From Island of Peace to Sea of Violence: How Narcoterrorism Engulfed Ecuador

8 February 2025

Charlie McCombie & Alejandra Cabrera

Introduction

Ecuador was once mostly known as the world's leading exporter of bananas and a prime destination for adventure-cum-ecotourism—an island of peace in a violence-ridden region. Now it has the highest murder rate in mainland Latin America (up from the fourth-lowest in 2018) and can claim the status of “cocaine superhighway to the US and Europe”, according to InSight Crime, which investigates organized crime in the Americas. By 2021, cocaine was Ecuador’s sixth-largest export, worth nearly $1 billion (0.9% of GDP).

"Ecuador as an island of peace is a misnomer," explains Daniel Pontón, professor of security and defense at Ecuador's National Institute for Higher Studies. Since 2019, its government has struggled to tackle rampant terroristic violence, restore security to its citizens, and fully assert state sovereignty. In the past three years, numerous deadly prison riots have taken place during which hundreds of inmates have been killed with knives and guns; politicians, judges, prison chiefs and journalists have been targeted with assassinations; and public institutions have been attacked with explosives. Meanwhile, money from drug trafficking has infiltrated the state to a systemic level, and now holds influence over key government officials. Since 2022, however, Ecuador has begun to take seriously the endemic corruption that plagues the country.

Ecuador remains in the midst of a profound security crisis, with homicides surging by 245% between 2020 and 2022, and many inside and outside the country decrying its descent into a narco-state. Although the causes of Ecuadorian gang violence are complex, four factors are key to understanding its rise: widespread poverty; the prevalence of drugs and guns; and regional migration. Unlike its cocaine-producing neighbors Colombia and Peru, Ecuador lacked well-armed guerrilla movements in the second half of the 20th century, and thus did not evolve the security infrastructure to effectively combat organized violence when these groups moved into the country. Mexican and Colombian cartels, Balkan, Italian, Russian and ‘Mocro’ mafia clans, and other international organized criminal groups now vie for control over various parts of Ecuador alongside local gangs including Los Choneros, Los Lobos, Los Lagartos and Los Tiguerones. “It is very disorganized. A handful of gangs have connections to international mafias. But the rest are not sure what they are doing or of their position in global markets,” says Renato Rivera-Rhon, Director of the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory (OECO), “That’s why we see the degree of violence that we do: these organizations are attempting to gain legitimacy in the eyes of their global superiors.”

Tracing the rise of gangs and narcoterrorism in Ecuador from the 1970s to the 2020s, with a focus on Ecuador’s social, political and economic context, this analysis explores the country’s emergence as a key player in the international drugs trade, alongside its escalating issues with violence. It investigates the transition of local street gangs into Mexican cartel proxies, and the rise of endemic corruption (narcopolitics), before assessing domestic and international efforts to respond to Ecuador’s ongoing state of emergency. (Bargent, 2019; The Economist, 2023b, 2024a, 2024b; Clapp, 2024; IRC, 2024; Quesada, 2024)

Poverty, Violence & The Political Economy of Ecuador

Although Ecuador’s most recent episode of violence is unprecedented in its scale and severity, the country is no stranger to the dual crises of poverty and organized criminal violence. The roots of the current situation can be traced back to the 1990s, when Ecuador was facing significant inflation and instability, and the economy was formally dollarized. Although dollarization unquestionably spurred economic growth, it also made Ecuador an ideal location for money laundering—the US dollar being the preferred physical medium of exchange for international criminal actors. Paired with its widespread poverty and proximity to the cocaine production hubs of Colombia and Peru—countries both beset by violent insurgency—Ecuador’s narcoterrorism crisis was perhaps inevitable without drastic intervention.

In 2007, at the beginning of his decade-long term, left-wing populist President Rafael Correa implemented a series of social spending and education reforms largely funded by oil revenues. When oil prices crashed in 2008, Ecuador’s oil-dependent economy collapsed, leading to an increase in drug trafficking and gang violence. Crime continued to escalate, culminating in a police riot in 2010, during which Correa was taken hostage. In response, he introduced judiciary reforms, including a more punitive penal code, and invested oil surpluses in the police, offering rewards to officers who captured high-profile criminals. This had an immediate effect on the prison population, which increased from 10,000 to 40,000, with many of the most-wanted ending up behind bars. Homicides, which had peaked at 20 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2000, were drastically reduced to 5.6 by the end of his term in 2017. Nonetheless, public sector corruption had become rampant under Correa, with the ex-president handed an eight-year prison sentence in 2020. He has lived in Belgium since 2017, however. (BBC News, 2020)

Gang members in an Ecuadorian prison staffed by the military.

Correa’s successor Lenín Moreno attempted to grapple with the economic crisis by implementing austerity measures that cut back on public spending. However, this led to political turmoil and fueled massive indigenous-led protests in 2019 against the elimination of fuel subsidies that had kept both fuel and product prices low for consumers for 40 years. Already precarious before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ecuador’s economic and political situation significantly worsened due to the global paralysis that ensued, exacerbating its longstanding issues with extreme poverty and limited opportunity. Government attempts to inject funds into the economy were further complicated by the country's dollarization. According to Ecuador’s National Institute for Statistics and Census, poverty surged to 32% in 2020, with extreme poverty reaching 14.9%. (National Institute for Statistics and Census, 2020, 2023)

Domestic gangs as well as international criminal syndicates exploited this situation for recruitment, money laundering and other activities. While trading in illegal drugs remains their primary source of income, Ecuadorian gangs are also involved in extortion, human trafficking and smuggling, like many criminal syndicates in Latin America. However, as one of the most biodiverse countries in the world, Ecuador is additionally subject to wildlife trafficking and illegal fishing and logging by gangs. Along Ecuador’s borders with Peru and Colombia, illegal logging of balsa trees by timber mafias has led to substantial deforestation, with around 15% of the Ecuadorian Amazon already lost. Illegally sourced balsa wood increased by over 1000 cubic meters between 2019–2020. Meanwhile in the remote northern Amazonian province of Imbabura, Los Lobos control most of the illegal gold mining, and charge a 10% tax on everything extracted. (Cárdenas and Jones, 2022; InSight Crime, 2022; Mistler-Ferguson, 2022)

