Peaceful Ecuador Descends into the Hell of Drug Trafficking

The murder of the mayor of Manta evinces that violence and political crisis in Ecuador don’t seem to have a limit. With mounting violence throughout the territory, criminal organizations are destabilizing a country that is set to hold presidential elections in a few weeks. Is drug trafficking threatening democracy?

Ecuador - narcotráfico

By Cristian Ascencio

It is a paradox: in 2016, Ecuador had its lowest homicide rate of this century (959), securing its spot as one of the safest nations in Latin America. But only six years later, in 2022, it reached the dishonorable record of 4,450 homicides. And it seems that this year the figure will continue surging. As of July 2nd, 3,568 people had died a violent death. Almost 20 per day. 

Faced with this dramatic situation, residents of cities such as Guayaquil (a city in which 40% of the homicides take place) have had to adapt their lives to this violence. They go out less and they close their businesses earlier. Additionally, authorities have decided to suspend face-to-face classes in coastal districts. It is as if the pandemic had returned, albeit with a different virus: criminal groups. 

As with residents’ lives, democracy is at stake. Nowadays, having a position as elected official in public office may turn any Ecuadorian into a target of a criminal gang, as the murder of the young and popular mayor of Manta, Agustin Intriago attests. On July 23rd, he was shot by hitmen while he was visiting sports facilities. Ariana Estefania Chancay, a young football player that had approached the mayor to ask him for support, also died in the attack. Other four people were wounded that day.

Months earlier, during the municipal election campaign, there were 15 attacks against candidates. Three were murdered. Omar Menendez, 41, was one of them, he was killed on February 4th, on the eve of the election. The next day, while his family held a vigil, the community elected him as mayor of Puerto Lopez.

Fernando Medina is a journalist who has witnessed this criminal war up close, as most of the press has. In 2018, a dissident group of the FARC kidnapped and murdered three of his peers from the newspaper El Comercio, at the border with Colombia. The homicide became an omen of what was to come for the country. Gangs fighting to control territories as they increase their firepower and diversify their criminal activities, kidnapping included. 

Medina was part of a team investigating precisely how criminal gangs, in this case former guerrilla members turned drug traffickers, took over areas on the border. “I believe it was a mistake not having included Ecuador in the planning of the peace agreements between Colombia and the Farc. The fact that dissident groups or criminal gangs would attempt to control the northern border of Ecuador was overlooked. These gangs are working with Mexican cartels and drug trafficking routes are being opened in Ecuador, they are recruiting and taking advantage of the absence of the State,” Medina explains.

The journalist states that there are areas, such as Esmeraldas (on the border with Colombia), where the State has definitely lost control. “Law enforcement became weak in the governments of Correa and Moreno; and recently, Lasso’s strategy has been very weak. On top of that, criminal gangs have started co-opting police officers,” Medina adds. 

In fact, a feature by TC Television and CONNECTAS, written by journalist Alina Manrique in 2022, revealed that the justice system has investigated more than 500 officers for misdemeanors and felonies connected with organized crime in Ecuador.

Manrique explains that “there is deep disillusionment of citizens in their institutions, and loss of trust in law enforcement,” and he stresses the events that occurred in the jail El Litoral in Guayaquil, in July this year. In a clash between rival gangs, 32 inmates were murdered –  many of them quartered or burnt. “The government knows that this jail is segmented as criminal organizations please, they have turned it into their operations center to run kidnapping and extortion activities,” Manrique points out.

What can explain the fact that Ecuador has stopped being a relatively calm country and has become synonymous with violence? The fight for key territory for transnational criminal gangs engaged in drug trafficking is one explanation, but not the only one.

Maria Fernanda Noboa, a PhD expert in security, defense and strategic studies, believes that the influence of gangs would not have seeped through without Ecuador’s current socio-economic conditions. “There are exogenous (such as the arrival of organized gangs from abroad), as well as endogenous factors. Endogenous ones include unequal development and the State’s inability to solve problems such as poverty.”

