Ecuador is in a war against organized crime

The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, admitted in an official decree that the country is in the midst of an internal armed conflict, the latest chapter in a years-long escalation of violence.

The decree came after an armed group took over a TV set during a news broadcast in Guayaquil, the country's most populous city and the epicenter of the violence.

The spectacle of violence caused the evacuation and closure of hundreds of public institutions and the collapse of roads and means of transportation.

Furthermore, all the commotion hit Ecuador after a particularly violent weekend, with prison riots, attacks, and kidnappings, according to local news outlet GK.

The digital media detailed the detonation of an explosive near the house of Iván Saquicela, president of the National Court of Justice, north of Quito, the capital.

President Noboa published the conflict declarations on top of an exception status he had already issued over the weekend following violence in prisons and the escape of a high-profile criminal.

One of the country's most dangerous criminals escaped from prison before the violence erupted and was followed by a second one a few days after. The fugitives are leaders of rival criminal gangs.

Noboa's decree specifically addressed those criminal groups, officially classifying them, along with around twenty other gangs, as terrorist organizations.

These criminal groups have been associated, according to local media, with various crimes, but especially with drug trafficking.

It is precisely drug trafficking that has contributed to Ecuador descending into a spiral of violence in recent years.

One of the most severe episodes of violence came last August when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was murdered.

Villavicencio placed his candidacy on the platform of fighting corruption and received several threats for his whistleblowing.

Among his investigations was a list of candidates for local governments he associated with gangs; the Prosecutor's Office found some of them among the contacts of a known drug trafficker.

The discovery was part of a macro corruption investigation, after which the prosecutor's office presented accusations against top justice officials for their links to drug trafficking.

According to Euronews, the United States Office of International Narcotics Affairs has described the port of Guayaquil as the "main logistics center for cocaine going to Europe and the rest of the world."

The logistics for the export of bananas and other primary products have been used by drug trafficking to move illegal substances, mainly to the European Union.

According to the EFE news agency, the effects of these illegal activities have led Ecuador to end 2023 as the most violent country in Latin America.

This is a radical change when, in 2019, the number of violent deaths was a quarter of that of last year, reports El País.