As Ecuador’s role in the global narcotics trade became increasingly important from 2016 onwards, violent crime linked to drug gangs drastically increased along with it. The deteriorating security situation is reflected in the murder rate, which surged from 6.7 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 to 25.6 in 2022, before soaring again to 45 in 2023, following successive waves of gang violence since 2020. This represents more than 8,000 violent deaths in 2023 in a nation of 18 million people, positioning Ecuador within the top-ten most dangerous countries worldwide. Desperate to flee the poverty and violence, Ecuadorians were the second-highest nationality by number in 2022 to cross Panama’s treacherous Darien Gap on their way north. (InSight Crime, 2023b; The Economist, 2023b, 2024b; Quesada, 2024; Reuters, 2024a)

Ecuador’s Role in International Drug Trafficking

Strategically positioned between the two leading coca leaf growers and cocaine producers Peru and Colombia, Ecuador served primarily as a transit country in the international cocaine supply chain during the 1970s–90s. Despite neighboring both countries, Ecuador had largely escaped the ongoing violence of the FARC and Shining Path insurgencies and cartel rivalries across its borders since the 1970s until recently. As a result, the Ecuadorian state “never developed the infrastructure or material capacity to address existential security threats stemming from revolutionaries or illicit gangs”, in the words of Dr Christopher Sabatini, Senior Research Fellow at Chatham House.

In the 1990s, after the Peruvian government’s temporary victory over the revolutionary communist party and guerrilla group Shining Path allowed it to begin reasserting state authority over cocaine-producing areas in Peru, Shining Path and other Peru-based criminal organizations shifted to using Ecuador’s ports to export their product. Meanwhile, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), a powerful Marxist-Leninist guerrilla group active since 1964, effectively monopolized the Ecuadorian cocaine trade into the 2010s. From the 1970s–1990s, it permitted Colombia’s Medellín, Cali and Norte del Valle Cartels to also use Ecuador as a transhipment point for trafficking drugs and as a hub for smuggling precursor chemicals needed to process the coca leaf into cocaine. The trafficking process was relatively peaceful as there was minimal state interference and little competition. High-ranking FARC members even claim to have financed Rafael Correa’s successful 2007 presidential campaign.

Colombian military assaults against the FARC as well as mass aerial spraying of coca crops increasingly pushed the group and coca cultivation across the Ecuadorian border. When Colombia tightened its port security in 2009, the poorly monitored port at Guayaquil in Ecuador took on an increasingly important role in the movement of Colombian and Peruvian cocaine to the North American and European markets. Between 2000–2015, the US implemented ‘Plan Colombia’, a $1-trillion-dollar aid and assistance project in collaboration with the Colombian government, to combat drug cartels and left-wing insurgents. This resulted in the development of a more active Colombian criminal and paramilitary diaspora in Ecuador, a process rapidly accelerated in 2016 when the Colombian government signed a peace agreement with the FARC, and most of its members demobilized.

FARC dissident factions, such as Front 48, which did not sign the accord, and other Colombian drug trafficking organizations operating primarily in the Nariño and Putumayo departments in southwest Colombia, began using the port of Tumaco, just across the Ecuadorian border, as a key logistics hub. The National Liberation Army (ELN), a Colombian far-left guerilla group founded in 1964, began using the country as a safe haven. Regional and international mafias from Mexico, Albania, Morocco and the Netherlands, in particular, also expanded their operations in Colombia and Ecuador to fill the power vacuum. This rapid influx was facilitated by Ecuador’s porous borders, lax visa requirements for foreigners (until 2020), and syndicates’ ability to launder money through Ecuador’s dollarized tourist economy and export drugs through its highly developed transport and export infrastructure. Mexican cartels now have a large presence in the country and fund local Ecuadorian gangs who act both as transportistas for Colombian cocaine and other illicit goods, and proxies in the Mexican gang war. Ecuadorian gangs have become more powerful, organized and violent as a result.

Colombian cocaine is currently trafficked through Ecuador’s lawless border provinces of Esmeraldas and Sucumbíos onto its coastal cities for export. As demand for cocaine in Europe and North America increased, Ecuador’s largest city Guayaquil, capital of Guayas province, developed into the primary shipping port for these markets. Much of the cocaine moved through Ecuador to Europe is hidden in shipping containers containing bananas or manufactured products, while North America-bound drugs are run up the Pacific coast by motorboat, submarine and Cessna aircraft. By 2019, more than a third of the product of Colombia’s record coca leaf harvest was being exported through the country. This realignment quickly brought a wave of violence to Ecuador, and Guayaquil is now considered its most dangerous city.

The busiest cocaine-trafficking route in the world today is the route from the port of Guayaquil to the port of Antwerp in Belgium, claims Dutch investigative journalist Chris Dalby of InSight Crime. According to the EU’s High Representative for Foreign Affairs and Security Policy, Josep Borrell, of the 110 tons of cocaine seized in Antwerp in 2020, 60% came from Ecuador. From there, it is largely moved on to the Netherlands for wider distribution across the lucrative European market, where cocaine prices are high and demand continues to grow. In this way, Ecuadorian ports have become “one of the most valuable pieces of infrastructure you can control if you are a drug-trafficking group in Latin America,” says Will Freeman of the Council on Foreign Relations in New York. The United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s World Drug Report 2022 lists Ecuador as having the third-highest level of cocaine seizures in the world after Colombia and the US.

Six tons of cocaine destined for Belgium seized by Ecuadorian police in Guayaquil in February 2022.

