monitor the plane at night or at least install a surveillance camera and point it at the runway. But Isabela's 20member police department told him it lacked the capacity and the case was now in the hands of prosecutors on another island.
The now 56yearold administrator feared for his safety. He spoke to The Washington Post on condition of anonymity.
His fear was justified. Military intelligence officials concluded that the plane came from Mexico. A year earlier, the plane flew from Ecuador to Mexico with a different license plate, a flight that is now being investigated for alleged drug trafficking.
The administrator wasn't the only person to raise the alarm.
Shortly after the plane's arrival in January 2021, the Isabela police chief told prosecutors he had reason to believe people on the island wanted to steal the plane, according to a memo cited in court records. Major William Albán Durán called for more police to monitor the plane. He also asked them to remove the gas cans left next to the plane as they made the theft too easy.
But authorities never moved the cans and police rarely checked the plane, the airport administrator said.
Then, in March 2021, two months after the Cessna's arrival, police gathered at a beachside restaurant in Puerto Villamil to celebrate Albán's birthday. Photos in court documents show about 15 men in Cuna del Sol raising glasses of wine. A nearby resident told the Post he saw the officers drinking late into the night.
According to authorities, the plane disappeared sometime that day.
Months later, prosecutors charged Albán and five other police officers with “illegal association” over their alleged connection to the plane’s disappearance and an alleged attempt to cover it up. Judge Ramón Abad Gallardo accused them of removing evidence and reports about the case and failing to remove fuel tanks from the airport. “If the fuel had not been on the plane or nearby, they would not have removed the plane,” Gallardo said.
The police are waiting for their trial. Albán did not respond to a request for comment from The Post.
Hilda Moscoso Espinoza, whose son struggled with cocaine addiction for years, sits on her farm. Photo: Carolyn Van Houten/The Washington Post
The man, whom the administrator recognized as a resident of the island, offered $100,000 in exchange for access to the airstrip. He did not say how the route would be used, the administrator said, but indicated that he had already made other similar arrangements.
The administrator had suspicions about a former colleague at the airport. When the administrator declined the man's offer, the man replied, “Your colleague was willing to take such a risk.”
Rivas confirmed that a former aviation authority employee was being investigated on suspicion of involvement in a “drug trafficking network”.
The former employee did not respond to text messages or calls seeking comment.
The next day, the administrator said, another man came through the airport. This time, he said, it was a stranger, a man who he said had a Colombian accent. The man increased the offer: $250,000. More than he could earn in 10 years working at the airport.
“I don’t want that, I don’t want that,” said the administrator.
So how much do you want? the man asked.
“My life is priceless,” the administrator replied.
He said he reported the offers to an intelligence officer.
The manager had already seen neighbors raising money to open a new hotel, buy a new boat and build a new house. The men and their offers confirmed for him what he had long suspected: Isabela was awash with drug money, he said, and the authorities were doing nothing about it.
“Everyone already knows,” he said. “It’s an open secret here.”
The investigation into the plane's mysterious arrival and equally disturbing departure remains open.
Intelligence investigators reported in October 2022 that the lack of security at Isabela Airport made it an ideal hub for “drug plots.”
In an intelligence report obtained by The Washington Post, investigators suspect that a local airline and a powerful Galápagos businessman have ties to the drug and wildlife trade.
Months after the plane disappeared, a man came by the location with an offer, according to airport authorities.