On the shores of one of the inlets that run through the whole of Guayaquil, in the Guasmo sector, one of the largest districts in the south of the city, there is a street with small houses made of brick, cane and wood and roofs made of zinc sheeting. They are built next to each other, some even share the same wall. There are 500 meters of asphalt, cement and poverty that is officially called Pueblo Nuevo, but they know it as Cuartel de las Feas, like in the famous soap opera Ugly Betty. From this site emerged the criminal gang that gave itself this name and is now a military target after the signing of a presidential decree declaring a state of war in Ecuador.
The Cuartel de las Feas has a hundred members who join forces with other criminal cells that operate in the surrounding neighborhoods and are dedicated to kidnapping, extortion and committing robberies of all kinds, of cell phones and especially motorcycles. “They steal motorcycles every week,” says one of the area residents. Collaborating with other small gangs is a way to watch each other's backs and expand their hiding places to hide. However, they all answer to a boss who belongs to a more powerful criminal gang that is also a target of the military: Lagartos.
It is not uncommon to see tattoos of her symbol on the walls of neighborhoods to remind other groups who is in charge. On Tuesday, January 9, when they saw their name on the decree, “the people of the Cuartel de las Feas disappeared, they went into hiding.” Later we saw them walking around the neighborhood like nothing had happened, but they don't do it on motorcycles anymore,” but as the days went by, they reappeared today, roaming the streets, “they understand it, the pulse of the People feel military where they are. and how to move.”
According to the presidential decree, since 2014 there has been an increased presence of criminal gangs, 22 of which have been classified as terrorists, but police have identified many more. The timeline begins in 1985 with the founding of the Queseros gang in the San José district of the city of Manta, another strategic drug trafficking and money laundering port that belongs to the Manabí province.
San José is also known as the 7 Puñaladas district. It was the 1990s, and residents found dead people on the sidewalks of their homes every morning. It was there, on the coasts of the Pacific, that the most dangerous gangs in Ecuador were founded, which appear on the authorities' crime map, such as Los Queseros, Los Corviheros and Los Choneros, they were boys who were dedicated to fishing and they went up with their wicker baskets the street until one day they decided to replace the sale of cheese and corviches (a typical Manabi dish) with drugs, which led to a struggle for territory and power, although at that time the violence did not occur. It was comparable to what is happening today and it did not go beyond these limits.
Over time, the leaders of the Queseros and Corviheros were assassinated and Los Choneros managed to prevail and maintain the hegemony of crime in the country for a decade – enough time to recruit more people and equip themselves with weapons. Through the streets of 7 Puñaladas walked Jorge Luis Zambrano, alias Rasquiña, who a few years later became the absolute leader of Los Choneros and gained control of the gangs that merged, such as the Chone Killers, Tiguerones and Wolves and Lizards are all now standing on the government's list of military targets.
The crime was directed by a single interlocutor, Rasquiña, who served part of his murder sentence in Guayaquil prison, and in this way, for several years, the level of insecurity was achieved at or below that of the rest countries in the region, until Rasquiña was released from prison in December 2020 and murdered. With the throne empty, the dispute over leadership caused massacres in prisons and split Los Choneros. Those who disagreed with the new leaders split up and formed new bands. An explosion of criminal groups is beginning, which, according to the government, are the trigger for the country's current insecurity crisis, which emerged from prisons and also served as training centers for criminals. Anyone who enters a prison must choose a gang in order to survive. Among all the groups identified by the government, it estimates that they have an army of 20,000 people who have kept the Ecuadorian state in check through simultaneous attacks across the country and have unleashed an unprecedented wave of violence.
The Wolves gang is the one that has gained the most power in the last three years. Due to his ties to the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, he has managed to expand his crime portfolio into areas such as illegal mining. According to police, one of the largest mining operations in the Andean mountain region of Imbabura province is behind the Lobos, who reactivated the La Merced mine after it was closed by a military operation in 2019. , which was achieved with a state of emergency for entering the area protected from criminals. At this point, the operation revealed that more than 7,000 people were engaged in illegal mining and other crimes such as sexual exploitation, human trafficking and arms trafficking were identified.
The current President of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, assures that he will not negotiate with the criminals who demand dialogue. He said this after one of the escapees from the recent prison riots, Fabricio Colón Pico, a member of Los Lobos, resurfaced through a video and said he could turn himself in if the state guaranteed his life. In another video, the leader of the Lobos in the Turi prison in Cuenca, where 21 prison leaders are being held hostage, alias Palanqueta, blames the president for the chaos in the country for not entering into a peace dialogue.
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