Inside the Ecuadorean port city fighting a drug-driven crime wave

Ten days into a government crackdown on organised crime, Cesar Suarez fell victim to the mayhem that has engulfed Ecuador.

The prosecutor, who was investigating links between gang crime and government corruption as part of a nationwide probe, was shot dead in his car last Wednesday in the city of Guayaquil by unidentified assailants in a killing that police said had the hallmarks of an assassination.

As once-peaceful Ecuador battles to take control of an unprecedented crime wave – measures include declaring drug traffickers to be “terrorists” and therefore military targets – its daily news reports are filled with political assassinations, prison riots and gang shoot-outs.

Worst affected is Guayaquil, home to Ecuador’s largest port. The city is an important business hub and centre for the export of bananas and shrimp – as well as illicit cocaine. On the streets, violence threatens to erupt at any moment.

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The unrest has its roots in a power struggle among illicit businesses across the region. In collaboration with Mexican cartels, including the Sinaloa cartel, Ecuadorean groups are fighting for control of drug trafficking routes that run from Colombia and Peru to Ecuador’s Pacific port cities, including Guayaquil.

[ How the narcotrafficking industry seized power in Ecuador ]

[ Ecuador assassination marks dramatic turning point for once-secure nation ]

That presents security forces with a forbidding challenge. In a symbol of the uphill struggle, gang leader Adolfo Macías, better known as “Fito”, whose escape from jail in the city on January 7th triggered the escalation in violence, remains at large.

“These are not conventional gangs, they are terrorist groups,” President Daniel Noboa, who took office on a crime-fighting platform in November, told CNN last week.

He said the gangs were well financed and controlled entire regions of the country, but added: “Right now the army and police are working together, and the people are united to eliminate this threat.”

Noboa declared a state of emergency, and more than 1,000 gangsters have been arrested in 18,000 raids, according to official figures, during the crackdown that followed Macías’s escape.

The clampdown had prompted retaliation from gangs, according to one police officer in the down-at-heel Guasmo neighbourhood of Guayaquil near the port, who said he was not authorised to speak publicly.

On a recent evening in Guasmo, a group of teenagers were kicking a ball around when gang members arrived and began shooting, killing one of the youngsters and wounding 13 people, of whom nine were minors.

“It was a quiet night until, bang bang bang, the sound of gunshots,” said one resident, who did not give his name for fear of reprisals. Nearby, a convoy of heavily armed police sped along Guasmo’s main commercial artery on their way to raid a suspected gang safe house.

Ahead of the latest outbreak, violence in Ecuador had been escalating for several years: the country’s homicide rate, once one of the lowest in the region, has increased more than nine-fold since 2017 from five murders per 100,000 inhabitants to 46 last year, according to the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) in Quito.

It ramped up in 2020 when the boss of the Los Choneros gang, Jorge Luis Zambrano – who went by the nickname Rasquiña – was murdered in a shopping centre cafeteria in the port city of Manta shortly after being released from jail. At that point, Macías took control of the group.

“After Rasquiña was murdered, that’s when these major disputes started taking place between the biggest criminal groups, and we started to see other groups join the fray,” said Fernando Carrión, a security expert at Flacso.

He estimated that the 22 gangs now designated as terrorist organisations had 50,000 members between them; Los Choneros alone is believed to have about 12,000 fighters.

Little is known about Macías’s background beyond his criminal record. In 2011 he was convicted of drug trafficking, organised crime and murder, and sentenced to 34 years in jail, where he ran Los Choneros from behind bars. He briefly escaped in 2013, before being recaptured weeks later.

Images of Macías, taken in August as he was being transferred between prison facilities, show him with long hair and a shaggy beard, wearing only a pair of Ralph Lauren boxer shorts. How he managed to disappear from jail is also uncertain; a government official spoke of a “probable escape”, likely with the involvement of prison guards.

Police raided one of Macías’s homes in the port city of Manta on January 13th, but found little beyond 500g of marijuana, a magazine clip and some 9mm ammunition. A Colombian general told local media that the fugitive may now be living in Colombia, where crime groups believed to collaborate with Los Choneros are based.

Another big Ecuadorean gang, Los Lobos, is believed by analysts to be in business with Mexico’s Nueva Generación Jalisco cartel. One of the leaders of Los Lobos, Fabricio Pico, was sprung from jail on January 8th. He has since published videos asking to negotiate his surrender with the government, saying he only fled to escape threats to his life, but the surrender request was rebuffed by Noboa.

The gangs use prisons as forward bases, making the prison system central to the violence. Some 400 inmates have been killed in the past four years, while riots and jailbreaks are common. The government has published images of inmates sat tightly together in prison yards as part of its crackdown. But some 48 inmates managed to escape last Monday from a prison in Esmeraldas, near the Colombian border.

While some guards are in the pay of the gangs, others have become victims: dozens of prison staff were taken hostage for five days after Macías’s escape this month.

“Macías is living proof – assuming that he is still alive – that the prisons are run by the gangs,” said Sofía Cordero, a Quito-based political scientist at the Observatory for Political Reforms in Latin America. “The prison authority, which has been penetrated by organised crime, needs to be overhauled while dangerous gang leaders need to be isolated in jails.”

About 15 people have been killed in this month’s violence. Each night in Guayaquil – long a hotspot of gang activity because of the value of its container port to drug traffickers – sirens blare as convoys of armoured police vehicles career down empty streets to raid the homes of suspected gang members.

On the roads around Guayaquil, police checkpoints are thrown up by heavily armed officers from one moment to the next.

“It’s inconvenient, for sure, but if it catches the crooks I don’t mind,” said Alejandro Torres, who runs a nearby car repair shop, as his pick-up truck was searched at a checkpoint on a main thoroughfare near the stadium. “Something has to be done about the control the gangs have over Ecuador.” – Copyright The Financial Times Limited 2024

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