A long update on the situation, more than two months after the proclamation of a situation of ‘internal armed conflict’ by President Noboa, a decision which has enabled the direct involvement of the military into operations against drug gangs now labeled as ‘terrorist’ organizations by the government in order to curb the explosion of violence. Warning, this is really depressing.
The successesAccording to
the official numbers, the police and the military have arrested since 9 January some 11,711 suspects (including 280 under the charges of ‘terrorism’) and seized over 64 tons of drugs, 3,371 firearms, 4,573 edged weapons, 240,000 bullets, 24,795 explosives and $294,000 in cash.
In a single raid on a pig farm in the agricultural province of Los Ríos,
some 21.5 tons of cocaine were seized, an all-time record seizure for a value estimated between $300 and $500 million.
The number of registered homicides has
decreased by 45% since the proclamation of internal armed conflict with 365 homicides registered for the month of February, down from 476 in January and 730 in December 2023.
Meanwhile, the 201 prison workers held hostage by rioting inmates in early January had been all rapidly freed and the military has claimed having retaken control over the penitentiary system, notably through highly publicized operations
to remove the TV satellite dishes and Internet cables illegally installed in the prisons.
Foreign narcos arrestedVarious foreign high-profile criminals have been arrested, notably two most-wanted Colombian drug traffickers:
Carlos Arturo Landázuri, the head of the Oliver Sinisterra Front FARC dissident group (which made headlines in 2019 when it kidnapped and murdered three Ecuadorian journalists) and
Henry Loaiza Montoya, a son of a historical leader of the Cali Cartel who was living in hiding in Ecuador since the early 2010s and until then evaded arrest by using false identity and undergoing facial surgeries.
Also recently arrested in Santa Elena province is
a Lithuanian drug trafficker wanted under an Interpol Red Notice and specialized into the production of synthetic drugs.
Transnational drug networks dismantledThe most important success may have been however
a joint operation with the Spanish police which led in February to the arrests of over thirty suspects in both Ecuador and Spain (notably in Marbella, Barcelona and Valencia) and the presumed dismantling of an international cocaine trafficking web operated by the Albanian mafia which has transported for years the Colombian-produced drug towards Europe ports by hiding the cocaine in the banana shiploads departing from Ecuador’s exporting ports, in first place Guayaquil. The alleged head of the criminal scheme, Dritan Gjika, an Albanian national who relocated in Guayaquil in 2013, has however evaded arrest.
Similarly has been recently dismantled a cocaine trafficking web which
exported drug to the Gambia by hiding it in shipment of salt and canned seafood products. Nine Ecuadorians, two Gambians and a Colombian have been arrested in the case.
Such apparent successes have enabled President Noboa to enjoy skyrocketing rating, scoring the highest approvals registered since the restoration of democracy in 1979.
Failures and flawsBut the Ecuadorian authorities have also suffered some embarrassing setbacks and there are strong indications about the situation far from being resolved.
Police and military abusesFirstly, a series of military and police misconduct and brutality have been reported with the most serious case being
the fatal shooting of a 19-year-old man without a criminal record nor drugs or weapons on him at a military checkpoint during what has been described by the army as an ‘attempted terrorist attack’ but called as an ‘extra-judicial execution’ by human rights groups and the family of the young man.
Policemen and soldiers also involved in criminal activitiesTrust in the army and, even more, the police may also be undermined after the arrests of several of its members for participation into illegal activities, as part of the crackdown on criminal groups. For example, on 15 February, there were
five policemen arrested for presumed participation into a 2023 kidnapping for extortion. Six days later, a raid against a drug gang ended with
the arrest of two policemen for cocaine trafficking and the seizing of firearms coming from the arsenals of the Ecuadorian army.
On 1 Mars, three soldiers (one on active due, the two other in the reserve force)
were arrested in Quito for presumed ties with ‘terrorist’ groups as $100,000 in cash had been found on them. That very same day, the justice confirmed
the indictment of ten Air Force members for their presumed participation in the November 2021 sabotage by explosion of the military radar installed in the coastal town of Montecristi to detect planes and ships used in drug smuggling – the radar was intentionally destroyed only eleven days after its start of operation.
Finally, in a particularly
shocking case of disappearance and murder of an 8-year-old girl which happened last month, the main suspect turned out to be the girl’s own father, a police officer.
