The violence in Ecuador does not stop marking milestones in terms of consternation of the population. The record number of murders and drug seizures of 2021, surpassed by increasingly aggressive events in January of this year, today has a more terrifying presentation. Two bodies woke up hanging from a bridge, tied hand and foot, in a neighborhood on the outskirts of Guayaquil, the hottest city in the country. The war unleashed between criminal gangs -which is behind national insecurity, according to the government thesis- and against the State had not confronted scenes of this type in local territory, beyond the news that arrived about the action of drug trafficking in other countries. like Mexico.
“We don’t know how the bodies got to that point,” acknowledged the police commander in that area, at a press conference in which he reported that one of the bodies had his wallet with him and it was a man with no criminal record and that the other is unidentified. “We have indications that these two people would have been kidnapped or disappeared since February 11 and their relatives filed the complaint on the 13th,” according to police command Marcelo Cortez. That is, one day before its discovery in Durán. Between that area, Guayaquil and the municipality of Samborondón, all adjoining, there have been 164 deaths so far this year. The three cantons make up the territory with the most murders in the country this year and 2021, when violence intensified in the Andean country. In the weekend alone, seven people have been killed in Guayaquil.
Durán is one of the most affected by the fight for territory between gangs, as reported by the police when there have been shootings -crossing of bullets in the middle of the street- or when murdered people have appeared. The same police thesis relates the hanging of the two men to the police operation that resulted in the seizure of seven tons of drugs, in the port of Guayaquil, on the same day, February 13. The amount seized, according to police calculations, is valued in the local market at 14 million dollars.
The Minister of Government, Alexandra Vela, warned a week ago about the chain reaction that could be generated by the arrest of 10 members of one of the gangs that, according to police information, dispute control of the drug route within the country . “We will be ready to respond to any reaction from organized crime groups,” he pronounced two Fridays ago, without that statement preventing the two bodies from being hung from a pedestrian bridge in the middle of the night in an area controlled by traffic cameras and with the military mobilized to patrol the streets.
After a massacre in a park south of the city, in January, in which five people were shot, the Ecuadorian president, Guillermo Lasso, announced the deployment of Army troops and 1,100 additional police officers to reinforce security in Guayaquil and his or her environment. A measure that he also ordered in October 2021 when he decreed a state of emergency due to the levels of insecurity. Despite this, more than 300 people were killed in the month of January alone.
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