The crisis of violence faced by the president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, just two months before the start of his term has once again put the Andean country in the spotlight. The murder of candidate Fernando Villavicencio by organized crime hitmen during the presidential campaign set off alarm bells and security became a central topic of the debate. The promises of a “hard hand” were an essential part of Noboa’s program, with the reference being the management of the problem of Nayib Bukele’s gangs in El Salvador. A good part of the Ecuadorian population is receptive to this discourse of forceful responses, even at the cost of loss of rights and freedoms.
But how has Ecuador gone from being a country with low crime rates to being the country with the highest number of homicides in the region in just two decades? The factors are both endogenous and external. The end of Rafael Correa’s presidency (2007-2017), a prosperous period in its beginnings, coincided with the economic crisis and left the country mired in political polarization that weakened institutional structures.
The governments of Lenin Moreno and Guillermo Lasso spent more time staying alive than developing policies to address the country’s structural problems. The former’s economic measures sparked nationwide protests that led to military intervention and the declaration of a state of emergency in 2019. His successor, Lasso, governed as a minority with fierce opposition that ended with his resignation. In his weakness, to confront gang violence he repeatedly resorted to the state of emergency, without this having any effect.
Institutional weakness has not only affected the Government, but also the security forces, penitentiary institutions and the judicial system, which allowed the penetration of organized crime through corruption. The consequence was impunity and the development of a structure parallel to the State that has territorial control of organized crime routes, especially in border areas, but also in urban areas and penitentiary establishments. Corruption not only affects the public sector, it has also infiltrated the private sector, diversifying the transnational crime business.
But the exponential escalation of violence is explained above all by the internationalization of criminal networks. The pressure against the gangs in neighboring states made them look for alternative routes, and Ecuador went from being a transit country to a center for the production and distribution of coca paste destined for the United States, Mexico, Europe and Brazil. The port of Guayaquil is the nerve center of this drug trafficking. The internationalization of local gangs, with links to Mexican, Brazilian and Colombian cartels, has led to an escalation of confrontation between rival gangs with extortion, murders, hitmen and kidnappings. The peace process in Colombia and the dismemberment of the FARC caused some demobilized people to join the gangs in Ecuador.
The attempt to break this network of violence only with heavy-handed policies has already proven futile in other countries such as Mexico. There may be temporary pacification, but transnational crime requires transversal State pacts and international cooperation, which goes far beyond security. It is necessary to review the structures that support this transnational network and escape from the populist mirage of simple solutions to complex problems.