In Ecuador, in just seven years, the murder rate per 100,000 inhabitants multiplied by five. In some regions, analysts consider that a “second lockdown” is being experienced, since the high levels of violence limit activities such as work or education. The growing power of drug trafficking and the absence of State measures are two of the factors that explain this rise in violence.
Between screams of horror and stunned, Ecuadorians witnessed the third assassination of a political actor in less than a month. After the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio, society’s call to end violence intensifies. Above all, a response from the State and law enforcement is required, to prevent the most recent crimes from going unpunished.
The assassination of the Assembly candidate, Rider Sánchez, on July 17; the mayor of Manta, Agustín Itriago, on July 23; and of the candidate for the Presidency, Fernando Villavicencio, on August 9, are some of the most recent manifestations of the growing violence in the country. On a daily basis, its main victims are the civilian population.
In the first half of the year, the Police registered 3,500 murders. Nearly half of them, 1,390, registered in the coastal city of Guayaquil, formerly nicknamed the ‘pearl of the Pacific’ and now considered the ‘crime capital’ in the country, according to Crisis Group analysis. The authorities explain the violence by the great growth of organized crime linked to drug trafficking.
The types of crimes have diversified. Apart from violent deaths, the population faces extortion, kidnappings, and attacks with explosives such as car bombs. “It is a series of crimes that were not common in our country before,” explains Paulina Recalde, an expert sociologist in the analysis of public opinion. “This type of event increases in intensity, they are concentrated in a shorter period of time, they reach parts of the country where this did not happen before,” she told France 24, alluding to the murder of Fernando Villavicencio in the country’s capital itself.
60% of the population believes that the country’s main problem is insecurity. Last year, only 22% thought so. It is a huge leap, security occupies all the concern of the population, says the analyst.
Prisons have become centers of violence. Riots often lead to massacres, the most recent being on July 25 at Guayaquil’s main prison, in which 31 inmates died. The authorities attributed the origin of the violence to confrontations between opposing criminal groups within the same prison. Recalde details that even after his death, “those deprived of their liberty continue in very serious conditions, it is difficult to identify their names and their bodies are not handed over to their relatives.”
Analysts and international human rights groups criticize, in parallel, the weak response of the State. They also point to cases of corruption within law enforcement, a factor that would explain the entry of ammunition into prisons.
However, in 2015, the InSight Crime investigative center published an article titled: ‘How Ecuador is decreasing its homicide rate’. The country had set itself the goal of going from a rate of 15 to five homicides per 100,000 inhabitants between 2011 and 2017. But in 2022, the rate was 25, the highest recorded in the country in recent years. What explains the turn to violence?
Ecuador, center of drug trafficking networks
According to Police data, in March 2022, 80% of the murders in Ecuador were caused by clashes between criminal groupswho seek to obtain “control of the distribution and export of drugs, mainly cocaine,” Crisis Group analyzed.
The violence caused by drug trafficking in Ecuador is woven within the framework of transnational criminal networks. Some of the main drug gangs are Los Choneros, Los Lobos, and Tiguerones. Los Choneros, the group that threatened Fernando Villavicencio and that operates mainly in Manta, the city where Agustín Intriago was mayor, works for the Sinaloa Cartel. While the other groups do it for the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel.
Ecuador was already a transit space for drug traffickers, but in recent years it became a center of action. In part, due to changes in the laws in Colombia. Reuters explains that, in Ecuador, the laws were less strict. In August of last year, the Police seized around 3.5 tons of cocaine, leaving the port of Guayaquil in banana containers destined for Europe.
Crisis Group explains that the dollarization of the Ecuadorian economy facilitates money laundering, another attractive factor for drug traffickers.
Carolina Andrade Quevedo, Quito’s Secretary of Security, denounced in an interview with France 24 that the criminal economy was infiltrating the Ecuadorian economy. “We know that criminal economies currently handle 5.4 billion dollars, and of which close to 2.1 billion are laundered in the Ecuadorian economy,” she explained.
Crisis Group recaps: “The reconfiguration of cross-border drug supply chains and a series of institutional failures, particularly in the prison system, have made Ecuador a favorite destination for drug trafficking and money laundering by criminal groups”.
Prisons, sources of armed violence
prison population went from 11,000 in 2009 to 40,000 in 2021according to data compiled by the local newspaper ‘Primicias’, and 27% of men would be incarcerated for sale or possession of drugs.
Human rights organizations denounce that, in prisons, people arrested for minor crimes are highly vulnerable to forced recruitment for organized crime.
“Many detainees, even those in pretrial detention or convicted of minor crimes, are forced to work with criminal organizations to preserve their physical integrity or access basic necessities, such as mattresses, bedding, and health supplies,” denounced Human Rights. watch on a July 2022 report.
It is estimated that since 2020, almost 500 people have died violently in the country’s prisons.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights also denounced “unprecedented levels of violence and corruption within prisons, [que responden] to the state’s abandonment of the penitentiary system”.
Precisely to provide a response to the prison crisis, President Guillermo Lasso created a special commission to investigate the situation. The group of experts concluded that 10% of the prison system officials benefited from monthly payments from organized crime.
“In the Ecuadorian case, things have gotten out of hand due to corruption, due to the level of injustice we experience. It is institutionalized injustice”, declares Santiago Argüello, an expert in criminology and human rights. “Injustice affects the violence that occurs inside prisons,” he says for France 24.
For his part, Recalde adds that, in recent years, the prison system had gotten out of the hands of civilian control. In other words, it had gone from being under the control of State institutions —of civilians in public power— to being administered by the Police. In addition, he clarifies that very sophisticated weapons have been found in outbreaks of violence in prisons, and he questions the way in which ammunition continues to reach the hands of inmates.
The criticized responses of the State
The Government of Guillermo Lasso has declared several states of emergency in the last two years. Measures such as military patrols in the streets and curfews are applied with the intention of managing the flashpoints of the security crisis. In April 2023, the president announced that he had modified the decree that allows the possession and carrying of weapons for self-defense, a decision that was strongly criticized. However, then the Ecuadorian Defense Minister, Luis Lara, stated that the port would continue to be subject to the strict controls and requirements that previously existed.
Andrade Quevedo criticizes, mainly, the lack of investment in security by the State. “There have been breaking points, but despite this there has not been a change of course, a change in budgetary priorities, an investment in security: we are adrift as a country,” he says.
The Quito Secretary of Security explained that, in 2022, of the 200 million dollar budget allocated to security, only 30% was executed. Of the 30 million specifically earmarked for prison management, only 21.8% was used. “Police are waiting for something as basic as bulletproof vests,” she said.
The Ecuadorian government has not privileged investment in society, in the face of measures to reduce public spending and settle debts with international creditors, agreed in their Crisis Group, Andrade Quevedo and Recalde analysis.
It is, as they explain, one of chain events: the absence of the State and the lack of social protection for the population put it in a situation of high vulnerability in the face of organized crime gangs. Argüello and Andrade add the criticism of the lack of investment in investigation on crime: a measure that would contribute to the design of public policies adapted to combat it.
Facing the next elections, a feeling of insecurity prevails. It is feared that the lives of the candidates will not be guaranteed and the uncertainty is latent when citizens must “go to the polls on August 20 when such a level of terror is experienced in the country,” Recalde sentenced.
On the other hand, there are demands shared by the population for the candidates for the presidential race: that progress be made in the investigations of the murders, in the cases of corruption and in ties of the State with drug trafficking.
“Whoever reaches the Government has no time to lose,” says Andrade Quevedo. Otherwise, he concludes: “We are on the way to a failed state.”
With Reuters and local media
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