Ecuador is a South American nation situated between Columbia and Peru. With a population of 18 million and around 280 square km of land, Ecuador was widely seen as the safest country in all south America – so why has it been receiving so much bad press during the last few weeks?
During the last five years, Ecuador has been in a rapid state of decline. Drug gangs have been taking more and more turf, and the county has become somewhat of a drug highway coming from Columbia and shipping worldwide. Several government members have declared the nation a narco-state and the murder rate has tripled in the last 2 years. But this is old news. The reason that this crisis in Ecuador has been getting so much coverage as of recent is due to the recent announcement by the president Daniel Noboa that they are at war with the drug gangs.
All of this began after the notorious drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar (also known under his alias ‘Fito’) escaped his cell in the Litoral Penitentiary on the 7th January after serving 12 years in prison, aside from briefly escaping once before in 2013. Fito was the leader of the Los Choneros cartel, which he managed since 2020 when his predecessor died. He did this from jail which had become almost standard procedure in Ecuadorian prisons due to the government’s haphazardly managed prison system.
Almost immediately after his escape a huge wave of narco-terrorism swept Ecuador. Hospitals and universities were attacked, prison guards were being held hostage in mass and a live television station was hijacked by gunmen. All of this led to a 60-day state of emergency and nightly curfew being declared by the government while they attempt to eradicate the gangs posing a threat, 22 of which have been legally labelled ‘terrorist organisations’
All of this begs the question of where things began to go sideways for Ecuador, the last 5 years has seen the steepest decline in recent history, so where did it all go wrong?
The answer seems an obvious place, Columbia. After all, that’s where all the drugs are coming from. Ecuador has brilliant roads and infrastructure to transport the product, little port security making an easy route to the rest of the world, and the cherry on top, the country was dollarized, meaning that money laundering would be a whole lot simpler - It only made sense to traffic drugs through Ecuador. This was the perspective of the guerrilla group ‘Farc’ who held ownership the drug route for as long as it had existed, but in 2016 there was a shift; Farc signed a deal with Columbia which meant ceasing all activity in the area, a clear win for Columbia, or so you would think.
Despite the drug routes being left unused after the abolishing of Farc’s activity, this subsequently created a power vacuum. A scramble for the territory began, Columbian and Ecuadorian gangs were now not only competing with each other, but with the Mexican cartel; even the Albanian Mafia who all wanted a piece of the pie. All of these different factions raised tensions sky high in the area as several different factions all fought for control, hence causing Ecuador’s downfall.
As of the time of writing (17th January) Ecuador has declared that they have freed all 178 prison guards previously held hostage and promised that no negotiations would be taking place with these armed groups. To how successfully this tactic will play out, we can only wait and see.