![]() ![]() In the first half of the year, the province saw 976 business robberies, according to National Police data, just 12 short of last year’s total. ![]() The province of Guayas, which includes Guayaquil, is the country’s most populous with about 4.5 million people. About a third of this year’s violent deaths took place in Ecuador’s second-largest city, home to the country’s main commercial port and a large prison complex.īuilt on flat land at the end of the Andes, the city stretches along the brown Amazonian waters of the Guayas River, with only a few tall buildings, and homes and small businesses such as pharmacies dominating the landscape. Outgunned, unprepared and underpaid, law-enforcement officers don’t dare enter parts of crime-ridden neighborhoods or the wings of some prisons, where dismembered bodies, as well as high-caliber weapons, grenades, belt feeders and drugs, have been found when the government deploys the military and additional police after vicious riots. “But definitely, in recent years, these criminal groups have garnered more influence here through local gangs, which they empowered, and today they have more weapons than the police themselves.” “Since the year 2000, we had already seen the Mexican cartels here,” said Rob Peralta, a former member of a National Police intelligence unit. The gangs have links to cartels from Colombia and Mexico, including the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation groups. Los Choneros and the similar groups Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones have been fighting over territory and control, including within detention facilities, where at least 400 inmates have died since 2021. Members carry out contract killings, run extortion operations, move and sell drugs, and are the law inside prisons. Founded in the 1990s, the group is the country’s largest and most feared gang. Restaurant owner Carlos Barrezueta said there are spots in Guayaquil where sales have dropped to a tenth of what they once were.Įcuadorian authorities attribute the unprecedented violence to a power vacuum triggered by the killing in December 2020 of Jorge Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL,” the leader of Los Choneros. Another time, he was robbed after he went out to have a couple of drinks. Thieves in Guayaquil stole his phone one time during his morning commute. Garcia, the 26-year-old shrimp packer, has been robbed twice this year. Data from the National Police show 31,485 cases were reported last year, about 11,000 more than in 2020. The bars and restaurants that survived the pandemic have fewer tables and close early. Malls have metal detectors at the entrances. Convenience stores, auto part shops and pharmacies have floor-to-ceiling metal bars that prevent customers from entering from the sidewalk. Shopping and dining is a different experience these days. “COVID came and went and left us vaccines, but a different type of vaccines,” said Holbach Muñeton, president of the National Federation of Provincial Chambers of Tourism of Ecuador. The COVID-19 pandemic turned hungry children and unemployed adults into easy recruits for criminal groups.Ĭriminals are increasingly demanding payments from businesses and terming the fee a “vacuna” - vaccine - as in immunity from crime. Dwindling state coffers, political infighting, corruption and soaring debts created funding gaps in social and law-enforcement programs. Cartel-aided gangs are battling for control of the streets, prisons and drug routes to the Pacific. ![]()
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