In addition to trafficking, Ecuador has more recently become a hub for drug cultivation and processing. Colombian cartels have outsourced these operations to domestic criminal gangs, who then transport the product mainly on to Central America and Europe. By 2022, satellite images revealed that half of Colombia’s coca plants had relocated south to regions bordering Ecuador—half of them within 10 miles of the border. (Bargent, 2019; InSight Crime, 2022, 2023b; Blasco, 2023; The Economist, 2023b, 2024a, 2024b; Clapp, 2024; Duarte, 2024; Quesada, 2024; Sabatini, 2024)

How Streets Gangs Became Cartel Proxies

There are approximately 1,500 organized criminal syndicates operating in Ecuador. (Duarte, 2024) Local gangs are thought to exchange cocaine shipments for weaponry from their Mexican and Colombian patrons. These arms are increasingly sophisticated and often US-made, and include machine guns, rifles and grenades. The Ecuadorian military, comparatively, lacks modern equipment and is poorly trained. In recent years, Mexican cartels’ notorious proclivity for gory violence has influenced these gangs. This has led to several public hangings, decapitations and immolations, as well as the adoption of the practice of hanging dead bodies from bridges with notes attached, all largely committed with impunity, primarily as a method of intimidation.

One of the largest and most sophisticated ‘mega-gangs’ in Ecuador is Los Choneros, which has built a strong relationship with Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel and other international criminal organizations. The group was initially identified by the government as an armed wing of an unnamed Colombian drug cartel (likely either the Medellín or Cali Cartel) that controlled Pacific maritime trafficking routes to Mexico and the US. As one of the earliest Ecuadorian gangs to partner with an international group, they seem to have gained first-mover advantage. Through its relationship with the Sinaloans, Los Choneros’ current leader José Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macías Villamar has turned from small-time gangster to kingpin.

Ecuadorian National Police Gang Timeline released in January 2024.

Formed in Chone, a beach town in Ecuador’s western province of Manabí by Jorge Busmarck ‘Teniente España’ Véliz España, Los Choneros emerged in the late ‘90s as a drug trafficking organization. In the years following, its members were also involved in robberies, kidnapping, extortion, contract killings and contraband smuggling centered on its stronghold in the coastal city of Manta. Los Choneros were able to maintain an effective criminal hegemony over the region from the mid-2000s to the mid-2010s. This was achieved through fierce territorial conflict and the elimination of rival gang leaders. This included the leadership of established group Los Queseros and newer outfit Los Corvicheros, formed by traders who exchanged the sale of cheese and fish for drugs respectively. Confrontations with Los Queseros had culminated in their leader Carlos Vera Cedeño successfully ordering the assassination of Teniente España’s wife, after which Los Choneros responded by murdering dozens of Los Queseros members, including Cedeño, but sparing his wife. A series of leadership changes followed Los Queseros’ eventual killing of Teniente España in 2007 as police operations and further assassinations carried out by multiple rivals unseated successive bosses. Jorge Luis ‘Rasquiña’ Zambrano González reemerged as leader in the early 2010s, having initially assumed command of Los Choneros after Teniente España’s death.

The arrest of Los Choneros’ leadership in 2011 spread the gang’s reach into the Ecuadorian prison system and transformed it into one of the most violent gangs in the country. As more gang members were arrested in targeted police operations over the next decade, the gang gained a permanent presence in jails across the country, while maintaining its presence in the streets. Los Choneros’ subsequent migration from their historical stronghold of Manta to the drug trafficking capital of Guayaquil caused clashes with Los Lagartos over control of criminal economies. Historically based in Guayaquil, Los Lagartos was originally a prison gang operating as contract killers since at least 2011 that transitioned into one of Ecuador’s main prison gang alliances when it was joined by micro-trafficking and smuggling gangs Los Cubanos, led by William ‘El Cubano’ Poveda Salazar, and Los Gorras, led by Giovanny ‘Gorras’ Mantilla Ceballos, in 2019 in order to fight their common enemy of Los Choneros. Los Cubanos had been confronting Los Choneros in prison battles since 2009, leading to the deaths of El Cubano’s brothers Kléber ‘Shrapnel’ and Walter ‘Cayman’ Salazar over the following decade. The Choneros-Lagartos rivalry was the source of many episodes of gruesome violence in prison and on the streets from both sides.

Alleged Los Lagartos members at a police station in Guayaquil on January 11th 2024.

Although the successive deaths of Los Lagartos’ leaders since 2019 has weakened the group, several smaller gangs have grown to rival Los Choneros power in recent years, partially as a product of government anti-gang measures. In 2019, President Lenín Moreno introduced a new, more punitive penal code, invested oil surpluses in the police, and began rewarding police officers for capturing high-profile criminals. As a result, although the most wanted ended up behind bars, prison violence, perpetrated particularly by Los Choneros, escalated. In response, Moreno declared a penitentiary crisis, deployed the army to suppress prison gang conflict, and distributed Los Choneros’ leadership and most violent members throughout the prison system in an attempt to disrupt their operations. However, this strategy massively backfired. The mass relocation led to the formation of many smaller gangs aligned with Los Choneros, multiplying their presence in the country. Within weeks of the prison crisis declaration, Los Choneros members had killed El Cubano, as well as Gorras’ brother Ricardo, and several other Los Lagartos members. Nonetheless, Gorras consolidated Los Lagartos’ constituent gangs, and under his leadership, enabled it to reach the height of its power as both a prison and street gang, leading to some of the worst violence in their rivalry with Los Choneros. However, the unexpected death of Gorras from COVID-19 in June 2020 left the Lagartos alliance without a central leader, leading to its fragmentation into smaller gangs. Los Choneros exploited Los Lagartos’ weakness in August by attacking their section of the Litoral Penitentiary—territory held by the gang for more than a decade—forcing them into a truce that would see their members lay down their weapons and cede control to Los Choneros in September in exchange for transfer to a safe prison block. Los Lagartos’ organizational capabilities were significantly diminished thereafter.

Jorge Luis Zambrano González (aka Rasquiña), leader of Los Choneros.

