Guayaquil, the capital of Guayas and the economic lung of Ecuador, is not only the largest city in the country, but also one of the most aggressive and difficult cities to live in. In 2023 it was in the Ranked 24th in the list of most violent cities prepared by the Citizens' Council for Public Security and Criminal Justice of Mexico. Here the gangs are rampant and fighting for control of the territory, particularly the five ports through which much of the drugs arrive and then travel to and from Europe North America.
In this scenario of poverty and drug trafficking, criminal groups carry out extortions, kidnappings, shootings, robberies and murders by hitmen on a daily basis. President Daniel Noboa has declared war on them and sent the armed forces onto the streets to fight the insurgency that the country is experiencing after the government declared 21 gangs and criminal groups as such Terrorist gangs.
As a port city between Colombia and Peru, the main producers of coca, Guayaquil (population 2.8 million) became an important enclave in the drug trade years ago. In 2021, Pablo Arosemena, then-governor of Guayas, told the BBC that the city was “experienced what Colombia experienced in the 80s and 90s.” The former mayor of Guayaquil Cynthia Viteri He even suggested allowing citizens to carry weapons to defend themselves, “because now that criminals approach your car, they'll point a revolver at you because they know you're unarmed.”
Ecuador ceased to be a transit point between Colombia and Peru a long time ago. Alfonso Harb, The former MP emphasizes that in addition to the ports that serve as a platform for the big cartels, there is an internal drug consumption market that has not stopped growing, especially in the favelas, where poverty has increased and where the absence of the state Supply prevents help, health and education for the population. Without outside help, the youngest children can easily be recruited by gangs, experts consulted complain.
These gangs have become criminal organizations like this Wolves and the Tiguerones, in the wake of the veteran Choneros gang, which included drug trafficker Adolfo Macías, alias Fito, who escaped from a prison in Guayaquil on January 7, causing the chaotic and violent situation of the last few days. “Criminal gangs are more armed than the police themselves,” Robinson Sánchez, head of operations for the sector, admitted in the past. It is a “war” of pistols against rifles.
Criminal groups' plans are often hatched in prisons, which authorities say have become control centers for organized crime. The death of the leader of the Los Choneros gang in 2020, Jorge Luis Zambrano, aka Rasquiña, It opened an internal divide between local groups that wanted to seize large shares of power. This climate led to the worst prison massacre of 2021, in which 119 inmates were murdered in various penitentiaries, some of them beheaded. In total, more than 450 prisoners have died in 18 violent clashes in prisons in the last three years, reports Ap.
President Noboa has doubled down on his commitment to a militarized approach, according to Insight Crime experts, but has given no indication of a long-term security plan. “Everything that is happening now is becoming a crisis, considering that the problem of violence and crime cannot be solved overnight,” Max Campos, security analyst and former deputy interior minister, told this website from Ecuador.