Violence in Ecuador, a very old new problem

The wave of violence that Ecuador is suffering these days can be read as a new phenomenon in a country that until now had been on the margins of the serious insecurity problems of other neighboring nations, such as Peru and Colombia. That has been buried in the past. In the last three years there have been riots in prisons with dozens of people killed by knives, an assault with dynamite and long weapons on a live public television station, bombs in barracks and police stations and selective assassinations of politicians and presidential candidates. Drug trafficking has silently emerged as a parallel power to the state that controls judges, generals and police. One may think that the decomposition of institutions has occurred in record time. However, a look at the last 40 years shows that the problems that have now emerged have been incubating since the 1980s, when large-scale drug trafficking began and the first gangs were created.

“Ecuador as an island of peace is an erroneous term,” explains Daniel Pontón, university professor at the Institute of Higher National Studies of Ecuador and security analyst. Unlike Colombia, it did not have guerrillas. The Government crushed some timid attempts, but starting in the 1980s the homicide rate began to grow. At that time, Pontón says, the presence of Mexican drug cartels was recorded, which until now had been a secret. Problems on the border intensified with the presence on the other side of the FARC and Colombian paramilitary groups. To combat these threats, the State authorized the creation of a North American military base in Manta, in the north.

Parallel to the rise to power of Rafael Correa, in 2007, the politician who was going to govern for the next 10 years, there was an outbreak of violence and drug trafficking. Plan Colombia, an agreement between the Government of that country and the United States to combat crime, produced a criminal diaspora towards Ecuadorian territory. Correa later dealt, in 2010, with a police revolt in which he himself was taken hostage in a police station, which caused a very serious security crisis. The president, who thanks to a boom oil and raw materials reduced the country's poverty by several points, he carried out a judicial reform that had immediate effects. Homicides, which at the beginning of the century had reached 20 per 100,000 inhabitants, were drastically reduced to the 5.6 with which he ended his term.

Firm hand

The prison population increased fourfold, from 10,000 to 40,000. “It was a heavy-handed policy, of course, although Correa now denies it,” adds Pontón. A new, more punitive penal code was created, oil surpluses were invested in the police, the police were rewarded for capturing high-profile criminals and that is why the most wanted ended up in prison. Correa concluded his administration with 62% approval and named a successor, Lenín Moreno. He, who would soon distance himself from his mentor, held a plebiscite to intervene in the Citizen Participation Council and create a Territorial Council that would audit all institutions, including the judiciary.

Pontón marks a before and after from here on. It coincides with the kidnapping and murder of three Peruvian journalists from the newspaper Trade by an armed group in northern Ecuador, which operated in both countries. Then, terrorist attacks occurred, such as the blowing up of a police station, which generated a lot of commotion. This caused Moreno to remove all the Correístas from his Administration, such as the head of intelligence and the ministers of Defense and Interior. He carried out a comprehensive reform on security issues, much more conservative and closer to the United States.

That is not necessarily the cause, but it is the beginning of what was going to happen next. This prison population had created criminal structures that exceeded the capacity of officials. The prisons became a powder keg starting in 2019, when riots began to occur. In the following four years, almost 500 prisoners would be killed in these riots. The Los Choneros gang took control of the main penitentiaries, allied with the Sinaloa cartel to export cocaine on a large scale to the United States and, although it may seem contradictory, from there they began to build their criminal network. “Moreno never took the massacres seriously. There was never a decided intervention. In fact, during the pandemic the prison budget was cut,” Pontón recalls.

Right-wing businessman Guillermo Lasso became president in 2021 with the entire problem on the table. Different experts agree that his security policy was erratic. The gangs received it with a riot with more than 70 dead in the Guayaquil prison. The feeling of decomposition was total. It is clearly seen in the homicide rate. It went from six per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 to 25.6 in 2022. The country became a huge morgue. Last year it reached 45, making Ecuador one of the most dangerous places on the planet.

Daniel Noboa, a young businessman who has been in power for 60 days, is now facing the biggest crisis of all, the one caused by criminal gangs in their desire to control all the resources of the State. Noboa said during the campaign that he had a plan to combat insecurity, but time has passed and he has not implemented it, he has only asked the army to patrol the streets, a recipe that previous presidents had already applied.

Andrea Suárez, director of Public Affairs at LLYC, is not very clear that this is the way forward: “Although this can be understood as a factor of progress, its effectiveness will be tested from two main factors: operability and availability of resources. In the first case, the dynamics of joint work between the Armed Forces and the intelligence of the National Police will be key, this is not a common situation and oiling the gears that launches an articulated work could require some time, mainly.

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