You don’t see a soul on 215th Street. He belongs to a neighborhood called Cuba Libre, which now is even difficult to call a neighborhood. Basically, because there is no one, no one on its sidewalks, as if an atomic bomb had fallen. The doors and windows of the houses are closed and covered with bars. Only the signs remain of the small businesses. Not a car, not a taxi. Some eyes peek through the blinds when they hear the sound of footsteps, but they hide as soon as they know they have been seen. In the Ecuadorian Pacific port city of Manta, no one wants to die in the crossfire.
The streets of Manta have become a cemetery. Five people were murdered in 48 hours. Because? Controlling its port, from where tuna is mainly exported, means having the possibility of sending huge tons of drugs to the rest of the world. For this reason, groups kill each other in the open in order to have control. Cuba Libre is one of these places where the gangs of Los Choneros and Los Pepes, allies of Los Lobos, two of the most fearsome gangs, confront each other with fire. A soft breeze bathes the afternoon, a respite from this tropical climate. “Two nights ago they killed two more men outside my house,” Manuel says, his voice low so the walls can’t hear. There are eyes watching everywhere.
There is a whole ritual of smuggling. Fireworks announce the sellers, the witches, that the drug has arrived, and they can go see it to continue distributing it. It’s 5:08 p.m. on a Thursday. “It seems like they ran out early today,” laments María, a neighbor. She has seen all kinds of faces and buyer profiles enter and leave the neighborhood. Young people, very old people, university professors and politicians. The sale of drugs runs all day, the business never stops. Large vans, with dark windows and no license plates, roam the streets all the time, leaving packages of drugs at any time of the day. Then they leave. Everyone remains silent, even the officers who rotate at the police post on the main avenue. 316 Street is the only one that preserves the life of an active, happy neighborhood dedicated to commerce. This avenue of merchants is a parallel world to what happens around it. Just by moving one block to the right or left the panorama changes drastically, to emptiness, abandonment, fear…
In Cuba Libre alone, 18 crimes have been recorded so far this year. With the declaration of the state of emergency and internal armed conflict that was signed in January, in some cities the violence was contained for a few weeks. But in others, like Manta, the opposite happened. There have been 157 violent deaths recorded so far in 2024, that means 60% more than in 2023, the most violent year in the history of Ecuador. In the streets of the city center, where the modern buildings facing the sea, shopping centers, the port where cruise ships arrive and the seafood trade, people do not have the same shine as always. Something worries them. “These guys want to take over the city,” says, cautiously, Rodrigo, a fish merchant who has seen the lives of acquaintances end more than once. One of those times was in the Playita Mía market, where every dawn the fishermen sell a part of their day’s work for internal trade. Some hitmen made their way as if nothing had happened among the people who were shopping and eating in the place and shot a merchant five times.
At the door of a circus, a few days ago, an assembly member, his wife and a young man were murdered while they were buying tickets at the box office. Fear settled in Manta again. President Daniel Noboa sent the bulk of the armed forces to this unforeseen fire that undermines his triumphalist speech about security in Ecuador. The surrounding food establishments are empty. “No one wants to go out, they lock themselves in their houses out of fear,” says Mercedes. It’s noon and she hasn’t sold a single dish. “All these places were always full, it’s sad to see the city like this,” she adds. The kitchen is off, they will wait two more hours before picking up everything and going home. In the market, the sellers have kept almost all the merchandise. Only a few will insist on selling and they pour water on the fish they have on the table so that they last longer on display.
Manta is one of the 22 cities in the province of Manabí. A few years ago, before an earthquake affected much of its infrastructure, Manta wanted to be the Miami from Ecuador. It was sold like this for a long time, as the city of beautiful beaches, good parties, the best gastronomy, and friendly people. It was paradise to go on vacation. For years, the city attracted tourists every holiday they chose despite its high cost of living. It was an open secret that Manta grew up under the shadow of organized crime. From there were born the criminal gangs that dispersed throughout the country: Los Choneros, Los Corvicheros, Los Queseros, Las Ranas. Among them they murdered each other until they disappeared, leaving only one, Los Choneros, the first to have links with Mexican cartels, in their case the Sinaloa cartel of Chapo Guzmán.
From the city’s extensive seafront, the residents of Manta have seen everything. For example, in the 1990s, when thousands of people from all over the country came to the beach and waited for nightfall to board the engine rooms of fishing boats, where coyoteros hid them to smuggle people to the United States. . When the boats capsized and the migrants were left desolate on the shore of the beach, it was the locals who fed them, lent them clothes and money to return to their cities. When the migratory wave subsided, organized crime used the same network of bribes to Navy authorities, shipowners and ship captains, but this time they were no longer going to transport people but drugs.
The tentacles of drug trafficking have spread throughout the province for decades, but never before has violence reached a ceiling that requires extreme decisions to be made, such as moving the Manta security block. That is, more soldiers, more police and the heads of the Armed Forces, Police, Ministry of the Interior and Defense must work from that city. That was President Noboa’s decision to confront the growing curve of violence throughout the province. But the measure is not just for security. The Government’s reasons go further, they are political. Manta and the entire province of Manabí is the enclave of Correismo; that is, from the party of former president Rafael Correa. The province is the third with the highest electoral weight, obtaining its support predicts a good result in the 2025 elections.
The security block sent by Noboa is in Manta, although the route it will take is not certain. The military and police presence has been focused on document checks on the road; little has been seen in neighborhoods like Cuba Libre. But the impact of the presidential announcement has prevented more crimes from being added for now. When that goes on, someone will open a door in Cuba Libre and go for a walk. And then another will join him and so on until a crowd is formed. Then it will be a neighborhood again.
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