The Ecuadorian government this Saturday transferred the country’s most dangerous criminal, José Adolfo Macías Villamar, aka Fito, leader of the Los Choneros criminal gang, which held the hegemony of crime, to the La Roca maximum security prison in Guayaquil, in Ecuador. The measure came three days after the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who denounced at the end of July that he had received a death threat from Fito. According to police, the Choneros are the operating arm of the Sinaloa cartel. About 3,600 police and military officers participated in the operation, which saw the inmate being transferred from a regular prison to a maximum-security prison in the same prison complex in Guayaquil at dawn.
Until now, Fito has been incarcerated in Jail No. 4, known as Guayaquil Regional. This center has been untouchable in more than a dozen operations carried out by public forces on prisons over the past two years.
The authorities filmed the prisoner’s transfer and disseminated the images. Shirtless, wearing black underpants and a long beard, the man known to be bloodthirsty was subdued face down in the courtyard of the prison pavilion with his hands tied behind his back along with a hundred other prisoners. The prison system is on high alert in case the government’s decision sparks a new prison riot, as has happened on other occasions when it moved prisoners in response to prison massacres.
The presidential candidate, who was assassinated this week, said after Fito’s threats: It is “a warning that if I continue to refer to him and his structure, they will attack me or attempt an attempt on my life.” Villavicencio filed a complaint with the prosecutor on his recommendation police custody, which the state granted him after analyzing that he had a 97% risk of being killed.
Fito has reasons to submit and not stage a violent uprising, and it is his freedom. Last March, a prison guarantee judge in Guayaquil overturned four of his prison sentences. In doing so, he opened up the possibility for his defense to use legal tricks so that he could benefit from an early release and serve his sentence outside of prison, as other leaders of Los Choneros did, such as Jorge Luis Zambrano, Rasquiña and JR, both murdered, months after they were on the street.
Fito grew up in Manta, a coastal city in the province of Manabí, a strategic location for drug trafficking. At 43, he has 14 trials for crimes including murder, robbery, organized crime, gun possession, totaling 34 years in prison, of which he has 12 years in prison. During that time, he was on the run for 10 months, having escaped with 16 other prisoners in an eight-hour operation from the maximum-security prison to which he has now been transferred.
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According to a published bulletin, officers seized 3,400 grams of marijuana, 937 grams of cocaine, 147 ammunition, 195 firecrackers and other unauthorized items such as refrigerators, freezers, air conditioners, speakers, sound equipment and cell phones during the operation .from the presidency of Guillermo Lasso. However, the document does not elaborate on the high-caliber weapons used by the prisoners who accompanied him in statements recorded by José Adolfo Macías from prison.
The last publication was on July 25, shortly after the Litoral prison massacre in which 31 inmates were murdered. Fito announced a peace deal with other gangs to end extortion and kidnapping, which has sparked more than 17,000 complaints since 2022. The scene was unusual. The ringleader was seated and behind him were five men, four prisoners with guns and a prison intelligence officer. According to police commander Fausto Salinas, the government described the incident as an “incident” and “an insolence on the part of the police”.
Fito’s rise to leadership of Los Choneros came as a result of the assassination of Rasquiña, the leader of the entire gang. Los Choneros gained a reputation as hit men, although over time they added racketeering, robbery and drug trafficking to their crime list. They were the first to establish ties with foreign cartels. According to police, Los Choneros is the operational arm of the Sinaloa cartel, which was first exposed in the country’s large-scale drug trade.
After Rasquiña’s death in late 2020, the struggle to fill the position sparked violence in the country’s prisons in a wave of massacres that claimed nearly 300 lives in 2021. It was decided with bullets and blood that Fito and JR would be in charge of Los Choneros, but his appointment ultimately led to the crime group being split into other gangs with which they now clash, some with the Jalisco Nueva Generación -Cartel work together.
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