The president of Ecuador, a country in a state of siege: “We are at war”

Violence has overwhelmed Ecuador these days, a country that until five years ago was among the safest in the region. The president, Daniel Noboa, the son of the country's richest businessman, 36 years old and with only 50 days in office, is facing an unprecedented crisis. With prisons as their center of operations, organized crime has killed police and prison officials in the last 72 hours and has tried to attack hospitals and police stations. Noboa has deployed the army in the streets and has asked them to shoot down criminals, whom he considers terrorists. “We are at war,” the president said.

Scenes of violence occur throughout the country, but are concentrated above all in Guayaquil, the most dangerous city. Its citizens protect themselves from street shootings and looting that occurs in shopping centers and stores at street level. Dressed as police officers, criminals set up roadblocks and murder or kidnap the occupants of the cars. The country has seen 13 hooded young people assault the set of a public media outlet, TC Televisión, live, and for half an hour, during which the transmission did not stop, they threatened journalists with guns, grenades and what looked like dynamite. . The barbarism turned into reality show.

Ecuadorian gangs, associated with the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), both Mexican, have infiltrated the State by purchasing police chiefs, generals, judges and prosecutors. Its main leaders, from prisons converted into luxury suites with a bar and swimming pool, control the drug routes that lead to the United States and the main ports and borders. They have officials in key positions on their payroll and those who don't live with the risk of being murdered. One way or another they end up having control.

Noboa so far has not shown signs of strong leadership. His role has been secondary, leaving the leading role in the press conferences to senior army officials. His biggest coup has been to declare “an internal armed conflict” and decree a curfew, something that other presidents have also established in the past. In an interview on radio Canela this Wednesday, he pointed out that the State is facing “terrorist groups” made up of more than 20,000 people. “We are not going to give in, we are not going to let society die slowly,” he added.

During the election campaign, he assured that he had a plan to regain control of the prisons, which included holding the most dangerous prisoners on barges on the high seas 120 kilometers from the coast. At this time the plan has not been executed nor are further details known about it. José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias Fito, considered the most dangerous criminal in Ecuador, leader of the gang known as Los Choneros, and Fabricio Colón Pico, member of Los Lobos, to escape from prison. The doors of the prison were opened wide to them, without the prison directors lifting a finger. The former are associated with drug traffickers from Sinaloa and the latter with those from Jalisco. The evasions of these two important leaders gave rise to the wave of confrontations that occurred in the streets.

Return 1,500 Colombian prisoners

The president says he is willing to pardon the main leaders of these organizations so that they can directly confront the deployed military. “They don't dare,” he believes. He says that in his sights are the officials hired by the crime, who will also be considered terrorists, with which they would face a prison sentence of between 10 and 13 years. To give an example, a judge had ordered Fito's release on six occasions, when there were no reasons for it. Noboa has inherited from the previous president, Guillermo Lasso, an immense debt that ties him hand and foot to deploy a larger operation. Of course, he says he has the support of Israel and the United States. Also with that of the Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, to which he has not responded with too much courtesy. He has proposed returning the 1,500 Colombian prisoners serving sentences in Ecuadorian prisons, the vast majority for drug trafficking. If he refuses to take them in, he says he will release them at the border.

Ecuadorians witness terrifying scenes these days. In a video uploaded to Instagram, three hooded men are seen asking the president to start a dialogue with the organized gangs. At his feet, subdued, nine prison officers, face down and with their hands behind their heads. “[Si no se producen esas conversaciones] “We are going to kill all the officials, inside and outside the prisons,” says one of the criminals. He then randomly grabs one of the nine and hangs him with a rope hanging from the ceiling and tied to an iron door. While the man is dying, another official stands up and addresses the camera: “Mr. President, do not allow this massacre to continue with us.” The corpse of the hanged man swings in the background like a pendulum.

Experts fear that the fight against criminal structures will take an authoritarian drift, as has happened in El Salvador. “We are facing criminals who use terrorist tactics, but that does not mean that they are terrorist groups,” agrees Luis Carlos Córdova, an analyst specialized in security. Lasso already took on terrorism as an enemy in April of the previous year, a measure that, according to the expert, “can be described as desperate and that can get out of control.” In his view, this declaration of internal conflict can lead to false positives being committed, a term coined in Colombia to name the murders of innocent people who are passed off as criminals.

For Córdova, the fact that drug traffickers have infiltrated the State, that they have blended into it, makes the presence of the army useless. It has been known that at least one general, a handful of colonels and 13 officers worked for Los Lobos. “Criminal structures may end up being the ones that end up protecting the security plan itself, leading to the birth of an authoritarian State, a regime of terror,” he concludes.

Ecuador, meanwhile, remains mired in chaos. This is a challenge to the State of a greater proportion than that faced by other countries such as Colombia and Mexico. The prisons remain in the hands of the gangs, which control the main sources of power, including those of politics, as evidenced by the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. The decomposition of institutions has been continuous and threatens to establish a narco-state in a country that until recently seemed immune to the tribulations of its neighbors. The nation faces a challenge of biblical proportions.

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