Following the murder of Los Choneros leader Rasquiña (above) in December 2020, several of its derivative gangs broke away in an attempt to take advantage of its weakened state, causing an unprecedented surge in vicious gang violence. Los Choneros has steadily lost power to an alliance of these and other rival groups in the years since, as splinter gangs including Los Lobos (based in Pastaza), Los Tiguerones (in Esmeraldas) and Los Chone Killers (in Guayas) captured drug trafficking routes and criminal economies once controlled by the gang. However, such alliances are volatile and are largely motivated by internal competition over routes, networks and recognition. Los Lobos (The Wolves), which has more than 8,000 members across Ecuador’s prisons and cities, led the Ecuador Nueva Generación Cartel—formed in 2021 inspired by the new alliance’s alleged partnership with Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG)—until it fell apart in the second half of 2023, with Los Tiguerones (The Great Tigers) and Los Chone Killers realigning themselves with Los Choneros. Nonetheless, “they’ve achieved new legitimacy. They’ve come back as allies and partners, not subordinates to [Los] Choneros”, according to Rivera-Rhon from the OECO.

Los Lobos, led by Alexander ‘Ariel’ Quesada following the suspected death of Wilmer ‘Pipo’ Chavarría in a 2021 prison riot, nonetheless remains a formidable rival of Los Choneros. As well as controlling El Turi prison housing nearly 1,600 inmates in Cuenca in the Amazonian province of Pastaza, Los Lobos maintain a strong presence in numerous other prisons including Litoral in Guayaquil, where they also dominate cocaine trafficking in the streets. Operating mainly in the cities of Cuenca and Latacunga and the coastal town of Machala, Los Lobos engage in cocaine processing, micro-trafficking, kidnapping, extortion, robbery, murder-for-hire, and illegal gold mining in addition to trafficking cocaine between Colombian and Mexican cartels. Following the deaths of most of Los Choneros’ leadership, Los Lobos began pursuing its allies including Los Fatales and Los Aquilas.

Los Lobos has also been in a feud with its former ally R7 since 2022, supposedly sparked by Ariel’s aggressive demeanor towards R7 leader Marcelo Anchundia, leading to dozens of deaths. In April 2022, Ariel and Anchundia both requested transfers after riots in El Turi prison involving both gangs claimed 20 lives. Ariel again ordered an attempt on Anchundia’s life after the latter’s transfer to Bellavista prison, leading to riots which left 44 prisoners dead. Several transfers followed before Anchundia was found hanged in his cell in November 2023.

Ecuadorian gangs, by number of members and prison territory held.

In July 2023, three videos surfaced on social media that featured alleged gang leaders announcing a peace treaty among themselves and several armed groups in Ecuador. This included one video where Los Choneros’ Fito, with his face uncovered, stands beside another individual wearing a police jacket.

President Guillermo Lasso, however, asserted that his “government does not negotiate and will not negotiate with criminals [and] will continue to confront them without relent." Although these alliances are hard to prove, former military intelligence director Mario Pazmiño claims Los Choneros trafficks exclusively to the Sinaloa Cartel, while its rivals do so to CJNG. However, InSight Crime suggests it is highly unlikely Los Lobos work exclusively with one cartel, given their dominance of the Ecuadorian cocaine trade. Nonetheless, in many respects, Mexican cartels are behind much of this recent wave of violence across Ecuador. Rivera-Rhon says the main issue with these alliances is that “they aren't strategic or long-term. They pay to the highest bidder,” thus contributing to a never-ending cycle of violence.

The strong presence of Albanian and ‘Mocro’ mafia clans in the country since the late 2000s has only compounded this violence as international clans battled local gangs and each other for control over trafficking routes. Many of these decentralized family networks use Ecuador as a base for their Latin American operations and maintain fluid relationships with Ecuadorian groups. Albanian cocaine kingpin Dritan Rexhepi became a key player in the Ecuador-to-Europe drugs trade in this way until his arrest in Türkiye in November 2023. A massive operation launched by the Ecuadorian authorities in February 2024 against Dritan ‘Tonny’ Gjika, another Ecuador-based Albanian trafficker and broker, arrested over 30 members of his international network, but failed to capture Tonny. European and Ecuadorian police claim he maintained contractual relationships with Colombian laboratories that supplied him with four tons of cocaine monthly. Using Ecuadorian proxies, including Los Choneros and Los Lobos, Tonny would then transport, store and export the cocaine in 15-40 kilogram loads concealed within banana shipments via fruit companies owned by himself and his Ecuadorian business partners. (InSight Crime, 2021, 2022, 2023a, 2023b; Manjarrés, 2022; EFE, 2023; Primicias, 2023a, 2023c; The Economist, 2023b, 2024b; Austin and Shuldiner, 2024; Mella, 2024; Quesada, 2024)

Narcopolitics & Narcoterrorism

Corruption is rife at all levels of Ecuadorian society. Although it has existed at least as long as drug trafficking, it reached epidemic proportions under President Correa. Bribery of the police, military and prisons officials, as well as politicians and judges is now systemic, such that gangs have partially captured the state. The World Justice Project’s Rule of Law Index places Ecuador in the bottom third of countries with the most corruption and weakest criminal justice systems both in the Latin American and Caribbean region and globally. Ecuador's justice system, headed by the National Court of Justice, underwent structural reforms to ensure greater independence from the executive following the introduction of a new constitution in 2008, but their effect has been limited.

Once one of Latin America’s most esteemed law enforcement institutions, the Ecuadorian national police force has been plagued by corruption scandals over the last decade. Cases range from graft and extortion to facilitating and conducting drug trafficking in police vehicles and contract killing. Between 2013 and 2017, nearly 500 police officers were dismissed, including high-ranking officers, for alleged criminal behavior. They have also increasingly become the target of gang violence since 2022. In part because of systemic police corruption, the Correa administration began expanding the role of the military in public security and anti-drug trafficking operations in 2012. However, criminal groups then started exploiting corrupt military personnel, particularly to source weaponry. In 2022, 25 air-force officials were punished for sabotaging radar equipment that was monitoring gang activity in Ecuadorian airspace. In 2023 alone, more than 65 navy personnel were investigated for trafficking cocaine using navy vessels and providing arms and information to organized criminal groups. Two members of the navy were even found to have been working as bodyguards for Los Choneros gang leader Junior ‘JR’ Roldán before his murder in May 2023 in Colombia under uncertain circumstances.

Junior Roldán (aka JR), leader of Los Choneros, before his murder in May 2023.

