Ecuador enters a crisis amid prison riots and the disappearance of gang leaders

Ecuador descended into chaos this week when a powerful gang leader disappeared from prison, riots broke out in several prisons and guards were kidnapped and threatened by prisoners in what has quickly escalated into a major crisis for the South American country.

The unrest continued Tuesday afternoon, when masked men stormed a television station in Guayaquil, the country’s largest city, taking anchors and staff hostage and exchanging gunfire with police as cameras rolled. The standoff ended after police subdued and arrested the intruders.

Explosions were also reported across the country and authorities announced that a second major gang leader and other inmates had escaped from another prison.

The president, Daniel Noboa, declared an internal armed conflict on Tuesday and ordered the armed forces to “neutralize” 20 gangs, which he described as “terrorist organizations,” according to a post on X, formerly known as Twitter.

Mr Noboa, who has prioritized restoring security in a country engulfed by violence fueled by a booming drug trade, had earlier declared a state of emergency and deployed more than 3,000 police and military officers to search for the escapee gang leader, Adolfo Macías.

The 60-day declaration imposes a nationwide curfew and allows the military to patrol the streets and take control of prisons.

“The time is over when drug trafficking convicts, hitmen and organized crime dictate to the government what to do,” Mr Noboa said in a video announcing the measure on Monday, adding that it was necessary for security forces to take control . Ecuador’s prison system.

Macías, the head of the Los Choneros gang and better known as “Fito,” disappeared on Sunday from an overcrowded prison in the coastal city of Guayaquil, from where he had long overseen his group’s operations.

The government had ordered the transfer of high-profile convicts, including Mr. Macías, from the cells where they run their criminal gangs to a maximum-security prison. That decision, prison experts say, may have led to Mr. Macías’ escape and the prison riots.

Mr. Noboa has pledged to regain control of the country’s prisons, which have become both gang headquarters and recruitment centers.

Some security experts believe that as many as a quarter of the country’s 36 prisons are controlled by gangs.

Last week, Mr Noboa announced he wanted to hold a referendum on security measures, including tougher penalties for crimes such as murder and arms trafficking, and expanding the role of the military.

Mr Noboa, the centre-right scion of a banana dynasty, took office in November after elections dominated by security and economic concerns. Violence has increased in recent years as gangs battle for control of lucrative drug trafficking routes that transport narcotics to the United States and Europe.

These fears were reinforced by the assassination during the campaign of another presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, who, not long before his assassination, had said he was being threatened by Los Choneros.

Mr. Macías is perhaps the best-known gang leader to run drug operations behind bars, and his group is believed to have been among the first in Ecuador to forge ties with powerful Mexican cartels.

Mr Macías, who is serving a 34-year prison sentence for crimes including drug trafficking, had already escaped from prison once in 2013. He became the leader of Los Choneros around 2020 and is in charge of the gang’s activities from his cell. the Guayaquil prison, part of a complex with about 12,000 prisoners.

After Mr. Villavicencio was murdered last summer, Mr. Macías was briefly moved to a high-security wing on the same property. But his lawyer appealed and a judge ordered Mr. Macías moved back to his favorite spot in the prison in Guayaquil, which serves as the Choneros’ base.

He celebrated this by releasing a music video in the style of a ‘narcocorrido’, a genre from Mexico that glorifies the violent exploits of drug traffickers.

Last month, Mr. Noboa, while promoting his plans to tackle the country’s prisons, said he would start with measures such as cutting off Mr. Macías’ access to electrical outlets and routers. “I saw on YouTube that Fito’s cell phone had four outlets,” Mr. Noboa said. “There are more sockets than in a hotel room.”

Mr. Macías was found missing from his cell during a search for contraband. His disappearance, officials said, came as he and other known criminals were scheduled to be sent to the maximum-security prison.

A top government official suggested this week that Mr. Macías may have learned of his impending transfer through a government leak. “That would be very serious,” said the official, Esteban Torres, because “it would mean there is rot at the highest levels of government.”

Securing Ecuador’s prisons is critical to ensuring efforts to root out corruption are effective, said Will Freeman, a Latin American studies fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations.

“You have to make sure that when you actually send people to prison for money laundering or complicity in organized crime as a public official, that the punishment is meaningful and that they don’t just continue to run criminal gangs from prisons,” he says. said.

He said a state of emergency could help stabilize prisons since the entity charged with running the prison system had failed to control the gangs, but that it was not a long-term solution. He noted that Mr. Noboa’s predecessor had repeatedly imposed similar measures.

“It is clear that they have not really improved the situation sustainably,” he said.

Jorge Núñez, an anthropologist who has studied the Ecuadorian prison system for years, said Mr. Noboa did not do anything dramatically different when it came to the penitentiary system.

“It’s a mix of improvisation and basically doing the same thing,” said Mr. Núñez, who said the previous government had handed over prisons to the police, who overlooked “growth and excessive empowerment of prison gangs.”

The privileges granted to cartel leaders increased over time, he added.

Prison searches have revealed not only extensive stockpiles of weapons and electronics in the country’s prisons, but also pigs, roosters and a cockfighting ring.

On Monday evening, as the first curfew approached, the streets of Quito, the capital, were quickly deserted. Only police cars and ambulances could be seen in a silence reminiscent of the Covid-19 pandemic.

“The curfew has direct consequences for us,” said Junior Córdova, a restaurant owner in Quito. “We had a great start to the year, but it’s not looking so good now because people are starting to feel scared.”

Genevieve Glatsky contributed reporting from Bogotá, Colombia, and José María Leon Cabrera from Quito, Ecuador.