Ecuador is at war against drugs. The challenge to the State launched by organized crime is not new, but Tuesday’s events have provoked an unprecedented reaction from the Government of right-wing President Daniel Noboa, who has not even been in office for two months and who won the elections last year. precisely promising to end the threat of drug trafficking.
“We are in a state of war and we cannot give in to these terrorists,” Noboa declared yesterday after saying the day before that Ecuador is in an “internal armed conflict” and ordering the armed forces to act militarily against 22 criminal gangs. headed by Los Choneros and Los Lobos, which came to be considered “terrorist” groups.
Noboa acknowledged that the moment is “hard” and that “this wave of violence is not an accident.” The president announced the deportation of some 1,500 foreign prisoners serving sentences in Ecuador, assured that drug trafficking groups have some 200,000 people at their service and referred to the infiltration of organized crime in the State. “Judges who help terrorists will also be considered part or members of the terrorism network,” he warned. And he told the drug traffickers: “If you want to resist and show off, be brave and fight against the military.”
The last straw was the images of a group of armed criminals entering the set and interrupting a live news program on the TC Television network in Guayaquil, the economic capital of the country. The police intervention managed to free the hostages and arrest the thirteen assailants. At the same time, similar actions also took place on Tuesday, mostly in the coastal city – with 29 attacks – and in other parts of the country, where there was also looting. The drug traffickers – 70 were arrested – spread terror in a hospital, university classrooms, businesses or simply shooting in the streets, with the result of ten deaths, including the popular singer Diego Gallardo, hit by a stray bullet in Guayaquil when he was going to search your son to school.
The gangs were thus reacting to Noboa’s decision on Monday to declare a state of emergency and a nightly curfew for two months after it was discovered that the head of Los Choneros, Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, who was imprisoned in jail, had escaped. Litoral de Guayaquil has been serving a 34-year sentence since 2011 for organized crime, murder and drug trafficking.
The Government planned to transfer Fito to a maximum security prison and carry out other drug trafficking movements, as one of Noboa’s first measures to tackle the problem of insecurity, since the gang leaders exercise control inside the prisons. , from where they continue to direct their criminal activities.
At the same time, to pressure the Government there were riots in prisons in Cuenca, Azogues, Napo, Ambato and Latacunga, which continued last night, with the result of 139 hostages, most of them prison guards, but also administrative staff.
The entire Ecuadorian opposition initially gave its support to the measures taken by Noboa, including former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017). However, Correa yesterday charged against the president, whom he described as a “totally unprepared person.” Correa added that “drug trafficking is infiltrated in the State” and blamed the current situation of violence on the conservative governments that succeeded his: “They are reaping everything they reaped during these years of destruction, of political persecution, where they forgot the good common to administer the State in the governments in power.”
“The president has taken extreme measures” in the face of a “brutal display of power,” Christian Zurita tells La Vanguardia from Quito. Whoever was the third most voted candidate in last year’s presidential elections – after replacing Fernando Villavicencio, murdered by drug traffickers – assures that after “this show of power by the leaders of organized crime, they are going to retreat.” Zurita describes the gang leaders as “very strategic: they take control, create chaos and disappear.” The former candidate, who on Tuesday came out publicly to support the measures announced by Noboa, maintains that “since the murder of Villavicencio there has been an escalation of violence” in Ecuador and affirms that “the Government must demonstrate firmness to take control of the prisons.” ”.