If traffickers are caught, they can often pay off prosecutors and judges to sabotage their investigations and obtain favorable rulings, or call upon corrupt politicians to arrange their freedom. Meanwhile, money from trafficking has bought the gangs control of around a quarter of Ecuador’s 36 prisons. A surge in cocaine seizures, gang violence and incarceration since 2017 had led to chronic overcrowding in the penitentiary system, while resource shortages and corruption compounded their infiltration by criminal elements. Leaders now use them as their headquarters from where they direct operations spanning multiple cities, organize attacks inside and outside prison walls, develop their criminal network, and recruit new gang members. Today, almost a third of Ecuador’s 33,000 inmates are gang members. Los Choneros, in particular, has thrived in Ecuador's overcrowded prisons and controls much of the main penitentiaries. Prison gang warfare involving Los Choneros has led to at least six massacres, including one where dozens of inmates were dismembered and burnt by the gang. In 2021, 330 prisoners were murdered in Ecuador, the highest number in the world. Since then, hundreds more have been killed by other prisoners and in government efforts to regain control of the prisons. (Código Vidrio, 2021; InSight Crime, 2022, 2023a, 2023b; Dalby, 2023; Clapp, 2024)

Walter Patricio Arízala Vernaza (aka Guacho) before his assassination on December 21st 2018.

In early 2021, amidst these security challenges, Guillermo Lasso, a right-wing businessman, assumed the presidency. Gangs responded with coordinated riots across three prisons housing nearly 70% of the total prison population. The Ecuador Nueva Generación Cartel (formed of Los Choneros derivative gangs) targeted members and leaders of Los Choneros, resulting in more than 80 inmate murders. Another prison riot followed in Guayaquil in September 2021 where Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones led attacks against Los Choneros, leaving 119 dead. Ecuadorian authorities seized scores of heavy-caliber weapons from prisons controlled by Los Choneros, Los Lobos and Los Lagartos following multiple days of prison riots in November 2021 that left 68 inmates dead, indicative of the increasingly steady flow of weapons into the Ecuadorian prison system. Officials blamed the Sinaloa Cartel and the CJNG for supplying Los Choneros and the Nueva Generación with these weapons ahead of the riots. Several more riots have occurred since, leading to hundreds of violent prison fatalities, with more than 500 in 2022 alone.

The Nueva Generación were again reportedly behind a wave of violence across Ecuador in November 2022 sparked by the transfer of many Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones members and leaders out of Guayaquil’s Litoral prison. Fearing they would lose control of their prison pavilions and criminal economies, the gangs set off car bombs, killed police officers and rivals—leaving their bodies hanging from bridges—and issued pamphlets warning of further violence if the transfers continued.

Gang violence spilled over into the political realm in a major way in 2023. Fernando Villavicencio, 59, (below) a leading presidential candidate in a snap election triggered by President Lasso’s dissolving congress following two attempts to impeach him in May was assassinated on the campaign trail on August 9th, 11 days before the vote. An investigative journalist who came to prominence exposing corruption under the Correa administration, Villavicencio had turned to politics and become a congressman. He was shot dead leaving an event at a school in Quito, while nine others, including a congressional candidate, were injured. Villavicencio had been campaigning on tackling rising crime rates and state corruption, taking down local gangs, and combating the Colombian and Mexican cartel presence, and had called out gang leaders by name. He had also said he would renegotiate deals with foreign oil and mining companies to secure a larger state share. President Lasso quickly condemned the killing and blamed Los Lobos. Police arrested six Colombian hitmen after a shootout on the outskirts of Quito, but all the men were found hanged in their prison cells two months later.

Fernando Villavicencio, a leading presidential candidate assassinated by gangs on August 9th 2023.

Villavicencio is just one of many politicians killed by gangs in Ecuador. The month prior, Agustín Intriago, the popular mayor of the port city of Manta, was similarly murdered. Despite declaring a 60-day state of emergency after Villavicencio’s assassination, Lasso vowed the election would go ahead. Fundamedios, a local journalism advocacy group, claimed “Ecuadorian democracy has been seriously wounded”, while former President Correa described Ecuador as a “failed state”. In November, Lasso resigned after the police began investigating his brother-in-law Danilo Carrera and several government officials for their alleged ties to Albanian organized crime. Soon after, the main suspect, a close friend of Carrera, was found murdered. (Bargent, 2019; InSight Crime, 2022, 2023a; The Economist, 2023a, 2024b; Quesada, 2024; Sabatini, 2024)

Ecuador’s youngest mayor, 27-year-old Brigitte García (below), is one of the more recent public figures to be murdered by unidentified violent gangs. García—a member of ex-president Correa’s Citizens’ Revolution Party—and her press officer were kidnapped on March 23rd 2024 in her hometown of San Vicente in Manabí, and found shot dead in an abandoned rental car the next day. Further police investigations are underway. The Ecuadorian Ministry of Government described the need to respond to this “criminal action” in terms of an ongoing national “fight against terrorism, organized crime and political corruption”.

Brigitte García, Ecuador's youngest mayor, murdered by gangs on March 23rd 2024.

Both domestic gangs, like Los Choneros, Los Lobos, and Los Tiguerones, and transnational trafficking networks have penetrated politics and obtained significant influence over the Ecuadorian state. The violent targeting of public officials who cannot be bribed is one outcome of the dilemma known as plata o plomo (silver or lead). Many who would otherwise refuse bribery cave when faced with the threat of violence. Those who reject the silver and survive the lead live under siege, wearing helmets and bulletproof vests, living and governing between safe houses, and only meeting colleagues and constituents virtually. “The government’s failure to protect its officials undermines its anti-corruption campaign and, thus, the wider struggle against gangs”, InSight Crime’s Anastasia Austin writes. (Austin, 2024b; Buschschlüter, 2024; Law and Shortell, 2024)

The Metástasis Case, an investigation led by Ecuadorian Attorney-General Diana Salazar aimed at combating the rise in narcopolitics (connections between organized crime and the state) began in May 2022 after Leandro Norero (below), a drug financier and founder of Los Chone Killers, was convicted of money laundering. Norero reportedly worked with Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones, owing to their then mutual enemy in Los Choneros, and was thus well-connected. In addition to more than $6m in cash and dozens of gold bars, prosecutors seized 16 mobile phones from his home, which they began trawling through.

