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.
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.”
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”
I first saw a video of gunmen storming a TV live on air.
Translation:
“Criminals take over the TC facilities in #GuayaquilThe channel’s signal is on the air and shots are heard”
We also have videos of terrorists executing people. I will not post those videos.
People running for their lives.
This is insane.
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.
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.
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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