According to Noboa, failures in the intelligence system need to be added to the aforementioned. “There is a fight for the route to move drugs out of the country in Ecuador, but drug trafficking is not the only problem. There are ten types of illegal markets, including human trafficking, arms trafficking, illegal logging, extortion and hit men activities. These enable the articulation of criminal ecosystems, so it is mistaken to think that drug trafficking is the only problem to address,” she adds.

In terms of how the State has acted, the expert asserts that despite constant states of exception, criminality has not receeded (the latter of which was declared for 60 days in three districts in the aftermath of the murder of the mayor of Manta).

Daniel Ponton, dean of the Escuela de Seguridad y Defensa at Instituto de Altos Estudios Nacionales, agrees that drug trafficking is not the only factor that explains this brutal increase in violence. For him, jail policies need to be looked at carefully. “Gangs have become powerful in jails and they have taken their power to the streets.” 

But for Ponton, one of the main factors is the lack of reaction by the State. “The current government blames Correa’s for allegedly having an agreement with mafia bosses. I think that is a sloppy theory and it’s more a pretext for current inaction. Correismo accuses the government of ineffectiveness, but they don’t come forward with concrete proposals either,” he explains.   

To make matters worse, the presidential campaign is in full swing in Ecuador, after President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly with the constitutional mechanism known as “crossed death”. Amidst that political and social climate, security has become critical for campaigns. But for Noboa, their discourses have lacked substance. “They tell you what they are going to do, but they don’t explain how they are going to do it, how they are going to invest the budget. They are even asking for more money, but the Police’s budget is underutilized. There is also the problem of co-optation of police officers by criminals,” he mentions. 

Eight candidates are running in the presidential first round, to be held on August 20, an usual number in a country with more than 200 political parties and movements. Retired colonel  Mario Pazmiño, security and defense consultant, agrees that some candidates’ discourses are unrealistic and even “insane”.  For instance, he says that a candidate has simply suggested “killing criminals, whereas another claims that a new constituent assembly would fix it all.” 

Polls show that Luisa Gonzalez, candidate of Correismo, would move forward to the runoff election (surveys place her as the front-runner, with roughly 30% of the vote intention). Her vice presidential formula, Andres Arauz, stated in an interview that he would have a meeting with the “top ten of most wanted criminals in each jurisdiction.” The statement sparked off controversy, but the candidate rectified and added that he had meant that they would sit and “analyze” the ten most wanted criminals in each province in a table of justice. 

The runoff would also include right-wing businessman Otto Sonnenholzner, lawyer and indigenous leader Yaku Perez (who came third in the last election) and journalist Fernando Villavicencio. There are coincidences in the discourse and programs of the four candidates that have the largest vote intention. They address interventions in jails and purging the Police, but they don’t give many details.

Below in the polls, with 4%, is Jan Topic, an outsider businessman who is a fan of  Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, and a member of the French Foreign Legion. Topic was investigated for alleged money laundering in the Odebrecht case, however, he has not been convicted. In a video of his campaign, Topic has said that in the legal framework, if criminals “have to fall, they will fall.”

@venteinformoSE SENTARAN CON LOS 10 MÁS BUSCADOS DE CADA PROVINCIA‼️⚠️ANDRÉS ARAUZ candidato a la vicepresidencia del Ecuador por la lista del CORREÍSMO, mencina que se sentaran en la mesa con los diez más buscados de cada provincia.♬ sonido original – VEN TE INFORMO

But the truth is that there is no light at the end of the tunnel for Ecuadorians. Pazmiño thinks that solutions should consider closing off the border, changing the citizen security strategy, temporary militarization of ports and airports, changing an ineffective intelligence system, renewing the judicial system and reengineering the jail system. Maria Fernanda Noboa adds that, alongside urgent decisions to fight organized crime, social intervention measures are required to build up the State’s presence. These and many other measures will be necessary to get Ecuador back in the list of the most peaceful countries in Latin America. A spot it never should have lost. 

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