Leandro Norero (left) upon entering the Cotopaxi Detention Center.

Among the vast trove of evidence were messages showing Norero plotting violent attacks against uncooperative officials; police officers and prosecutors being bribed to tamper with evidence and provide information; and favorable or postponed rulings being bought from judges, mostly with laundered money. They even suggested Norero and his inner circle had paid Judge Emerson Curipallo $250,000 in 2022 to release Jorge Glas, former Vice-President under President Correa, who had twice been convicted of corruption. In 2017, Glas received six years in prison for soliciting bribes, including some $13.5m from Odebrecht, a Brazilian construction firm, and in 2020, another eight-year sentence on a separate bribery charge. Norero had hoped this ‘little favor’ could be cashed-in if Glas became president. In March 2024, in evidence to the Metástasis investigation, Norero’s cellmate claimed to have seen him video-calling Correa about Glas’ release. Judge Curipallo is now imprisoned for illegally releasing 60 people with links to organized crime.

On April 5th 2024, Glas was captured in a controversial Ecuadorian police raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito where he was staying, having been granted asylum hours earlier. He is currently facing more than 30 new charges. Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador, who is sympathetic to Glas’ party, immediately severed ties with Ecuador in response and brought the case to the International Court of Justice in The Hague. Venezuela swiftly followed suit. (Crew, 2024; The Economist, 2024d)

Messages also showed Norero asking his lawyer to find the address of Fernando Villavicencio so he could “send the muchachos [lads]”. However, Norero was killed in October 2022 in a prison battle between rival gangs, meaning others likely ordered the successful hit on Villavicencio in 2023. Salazar continues to uncover extensive links between drug gangs and the state’s security forces, judiciary, and politicians at the highest levels as her team works through Norero’s phones as well as 624 other devices seized after coordinated riots in January 2024. Many recent bouts of serious violence have partly been caused by her success, as gangsters worry about their waning influence. This has made bringing them to justice incredibly dangerous.

Numerous judges, prosecutors and judicial officials have been threatened, attacked and assassinated in recent years. At least eight prosecutors have been murdered since 2022. These include César Suárez—a prosecutor investigating the family of Adolfo Macías—assassinated on January 17th 2024, supposedly by members of Los Chone Killers. Protection requests for judiciary staff soared from 55 in 2022 to 700 in 2023. Many have taken to social media to demand greater protection, as Suárez had lacked a permanent police escort. In August 2023, the UN called on Ecuador to do more to protect judges and prosecutors from organized criminal threats. However, the government simply cannot afford all the extra security. While some prosecutors have opted to pay for food and travel expenses for their security escorts, others prefer no police protection at all out of fear an officer will be turned against them. On January 5th 2024, Los Lobos boss, Fabricio Colón Pico Suárez (below), was arrested for allegedly plotting Salazar’s assassination. However, he escaped jail just four days later, along with 38 other inmates, 12 of whom have since been recaptured.

Fabricio Colón Pico Suárez, a leader of Los Lobos, after being arrested on January 5th 2024.

On December 14th 2023, officials carried out 75 raids, arresting 31 people, including Wilman Terán, President of the Judiciary Council—the body that selects, promotes and punishes judges—and Pablo Ramírez, a former prisons agency director. Other detainees were judges, prosecutors and police officers. Salazar had issued 38 arrest warrants, but seven people had initially managed to evade capture. Moreover, when federal agents arrived at the judiciary council building to arrest Terán, they found the lifts had been disabled. Rafael Correa, meanwhile, had tweeted about a “major national raid” hours before the operation had begun. Such obvious sabotage suggests not only a serious leak, but long-standing links between gangs and the state. Following this massive operation, gangs responded with a further escalation in violence, as Salazar had predicted.

José Adolfo Macías Villamar (aka Fito), leader of Los Choneros, on August 12th 2023.

Days of shocking gang-perpetrated chaos were set in motion on January 7th 2024 when Los Choneros boss José Adolfo ‘Fito’ Macías escaped prison—where he was serving a 34-year sentence for murder and drug-trafficking—for the second time in 10 years. Guards at La Regional prison in Guayaquil discovered he was not in his cell in the morning, just before he was due to be transferred to a more secure unit in the prison complex. Corrupt officials almost certainly tipped him off. As news spread of the authorities’ monumental manhunt for Fito, gang members rioted in at least six prisons across the country. Hundreds of security personnel were taken hostage and some were murdered by inmates. Videos circulated on social media of guards being shot and hanged. It wasn’t long before the violence spread to the streets where rioting gangsters detonated car bombs, burned cars, and kidnapped policemen. The following day, President Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency and imposed a nightly curfew. This lasted until March 8th, whereupon it was extended for 30 days (totalling 90 days), before being supplanted by the new declaration of an “internal armed conflict”. In response, a number of gangs declared war against the government. More than 3,000 members of the police and military are deployed in the search for Macías.

On the afternoon of January 9th, masked gangsters claiming to be members of La Firma, associated with either Los Tiguerones or Los Choneros, stormed the studio of El Noticiero, one of Ecuador’s most-watched news TV programmes. Pistol-whipping staff to the floor, they held the crew hostage live on-air with machetes, shotguns, assault rifles, grenades, and dynamite. State-owned channel, TC Televisión, based in Guayaquil, continued broadcasting for 20 minutes as they flicked gang signs and took selfies, before later being arrested by armed police. On the same day, another armed group raided Guayaquil University, taking students hostage and exchanging fire with police.

Ecuadorian soldiers detain the men (and boys) who stormed the TV station.

