Ecuador Declares ‘Internal Armed Conflict’ After Gunmen Storm TV Station, Kidnappings, and Prison Riots
Cartels and gangs have almost taken over Ecuador. Someone tell the government what’s going on in Ecuador is a REAL insurrection.
Holy moly. Ecuador has been on alert for weeks and started simmering when Los Choneros gang leader Aldolfo Macías disappeared from his cell on Sunday.
Ecuador exploded today.
I’ll explain more below the tweets. This is serious.
Tuesday
Daniel Noboa, the president of Ecuador, already declared a state of emergency after Macías escaped.
Noboa updated the decree today. He tweeted (translated via Google):
“I have signed the executive decree declaring Internal Armed Conflict and identified the following transnational organized crime groups as terrorist organizations and belligerent non-state actors: Águilas, Águilas Killer, Ak47, Caballeros Oscuros, Chon eKiller, Choneros, Covicheros, Cuartel de las Feas, Cubanos, Fatales, Gangster, Kater Piler, Lagartos, Latin Kings, Lobos, Los p.27, Los Tiburones, Mafia 18, Mafia Trébol, Patrones, R7, Tiguerones.
I have ordered the Armed Forces to carry out military operations to neutralize these groups.”
He firmado el decreto ejecutivo declarando Conflicto Armado Interno e identifiqué a los siguientes grupos del crimen organizado transnacional como organizaciones terroristas y actores no estatales beligerantes: Águilas, ÁguilasKiller, Ak47, Caballeros Oscuros, ChoneKiller,… pic.twitter.com/rVfSTFmHlG
— Daniel Noboa Azin (@DanielNoboaOk) January 9, 2024
What the terrorists are doing is bad enough.
But you know our government could very well do something like this. No one would dare abuse it, right? Translation:
The Assembly of Ecuador offers amnesty to police and military who use force during the “armed conflict”
“We support the Armed Forces, National Police and law enforcement officials”
#ALMOMENTO | La Asamblea de Ecuador ofrece amnistía a policías y militares que hagan uso de la fuerza durante el “conflicto armado”
“Respaldamos a las Fuerzas Armadas, Policía Nacional y a los funcionarios encargados de hacer cumplir la ley” pic.twitter.com/rBe8hfjjOP
— Azucena Uresti (@azucenau) January 9, 2024
I first saw a video of gunmen storming a TV live on air.
Translation:
“Criminals take over the TC facilities in #Guayaquil
The channel’s signal is on the air and shots are heard”
Imagine watching a major TV station and suddenly armed gang members are taking the anchors hostage live on air.
This is the terrifying situation of Ecuador, which unfortunately barely makes it onto the radar of the EU or US.
Big turning point. https://t.co/JuRh4yunpA
— Will Freeman (@WillGFreeman) January 9, 2024
BREAKING: Gunmen storm Ecuador television studiopic.twitter.com/azkpcIxJ3h
— The Spectator Index (@spectatorindex) January 9, 2024
JUST IN – Footage showed the moment Ecuador authorities arrested men with arms in a public TV studio during hostage situation
— Insider Paper (@TheInsiderPaper) January 9, 2024
We also have videos of terrorists executing people. I will not post those videos.
People running for their lives.
This is insane.
JUST IN: Ecuador is in total chaos as armed gangs have reportedly stormed University of Guayaquil, attempting to kidnap students.
The incident comes as a television station crew was taken hostage on live air.
The chaos is in response to President Daniel Noboa's decision to call… pic.twitter.com/49NwjeC2u2
— Collin Rugg (@CollinRugg) January 9, 2024
BREAKING NOW:
Military purportedly deployed in Guayaquil after Ecuador's MOST WANTED CRIMINAL disappears from prison..
DEVELOPING.. pic.twitter.com/G2zHnwFVej
— Chuck Callesto (@ChuckCallesto) January 9, 2024
Ecuador is entering Marshall law after cartel seizes control over parts of the country pic.twitter.com/0Pll2PRSo5
— Harrison Krank (@HarrisonKrank) January 9, 2024
#BREAKING: Armed Forces are patrolling the streets of Quito, Ecuador. pic.twitter.com/l6yJ95gjq7
— Censored Men (@CensoredMen) January 10, 2024
Past 24 Hours
So what has happened in the last 24 hours? A lot.
From The Financial Times:
In the 24-hours before the raid, at least seven Ecuadorean police officers were kidnapped by criminals around the country, including in Machala, a south-western city, and in the capital Quito, where a vehicle carrying liquefied petroleum gas was set ablaze at a petrol station.
In Cuenca, a hilltop city popular with tourists, unknown assailants launched an explosive at a military truck, according to authorities. In Esmeraldas, a coastal province that has suffered some of the worst of the violence, three attacks with explosives were reported by police.
Another jailbreak took place in Riobamba, in the central Andes, with 32 inmates escaping, including Fabricio Colón, one of the leaders of the Los Lobos gang, the town’s mayor told local website Primicias. Twenty escapees were recaptured, though Colón is among those still at large.
