Ecuador: the reasons that explain why prisons are under the power of the mafia

Converted into centers of operations for criminal gangs, opulent refuges, theaters of horror and morgues. Inside the prisons of Ecuador, drug traffickers created an inferno, whose tongues of fire spread to the streets.

The escape of Adolfo Macías, alias Fitohead of the largest drug gang in the country known as The Chonerosturned his eyes to the fragile control of the prison system, where fights between groups have left more than 460 inmates dead since 2021.

Engulfed in violence, the nation surpassed its records for drug seizures and murders in 2023: 220 tons and a homicide rate of 46 per 100,000 inhabitants.

These are four keys to understanding how Ecuador's prisons ended up under the power of the mafias and the regime of terror that they impose within them.

Alliance between inmates and some police officers

There is an alliance between inmates and some police officers. The exchange of information for privileges in prisons broke mafia codes such as not snitching, which further cracked rivalries between gangs.

“Characters like Fito, like Rasquiña (former leader of Los Choneros murdered in 2020) and like any other of the gang leaders are Frankensteins of the State, they are the product of the State and drug trafficking,” Jorge Núñez, an Ecuadorian anthropologist, tells AFP. from the University of Amsterdam.

Suites, nightclubs, swimming pools and fighting cocks are some of the luxuries inside the penitentiaries. Fito even recorded a video clip in his honor in the prison from which he escaped hours before an operation to transfer him to a safer one.

“These people come from illegal economies, but in the end they acquire their power by coming into contact with (…) police intelligence,” adds Núñez, an expert at the Kaleidos ethnographic center.

Deep-rooted corruption

For Alexandra Zumárraga, former director of social rehabilitation, another blow to the weak prison system was having given power to a corrupt police force to control access to penitentiaries.

An example of this is the “Metastasis” case.which revealed the links between drug trafficker Leandro Norero – murdered in 2022 in a prison – with politicians, judges, police, prosecutors and a former director of the body in charge of prisons (SNAI).

During the government of Lenín Moreno (2017-2021), the Ministry of Justice and Human Rights, which managed the prisons, was eliminated. Then the SNAI was created, which has failed to stop the violence despite states of exception that allow the militarization of prisons.

“This brought the police much closer to the drug mafias,” says Zumárraga.

“The State completely lost control of the prisons, not even the (penitentiary) guides were entering there anymore,” he adds.

According to Zumárraga, In more than a dozen massacres, the Prosecutor's Office has not investigated those who allow the entry of modern rifles, grenades and thousands of ammunition.

Question of survival

An Ecuadorian prison is almost a death sentence. Those who enter for crimes unrelated to organized crime end up dead in massacres or join gangs in order to survive.

The slowness of justice also saturates the already overcrowded prisons.

In some of the prison massacres, which are among the worst in Latin America, there were “cases of people who already had (the right to) the freedom ticket, (but the authorities) had not issued it and they were massacred,” says Zumárraga.

The prisoners also end up tattooed with the symbols of the gangs that control their yards, and then murdered by their rivals.

Núñez, who has investigated the prison system since 2004, explains that a prisoner or his family must pay the gangs about $240 a month to have “security.”In prisons, organizations also enlist new recruits and thus expand their illegal economies.

Militarized prisons

Faced with the onslaught of drug trafficking, President Daniel Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict,” called criminal gangs “terrorists” and deployed thousands of soldiers.

Previously considered an island of peace between Colombia and Peru – the world's largest producers of cocaine -, Ecuador went from having four drug organizations in the 1990s to more than 20 in 2023, linked to Mexican, Colombian and Balkan cartels, according to the presidency.

The fight against drug trafficking included the militarization of prisons and impoverished neighborhoods. Images from the Armed Forces show prisoners parading half-naked, with their hands tied and surrounded by soldiers. There are even videos of beatings and humiliations circulating.

“If other countries in the region have taught us anything, it is that militarization only creates more violence and the only people affected by militarization are ordinary citizens,” says Núñez.

Often compared to Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Noboa plans to build prisons in his style and contracted with the same company.

Human rights organizations put a magnifying glass on respect for the fundamental guarantees of prisoners.

AFP