Noboa quickly responded by designating 22 gangs ‘terrorist groups’; declaring an “internal armed conflict”; and ordering the army to “neutralize” these groups. The police and military were enlisted to guard citizens in the streets, and strategic infrastructure in the country's main cities, particularly Guayaquil and Quito, the epicenters of the outbreak of violence. More than 2,500 people were arrested and at least ten people were killed. Noboa also sent the army into prisons to retake control from the gangs. There have reports of widespread prisoner abuse, extortion and torture since the military was charged with running several of these prisons. Noboa claimed Ecuador was "struggling every day not to become a narco-state", and on January 12th, announced plans to increase VAT from 12% to 15% to pay for security, citing the escalating violence.

On March 15th, Attorney-General Salazar presented evidence against 13 suspects, including a former member of the National Assembly and a lead prosecutor in Guayas, bringing the total number of defendants in the Metástasis Case to 52. Prosecutors allege that Norero facilitated bribes to officials from across Ecuador’s judiciary, legislature and security forces via his lawyers and other intermediaries. This followed Salazar’s announcement on March 5th of a new investigation—the Purge Case—into a dozen judicial officials and state-affiliated lawyers in Guayas, based on texts seized from the phone of a Metástasis suspect, and Noboa’s creation of a joint financial crime investigation unit to fight money laundering and corruption two days later. (InSight Crime, 2023b; The Economist, 2023b, 2024a, 2024b; Alvarado, 2024; Austin, 2024b; Garcia and Villarraga, 2024; Quesada, 2024; Sabatini, 2024; Voss, 2024)

Domestic and International Responses

Following escalating violence attributed in large part to the Latin Kings—a street gang formed by Puerto Ricans in Chicago, Illinois in 1954 that had spread to Ecuador by the ‘90s—President Correa legalized gangs in 2007, recognizing them as ‘urban youth groups’, leading to a drastic drop in the murder rate. However, in the name of halting ‘Yanqui imperialism’, he also closed an American air base in the coastal city of Manta in 2009 (allegedly a election promise made to the FARC); reduced cooperation with the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); and disbanded an elite DEA-trained anti-narcotics police unit during his presidency. The closure of the base, which was used to track and intercept drug traffickers in the Andean region, significantly reduced the effectiveness of efforts to counteract transnational crime, which had already begun to take root in Ecuador. This was part of an antagonistic foreign policy that alienated both the US and Colombia, causing anti-narcotics cooperation with the two key sources of cocaine demand and supply to wither. Moreover, Correa directed the intelligence, security and judiciary services away from combating organized crime and towards imprisoning his political rivals, and weakened civil society protections.

When President Moreno entered government in 2017, he initiated comprehensive security reforms, adopting a more conservative approach closely aligned with the United States. This signaled the beginning of ongoing changes that have vastly increased Ecuador’s capacity to track drug traffickers. The US, along with regional neighbors Peru, Argentina and Bolivia later pledged to support the embattled Ecuadorian government in anti-gang efforts. President Moreno initiated a crackdown on gangs amid the abduction and murder of three Ecuadorian journalists from El Comercio newspaper in 2018 by the Oliver Sinisterra Front (FOS), a FARC dissident group with around 400 members led by Walter Patricio ‘Guacho’ Arízala Vernaza. Operating around Ecuador’s northern border regions, the FOS had also perpetrated several terrorist attacks against security forces, including the bombing of a police barracks, due to their cooperation with Colombia on anti-terrorism efforts. In response to these bombings and other attacks on civil society, Moreno purged a number of Correístas (followers of Correa) from his administration in 2018, including the head of intelligence and the ministers of defense and interior. The same year, the Colombian authorities assassinated Guacho by sniper in a remote area of north-western Colombia near Tumaco as part of a joint Ecuadorian-Colombian military and police operation against the FOS that used dozens of tapped phone lines to determine the locations he frequented. The FOS then rebranded as the Alfonso Cano Western Bloc in 2020 and joined the Segunda Marquetalia, a larger FARC dissident group. The latter agreed to begin a peace process with the Colombian government in February 2024. (El Comercio, 2018; Gaviria, 2018; Méndez, 2018; InSight Crime, 2023b; Acosta and Griffin, 2024; Siniawski and Bocanegra, 2024)

Ecuador becoming a narco-state would have grave domestic, regional and international ramifications. Sabatini argues the international community has a responsibility to help Ecuador as the majority of the money that fuels narcoterrorist gangs flows from cocaine sold in Europe and North America, the largest cocaine-consuming markets. In practice, this means the US, EU and UK should reinforce their demand-side policies to reduce the flow of drugs, and offer financial, material and technical assistance to the Ecuadorian government. “Just as the reasons for the current troubles are domestic and international, so are the responsibilities and solutions,” he suggests. Coordination between Ecuador, Peru and Colombia is particularly important, including on improving border controls via troop deployments and air surveillance. Governments’ mutual sharing of data about criminal groups operating transnationally in the region will also be vital if Ecuador’s anti-gang offensive is to succeed, suggests Dalby, something which does not happen at the moment. Ecuador and Colombia are set to begin collaborating on countering drug trafficking this year.

President Noboa, a right-wing scion of a billion-dollar banana empire, who entered office last November as Ecuador’s youngest president, has been promoting his ‘Phoenix Plan’ for bolstering security. The initiative, projected to cost around $800 million, will establish a new intelligence unit, provide tactical weapons to security forces, construct two new maximum-security prisons, and implement stricter controls at ports and airports. Noboa announced the construction of one of these prisons in the coastal region of Santa Elena in June 2024, claiming it would be built by the China Road and Bridge Corporation; employ Israeli-expert-trained staffed and advanced facial-recognition technology; and be ready to house 800 of the most dangerous inmates by April 2025. However, little progress has been made. He had earlier promised to build floating prisons in the Pacific Ocean while campaigning, but this idea seems to have been abandoned. The US had initially pledged $200 million in security equipment for the Ecuadorian army in exchange for Ecuador’s Soviet-era arms, but the deal collapsed after Russia protested an American plan to send the weapons to Ukraine. (Reuters, 2024a, 2024b)

In December, news emerged that an unnamed group had submitted a peace proposal to the Ecuadorian government. Various videos appeared on social media from different armed groups urging for peace talks similar to those in Colombia. During one, a representative reads a communiqué arguing: "Colombia [..] has an agreement with the US [and] has made peace treaties with the FARC, guerrillas and paramilitaries”, referring to Colombian president Gustavo Petro and his predecessors’ semi-successful efforts to negotiate ‘Total Peace’ with the numerous armed groups in the country. They point to this as evidence that peace negotiations are a viable strategy that doesn't cause friction with the US. In comparison, the representative addresses President Noboa directly, claiming “You [...] want to kill the Ecuadorian people for your own damn ego".