Gangs have taken over the prisons, too:
Amid the violence, prisons have fallen under the control of the gangs, who often use them as bases for their operations and staging grounds for street battles. More than 400 inmates have died in the past four years, with many massacres taking place within the Regional complex where Macías was being held.
Roberto Izurieta, a government spokesperson, said in a television interview on Monday that the country’s penitentiary system had “completely failed”, and that Macías was expected to be transferred to a maximum-security facility just hours before his disappearance.
Lead Up to Tuesday’s Takeover
The assassination of Fernando Villavicencio, the far-right presidential candidate, in August caused a ripple across the country.
Villavicencio told everyone the Choneros gang threatened him. The police claim they couldn’t connect the gang to his murder.
The snap election happened in November. Centre-right Noboa, son of a rich banana magnate, won the election.
Ecuador is the top banana exporter in the world.
Rise in Crime, Homicides
Ecuador has deteriorated since 2016 thanks to the drug wars and crime in Colombia.
The 2020 shutdown made everything worse:
Gangs operating inside Ecuador’s prisons have taken advantage of the state’s weak control to expand their power, threatening inmates’ lives, according to human rights groups and prisoners’ families.
Outside prisons, murders have exploded. Since 2016, Ecuador’s homicide rate has soared by almost 500% to an estimated 22 murders per 100,000 people in 2022, global risk intelligence company Verisk Maplecroft said in a note.
Guyaquil, considered Ecuador’s most dangerous city, registered 1,390 violent deaths in the first half of this year, nearly as many as it tallied in all of 2022, and close to half of the 3,500 cases registered nationally, police data showed.
The crime and homicides have pushed Ecuador to “the third most crime-ridden country in Latin America.”
The latest report found “11 distinct criminal groups in 21 of the country’s 24 provinces.” They came from Colombia, Ecuador, Mexico, Peru, and Venezuela.
An article published on December 14 stated that the drug wars caused 6,348 murders. Who knows how many since then:
“One strategy is to disrupt the primary source of financing for organized crime, which involves preventing the entry of cocaine through the northern and southern borders,” said security analyst Mario Pazmiño. But drug traffickers have also expanded into firearms and ammunition trafficking, illegal mining and human trafficking.
At the local level, the gangs thrive on extortion, kidnappings and selling stolen vehicles and cell phones. “It’s a criminal holding company that’s been ignored by a government that doesn’t understand it,” said Pazmiño. “There’s a clear criminal complicity going on, and it’s because there’s a lack of political decision-making about what our country really needs.”
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Comments
They wish they’d followed El Salvador’s example now, don’t they?
It’s not to late for them to start down that path.
Here come millions more
Don’t worry, our Cuban head of DHS, Mayorkas, has continually informed us that our borders are secure. Thanks to Dick Chaney Jr. and her clique, we know what an insurrection looks like. There is no way this will happen on our watch. Joe can simply call every legal non-citizen guest on their government phone and make sure they don’t do anything improper. Besides, who is going to step out of line in a country that 1) isn’t a major producers of bananas and 2) is lorded over by #dementiahitler? Nothing to see here, folks.
So to restate; Weak leadership, lack of effective policing, dysfunctional system of incarceration, public officials compromised by or complicit with criminal cartels, high rates of crime that are increasing daily including brazenly in public by criminals who don’t seem worried about any sort of consequences for their actions…. No offense but that description sounds an awful lot like Chicago.
Except for the bananas part.
New York, San Francisco, Los Angeles, Philadelphia…
Let me guess: more effects of climate change.
The world is catching fire under Biden. The whole world.
We were in Quito last year. Transit stop on our way to the Galapagos. We were at the hilltop area mentioned. As well as the area pictured with the military vehicles. These countries have to go after the gangs with ruthless precision. If we had a government that was interested in helping, they would shut off the flow of cash through the banking system. Unfortunately our government is more worried about lopping off the sex organs of pre-pubescent boys and girls. FJB
Leftists under attack?
Good.
The crime and homicides have pushed Ecuador to “the third most crime-ridden country in Latin America.”
Wait. With all this breathless hullabaloo, and it’s only the third worst?
Sounds like somewhere needs to be shut out of the rest of the world for a while.
If Ecuadorians ever get tired of dying at the hands of narco-terrorists, maybe they could ask Nayib Bukele for some pointers on reducing crime in a Latin-American country.
My 19 year old granddaughter is serving a mission for our church right now in Northern Ecuador. I pray for her safety. If it gets really dangerous my church will pull the missionaries there back to the US.
The father of Rafael Correa, President of Ecuador from 2007-2017, spent 3 years in prison for attempting to smuggle drugs into the United States. Rafael Correa was 5 years old at the time of his father’s arrest, and didn’t find about his father’s arrest and imprisonment until he was 18.
Ecuador produces a lot of bananas. Just sayin.’
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rafael_Correa