The unresolved situation in the prisonsThe prison system was already collapsing before even the proclamation of internal conflict situation with back then
an average 13.4% overcrowding rate in Ecuadorian prisons, reaching as far as 40.8% in the Guayaquil’s Littoral Penitentiary (the country’s largest prison) or even 75% in the prison of Machala. The addition of 12,000 new inmates will not help improving things, especially as the construction of the mega-prisons and floating prisons promised by the government hasn’t much progressed.
Similarly, Noboa’s pledge to expel the foreign arrested criminals from Ecuador failed to materialize as Ecuador is facing a diplomatic dispute with the country of origin of the majority of foreign inmates, Venezuela, after declarations of the Ecuadorian president about the illegitimacy of the upcoming Venezuelan elections.
On 22 February, as the army was organizing a visit for journalists to show off how it has restored full control over the prison of Latacunga, it was revealed that three prisoners (including two sentenced for assassination) detained in the maximum security block
had managed to evade the prison shortly before by passing through a broken window.
Violence continuesThe apparent reduction in the number of registered homicides should not hide the fact that not only it is remaining higher than the one recorded in January 2022 (307) and that, despite the state of emergency and the intervention of military in policing operations,
a record number of kidnapping and extortion cases has been reported since January including a five-fold increase in registered cases in Guayaquil compared to 2023.
An assemblywoman belong to Noboa’s party
has been recently the victim of an express kidnapping.
Contract killings of prominent people still ongoing.On 17 January, César Suárez, a senior prosecutor and close collaborator of the country’s attorney-general, was assassinated. He was investigating the armed attacks against the TC television studios but also also
various cases of corruption and ties with drug trafficking involving police generals, senior judges, politicians and businessmen.
On 7 February, a 29-old-year municipal councilor in Naranjal, Guayas, elected for Rafael Correa’s left-wing populist Citizen Revolution (RC)
was shot to death by hired assassins.
And it has been just announced today that the RC mayor of San Vicente (Manabí)
has been assassinated by hitmen.
Gang leaders still to be arrestedFinally, the Ecuadorian authorities have failed to recapture a majority of the inmates who evaded during the January prisons riots (only 34 out of 90 re-arrested) and have so far be unable to arrest the Ecuadorian-born big bosses of the drug mafias, mostly capturing second-tier leaders or heads of relatively minor gangs.
Fito and the villa in ArgentinaThe most egregious case is the one of José Adolfo Macías Villamar, aka ‘Fito’, the leader of the Choneros, one of the two most powerful gangs in Ecuador which is allied to the Sinaloa Cartel. The official confirmation of
the evasion of Fito from the overcrowded Littoral Penitentiary, announced by the government on 7 January, has been the triggering event for the subsequent widespread violence. The military and the police came then to transfer the leader of the Choneros from the Littoral Penitentiary towards another prison, reserved for dangerous criminals, hence implementing a long planned decision previously delayed, canceled or rescinded by the government and the justice. The cell of the criminal was hover found empty, Fito having in all likelihood left the prison by the entrance door at an uncertain date, maybe as early as Christmas, benefiting from complicity inside the prison staff if not inside the police high command.
When serving his sentence for drug trafficking and the assassination of a prison director, Fito had indeed enjoyed scandalous privileges, having access to Internet, phones, weapons, jewelry or alcohol and being able to organize parties or cockfights in his prison block where he also recorded ‘public statements’ and music video clips celebrating his feats and later posted on the social networks. More prosaically, the imprisoned drug lord was fully able to continue managing his criminal ventures and organizing the killings of his rivals or of persons having bothered him.
The whereabouts of Fito are remaining unknown (he is thought to have left Ecuador since weeks) but his wife and several relatives
got arrested on 19 January in Argentina, about two weeks after their relocation from Ecuador to
an expansive house a brother-in-law of Fito had bought in November 2023 in a very chic neighborhood of Córdoba surrounded by a golf course. According to the Argentinian government, Fito planned to rejoin his family in the Córdoba house.
The relatives of Fito were promptly deported from Argentina towards Ecuador where they have been left free, none of them being indicted in an ongoing proceeding since they
have been cleared in July 2022 by a (now investigated) judge of the charges of illegal enrichment, tax evasion and money laundering. The judge then also ordered the restitution to Fito’s relatives of their assets previously seized by the justice. The case had been opened after the tax administration found out the wife of Fito, theoretically a nurse by profession, had deposited some $2.1 million on her bank accounts between 2013 and 2019 and was the owner or shareholder of three different companies. Charges of organized crime previously filed against the relatives of Fito were for their parts dropped in 2017.
