For Mexican cartels, Pacific ports play a key role in the operations logistics of illicit goods trafficking. Artisanal fishermen in Ecuador’s coastal cities were co-opted to provide logistical assistance to criminal groups engaged in drug trafficking—all while leveraging fuel subsidies established during the Correa administration. In 2022, officials estimated that in the department of Esmeraldas, around 72 percent of the gasoline for artisanal fishing that the government provides was sold to criminal networks.
For European groups, the Pacific ports have also become key in the surge in the demand for cocaine in the continent, especially as Colombia’s port security has been tightened. Given that most of this cocaine flow happens via commercial shipping networks, Albanian mafia groups, such as Azemi and Rexhepi gangs, have become dominant brokers in cocaine trafficking to Europe by liaising with local gangs in Ecuador.
State of Violence (2020–2024)
The intensity of Ecuador’s criminal rivalries has manifested most clearly in the past three years. In 2019, Ecuador was considered one of the safest countries in Latin America with a homicide rate of 6.7 per 100,000 inhabitants, but what had been called an “island of peace” quickly became a nightmare in recent years, with the discovery of dismembered bodies and car bombings taking place periodically. In towns like Durán, contested by several gangs and adjacent to the ports of Guayaquil, the homicide rate averaged 145.43 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023 and was ranked the most violent city in the world.
An uptick in homicides began to take place in 2016 but skyrocketed in 2020 as the country suffered the brunt of the Covid-19 pandemic. The restriction of movement left many struggling to make ends meet as businesses closed and laid off workers. The economic diagnosis of Ecuador prior to the pandemic was already bleak. According to the United Nations Economic Commission for Latin America and the Caribbean, Ecuador’s economy did not experience any growth in 2019, and its GDP actually contracted by 7.8 percent in 2020. The pandemic exacerbated levels of poverty, and by mid-2023, 4.9 million Ecuadoreans lived in acute poverty (with an income of less than $3 a day, and 1.9 million lived in extreme poverty (with an income of less than $1.60 a day).
The recruitment model of gangs has not been thoroughly documented, but in off-the-record interviews with security experts in the country, the authors uncovered that gangs like Los Choneros and Los Lobos have primarily recruited underprivileged youth, in particular fishermen, in the coastal regions of Esmeraldas, Guayas, and Manabí. In this context, gangs offer underprivileged sectors of the population with unmatched salaries that they could not refuse. Former leader of the powerful gang Los Choneros, Junior Roldán, alias “JR,” made use of the “benevolent cartel” model to win the hearts and minds of the populations where his criminal enterprise operates.
In addition to accelerated recruitment, two major factors seemed to have been pivotal in Ecuador’s recent spike in violence: fights over territorial control and the rise of arms trafficking into the country.
Ecuadorean gangs, unlike cartels, are prison-based organizations whose logistical centers are penitentiaries. From the penitentiaries, where each section of the prison is separated and controlled by each of the major gangs, leaders of these criminal groups direct drug trafficking and targeted killings and rule organized crime on the streets. Competition for control of the prisons has led to some of the highest homicide rates in Ecuador. A 2022 study revealed that if Ecuador’s prison system were a city, it would be, after Guayaquil, the second-most-violent city in the country. These acts of violence are not isolated events; they instead reflect the struggle for territorial control inside and outside the prisons.
The waves of violence experienced in Ecuador typically occur after the death of powerful gang leaders, which reflects the subsequent fight over territorial control. For example, the death of the leader of Los Choneros, Jorge Luis Zambrano (alias “Rasquiña”) in 2021 led to the split of the gang into two factions, Las Águilas (led by “JR”) and Los Fatales (led by José Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito”), and ignited a wave of violence in Ecuador’s prisons. While Los Choneros remains a powerful criminal faction in Ecuador, Los Lobos, counting the support Los Tiguerones and Los Chone Killers, has grown to challenge it. Perhaps most notable about the rise of Los Lobos has been the aping of tactics previously unseen in Ecuador but more common in Mexico, such as gruesome scenes of bodies adorned with “narco messages” in public spaces. According to one noted security analyst, the proliferation of smaller groups following the decline of Los Choneros has made Ecuador a kind of “Silicon Valley for organized crime,” where ambitious upstarts understand that innovation has become prized and rewarded.