Noboa campaigned on taking mano dura (an iron fist) to the gangs, following the ‘Bukele model’ pioneered by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele widely praised across the region. Bukele has imprisoned some 2% of the population of El Salvador, drastically reducing the murder rate, and has become one of the most popular presidents in the world in the process. President Noboa has redoubled his show of force since January 2024. This strongman approach to Latin American gang policy has not often succeeded long-term, however. Noboa, meanwhile, is much weaker than Bukele, and gangs in Ecuador are far more sophisticated than those in El Salvador. Thus, continuing to communicate and negotiate with gangs will be crucial to achieving a sustainable peace in Ecuador. Noboa’s government and the gangs agreed they may issue a joint statement as negotiations proceed. (AP News, 2023; Primicias, 2023b; Saavedra, 2024)

In the meantime, Noboa’s militarized response has resulted in a countrywide reduction in homicides, and is proving widely popular in spite of increased police reports of kidnapping, extortion and homicides in Guayaquil and Durán. Roberto Santamaría León, the police chief of the Guayaquil neighborhood of Nueva Prosperina—currently the world’s deadliest municipality per head—says of the gangs, “They’ve built a parallel state here. Just as you or I pay taxes to our countries, so here residents pay taxes to the gangs.” This extortion system is known as the vacuna (vaccine), “named for the dose of corruption it injects into every limb of Ecuadorian society,” according to journalist Alexander Clapp. “Vacunas can be demanded at monthly, weekly, or even daily intervals, from virtually anyone—taxi drivers, shop owners, citrus farmers. Regardless of the victim or the sum involved, the goal is much the same: to quash any doubt that the gangs’ authority eclipses that of the state.”

On April 21st 2024, President Noboa initiated a mandatory constitutional referendum on the implementation of new anti-gang security measures. These included allowing the armed forces to operate permanently alongside police inside the country and its prisons; state security services to use weapons seized from gangs; and suspected criminals to receive harsher prison sentences (for violent crimes), be extradited (under certain conditions), and have their assets seized. Ecuadorian citizens overwhelmingly voted to approve all of these proposals. In addition to combating gangs, Noboa inevitably hopes this will bolster his public perception ahead of presidential elections in mid-2025.

On April 22nd, police announced the recapture of Los Lobos leader Fabricio Colón Pico Suárez, while the national prisons agency revealed that a warden in Manabí had been killed in an attack. Incidents such as these are likely to continue in Ecuador for the foreseeable future until effective state and sustainable security reforms are implemented. As Anastasia Austin of InSight Crime writes, “Ecuador’s numerous gangs boast significant territorial presence and a diversity of funding streams that will pose a formidable challenge to the country’s weak institutions in what will likely be a drawn-out conflict between organized crime and the state.” (Bargent, 2019; InSight Crime, 2023b, 2024a; The Economist, 2023b, 2024a, 2024b, 2024c; Alvarado, 2024; Austin, 2024a; Clapp, 2024; Quesada, 2024; Sabatini, 2024; Voss, 2024)

Fabricio Colón Pico Suárez, a leader of Los Lobos, after being recaptured on April 22nd 2024.

Additional Resources

youtube.com/watch?v=DNHWHeBNeMcyoutube.com/watch?v=s9SF6Jj-aMo

youtube.com/watch?v=KzETaYDqwZg

Austin, A. (2024) ‘Ecuador Faces a Tangled Web in its War on Gangs’, InSight Crime, 19 January, insightcrime.org/news/ecuador-faces-tangled-web-war-on-gangs/.

Austin, A. (2024) ‘Plata o Plomo: Ecuador’s Public Servants in Gangs’ Crosshairs’, InSight Crime, 28 March, insightcrime.org/news/plata-o-plomo-ecuadors-public-servants-in-gangs-crosshairs/.

Austin, A. and Shuldiner, H. (2024) ‘Unmasking the Foreign Players on Ecuador’s Criminal Chessboard’, InSight Crime, 3 March, insightcrime.org/news/unmasking-foreign-players-ecuador-criminal-chessboard/.

Clapp, A. (2024) ‘A journey through the world’s newest narco-state’, The Economist, 22 November, economist.com/1843/2024/11/22/a-journey-through-the-worlds-newest-narco-state/.

InSight Crime (2019, 2020) ‘Thriving in the Shadows: Cocaine, Crime and Corruption in Ecuador’, InSight Crime, insightcrime.org/investigations/cocaine-crime-corruption-ecuador/.

InSight Crime (2021) ‘Lagartos’, InSight Crime, 1 June, insightcrime.org/ecuador-organized-crime-news/los-lagartos/.

InSight Crime (2022) ‘Lobos’, InSight Crime, 8 November, insightcrime.org/ecuador-organized-crime-news/lobos-ecuador/.

InSight Crime (2023) ‘Choneros’, InSight Crime, 26 September, insightcrime.org/ecuador-organized-crime-news/los-choneros/.

InSight Crime (2023) ‘Ecuador Profile’, InSight Crime, 20 March, insightcrime.org/ecuador-organized-crime-news/ecuador-profile/.

InSight Crime (2024) ‘Ecuador’, InSight Crime, insightcrime.org/ecuador-organized-crime-news/.

InSight Crime (2024) ‘Tiguerones’, InSight Crime, insightcrime.org/ecuador-organized-crime-news/tiguerones/.

Ministerio de Defensa Nacional del Ecuador (2021–2024) ‘Noti Defensa’, Ministerio de Defensa Nacional del Ecuador, defensa.gob.ec/sintesis-noticiosa/.