Pico, the hired killer on the runAnother criminal the authorities have failed to recapture is
Fabricio Colón Pico, a Quito-based gang leader who has specialized into murder-for-hire. Pico is belonging to the Lobos, the arch-enemies of the Choneros and the local partners in crime of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel.
The Lobos and the Choneros are waging a particularly violent gang wars trafficking since the 2020 assassination of ‘Rasquiña’, the longtime chief leader of the Choneros who got shot by hitmen in a mall of Manta, presumably at the instigation of a Lobos-led gang alliance. Rasquiña then exerted a hegemony on transportation of cocaine from Colombia to the Ecuadorian ports. His death triggered an intense competition for the control of such lucrative and was followed in February 2021 by the first of a long series of prison massacres, as part of the Choneros-Lobos war.
One of the main suspect in the August 2023 assassination of journalist-turn-presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, Pico has been also publicly accused by the country’s attorney-general, Diana Salazar, to have been contracted to assassinate her, allegedly by the same persons behind the death of Villavicencio. Nevertheless, he was sent behind bars in early January for the kidnapping of the son of the financier of the Choneros but
evaded just four days thereafter, taking advantage of the riots to avoid his planned transfer to a high-security prison.
Pico resurfaced shortly thereafter when he posted a video on the Internet explaining he evaded for fear for his life and posed a series of conditions for a surrender, a negotiation the government publicly rejected. Like Fito, the whereabouts of Pico are remaining unknown.
Comandante WillyFinally, the police is still remaining unable to locate William Alcívar, alias ‘Comandante Willy’, the leader of the arch-violent Esmeraldas-based Tiguerones gang, who
has been formally indicted for having ordered the attacks against the TC television studios. Alcívar started his gang career in the Littoral Penitentiary, not as an inmate but as a prison guard.
The grip of organized crime on the countryWhich is leading me to elaborate on the harsh reality about criminality in Ecuador which is going far beyond street or prison gangs.
The country has actually to deal with extremely powerful and well-financed
transnational mafias (Colombian narco-guerrillas and paramilitary; Mexican cartels believed to wage in Ecuador a proxy war through the Choneros/Lobos feud; Albanian clans; and, not mentioned in the article but rumored to be also active in Ecuador, the
Ndrangheta and the Chinese mafias).
Such criminal organizations and their local allies have infiltrated all spheres of the state (justice, police, army, prison administration), bought complicity inside the local political class and can rely on Ecuadorian businessmen to launder, transfer to tax havens or reinvest in in the legal economic sector the dirty money. They are well-helped by the chronic political instability, enduring economic problems, institutional weakness, widespread corruption and defective rule of law which are plaguing Ecuador since the independence, if not even before.
The criminal groups operating in Ecuador have expanded their activities well beyond cocaine trafficking, now also being involved into:
*
extortion of companies, small businesses, civil servants, workers, prison inmates and individuals
*
illegal gold mining, a booming activity driven by the Chinese expanding demand for gold
* arms trafficking, an illegal activity in which are involved both the
Ecuadorian and the
Peruvian military. According to the last article, a majority of the explosives seized in Ecuador (and mostly used for illegal mining) is wearing the seal of the Peruvian Army’s Factory of Weapons and Ammunition.
* smuggling of gasoline with
Peru and
Colombia. Prices of the Ecuadorian gasoline are cheaper compared to Colombia and Peru, encouraging trafficking at a large scale including for the provision of the gasoline needed for the production of cocaine in Colombia.
* trafficking of protected species, in first place
illegal shark fishery, feeding a well-organized trafficking of shark fins exported through Peruvian ports towards the Asiatic markets.
*
illegal logging.
* human trafficking (
coyoterismo), historically centered around the illegal emigration from the central highlands of the country towards North America as Ecuador has experienced several waves of emigration, the most important one happening in the late 1990s when financial deregulation and corrupt practices of the Guayaquil oligarchy had led to the collapse of the banking system.
Entire rural communities are reported to
have fallen into the hands of the
coyoteros after they had appropriated the houses, lands and assets of migrants who had failed to repaid back the loan shark debts for the journey or perished before reaching the US soil. Now
coyoterismo has also extended to the growing Chinese illegal immigration, exemption of visa requirements for Chinese passport holders having turned Ecuador
into a major transit country for Chinese migrants hoping to reach the United States.
* and, even more importantly, money laundering, now considered as
the second largest criminal activity in the country behind drug trafficking. This is an activity which is involving more ‘respectable’ individuals and organizations than the previous ones as there is a long tradition of corruption, misappropriation and tax evasion among the Ecuadorian ruling classes (politicians, administrators, businessmen).