Buoyed by money and guns provided by transnational criminal organizations, the clashes between gangs in contested territories have become deadlier. From January to June 2023, intentional homicides with firearms increased 897 percent compared to the same period in 2019, and, during in-person interviews, security experts identified arms trafficking coming in from Chile, via Peru, and through the northern border with Colombia as one of the main destabilizing factors in the country. A drastic rise in weapons trafficking can be seen from 2021, when Ecuadorean authorities seized 1,299 cartridges and 155 magazines for different types of weapons, to 2024. This year, the armed forces had seized 84,164 cartridges, 996 magazines, and over 1,500 firearms in the span of 22 days alone, the vast majority of which were found inside prison cells in places like the one in Guayaquil. According to the Ecuadorean Organized Crime Observatory (OECO), around 55 percent of the international firearms seized in Ecuador are manufactured in the United States. Like in many countries in Latin America, assault weapons and automatic guns are illegal in Ecuador.
State of Exception
President Daniel Noboa declared a ninth state of exception in Ecuador after gang members took control of a TV station in the port city of Guayaquil, unleashing a second wave of violence. While he is not the first to use the state of exception to stabilize the country, President Noboa is the first to declare gangs in the country terrorist organizations and use the rhetoric of internal armed conflict to activate the armed forces to intervene in the penitentiaries. This state of internal conflict, and the loosely defined denomination of “terrorist organizations,” has led to 14,765 arrests, but only 280 individuals have been detained on terrorism charges. Ecuadorean authorities have yet to release data on the demographics of those arrested, a strategy for fair and timely trials, and a solution to the country’s long-standing prison crisis.
In Ecuador’s capital of Quito, and even in the port city of Guayaquil, there is little to show for the state of armed conflict. Since President Noboa instituted the state of exception, the armed forces have primarily focused on prisons, working to dismantle the existing infrastructure that allowed some gang members to have luxury villas, firearms, cell phones, and even exotic animals. Taking control of the logistical centers of gang activity is the first step in curtailing violence in the country, but criminal groups have also proven capable of working together against the state when their interests are threatened.
So far, the results of the state of the exception, and the president’s security plan, dubbed “Plan Phoenix,” are mixed. Noboa boasts a 41 percent reduction in homicides, but neither the statistics department nor the national police has provided any data to back up that claim. Without access to third-party data, it is hard to say whether Noboa’s measures are producing the promised results. Last year, for example, the total number of homicides in the country reached 4,300, and in mid-March of this year, the count had already reached 1,199 deaths, not counting those killed in the most recent wave of attacks during Holy Week.
The panorama is even less hopeful when considering the diversification of criminal activity in the country. In Guayaquil, the police registered 724 emergency calls for extortion only in the first quarter of 2024, an increase of 476 percent when comparing the same period in 2023, marking a shift in criminal tactics used by the gangs. Similarly, the police reported 209 confirmed kidnappings during January and February of 2024, compared to the eight cases recorded in the same period of 2023, totaling an increase of 2,512 percent.
Conclusion
President Noboa, who assumed the presidency with 18 months to govern, has been able to rally the Ecuadorean people, and most importantly the military, in a united front against the gangs. Noboa’s popularity has been further reinforced by outstanding popular support of the referendum this April, which vests the armed forces with greater authorities, strengthening the country’s mano dura approach to combating crime. However, with an impending fiscal crisis and a ballooning security budget, Ecuador needs more than a temporary security strategy; it needs a plan to rebuild its institutions, promote prosperity, and work with partners in North America and beyond. If Ecuador and its partners fail to meet the multitude of challenges, the short-term gains through multiple states of emergency will be eviscerated, and Ecuador could revert to a scenario far worse than the status quo ante.
Ryan C. Berg is director of the Americas Program and head of the Future of Venezuela Initiative at the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) in Washington, D.C. Rubi Bledsoe is the program coordinator with the CSIS Americas Program.
Source link : https://www.csis.org/analysis/eye-storm-ecuadors-compounding-crises
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Publish date : 2024-04-24 03:00:00
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