QUITO, Ecuador (CN) — In November, Juana Francis Bone's 14-year-old niece went to the corner store for a minute and never came back.
When her family filed a police report, they were told each officer had some 60 missing person cases on their shoulders. Her niece would be just one more.
Francis is a law student and advocate for Black women’s rights in the organization Mujeres de Asfalto. She lives in Esmeraldas, a largely Afro-Ecuadorian city on the coast of Ecuador, today considered one of the most violent in Latin America.
News of decapitated bodies in the streets, shootouts between gangs, targeted assassinations, and extortion of people and small businesses have become common in the city, Francis says. Personally, she’s tired of thinking about it. She works from home now, tries never to leave the house alone, and doesn’t go to crowded public places where stray bullets are likely to fly by.
“Imagine having this feeling that you leave your house, but you don't know if you're going to come back alive,” Francis told Courthouse News by phone. “I think this whole wave of violence has changed everyone's life.”
Violence in Ecuador has escalated rapidly in recent years, with coastal cities like Esmeraldas and Guayaquil bearing the brunt. Last month, the violence reached a peak when masked armed men burst into a TV station during a live broadcast. They shouted a message about not messing with the mafia while holding up several journalists. The images shocked people both at home and abroad, giving the impression that Ecuadorian officials have lost control.
President Daniel Noboa responded by declaring war against the 22 criminal groups operating in the country, which he calls “terrorists.” In the first 26 days of this battle, officials say they have taken back control of prisons and made over 5,800 arrests — including 237 people accused of terrorism — but there has been very little information released about the detainees.
The country has largely celebrated these results, as people have been living in fear and frustration over increased crime. Some polls even put Noboa’s approval rating at 80%.
But many say a military response to Ecuador’s security crisis is short-sighted, as it doesn’t address the large-scale impunity, corruption or weakened state and institutions that led the country to this point.
The epicenter
As recently as 2018, Ecuador’s homicide rate was one of the lowest in Latin America, and the country appeared to be one of the safest in the region. But in 2023, there were over 7,500 violent deaths, marking one of Ecuador’s most violent years on record and almost double the killings in the previous year. Today it is considered among the top three most dangerous nations in the region.
The surge in violence began not long after prison riots started in February 2021, following the killing of a key gang leader. The assassination sparked fighting between rival gangs both inside prison walls and on the streets, which hasn’t subsided. Over 600 prisoners have since been killed in recurring riots.
In 2022, the Inter-American Commission of Human Rights released a report detailing corruption among guards that has allowed guns, knives and explosives to enter prisons. Repeated cutbacks in staff, training and rehabilitation programs also allowed the prison system to fall into the hands of criminal gangs.
Anthropologist Jorge Nuñez, who has been studying Ecuador’s prison system for over two decades, told the BBC these penitentiaries have long been controlled by criminal groups and have become the perfect place to recruit new members.
Several of these groups are also entrenched in transnational criminal groups, like Mexican, Colombian, Venezuelan and even Albanian gangs, who have a strong interest in Ecuador’s strategic geographical position.
