Ecuador’s Descent Into Chaos

On August 9, just 11 days before the first round of Ecuador’s presidential election, one of the leading candidates, Fernando Villavicencio, was gunned down as he left a campaign rally in the north of the capital. Even in a region of the world that has long struggled with organized crime and drug violence, high-level political assassinations have become rare; for Ecuador, a country that has in the past been known for its relative calm, the killing seems particularly shocking. Not since the run-up to Colombia’s 1990 election, when Medellín cartel boss Pablo Escobar held sway and four presidential candidates ended up dead, has a national political campaign been conducted under such a cloak of fear.

The possible motives of the killing, which was likely orchestrated by a criminal group averse to Villavicencio’s tough security approach, are not hard to discern. A former investigative journalist, Villavicencio had earned the enmity of former presidents and high state officials for taking on corruption and dirty dealings. He had helped unveil a secret state surveillance operation, as well as an electoral slush fund benefiting former President Rafael Correa’s political movement. And he was running a popular campaign for president on a pledge to save the country and “finish off the mafia.”

Nonetheless, the assassination was an astonishing statement of how far Ecuador has descended into lawlessness. Between 2020 and 2022, the country’s murder rate increased 245 percent. Over the course of this year, there have been a number of other political killings, including two candidates for the February local elections, as well as the mayor of Manta and a councilor in Durán, both on the Pacific seaboard. And the attacks have spread from the coastal cities, where the drug trade is concentrated, to the capital, with a car bombing shaking the heart of Quito in late August.

Perhaps most disconcerting, Ecuador seems to be disproving one of the standard assumptions of security officials and experts on the drug trade: that Latin America’s crime bosses avoid frontal assaults on the state. In the decades since Escobar was gunned down by police on a Medellín rooftop in 1993, the region’s many criminal organizations have generally refrained from attacking high-level authorities because of the danger of triggering a broader crackdown. Instead, they have preferred to co-opt or terrorize local police, judges, and officials and to stamp their authority over specific communities. But perhaps because Ecuador’s state is so weak, criminal organizations in the country have abandoned this restraint.

Now, the security crisis threatens to overshadow the country’s runoff election on October 15. Whoever wins—the contest pits Luisa González of the left-leaning Revolución Ciudadana party against Daniel Noboa, a center-right businessman and son of a former presidential candidate—will face the urgent task of preventing a slide into outright chaos. Yet because of the complicated drivers of the crisis, it is unlikely that the hardline policies being pursued by other Latin American leaders could work in Ecuador. How the incoming president handles the situation could have far-reaching consequences for the region as a whole.

COCAINE COAST

Ecuador’s epidemic of violence has spread with alarming speed. Every year since 2020, the number of violent deaths has nearly doubled; this year’s homicides are already on track to surpass last year’s record 4,824. Such spikes in bloodshed are not unfamiliar in Latin America: morgues in the Mexican border town of Ciudad Juárez, for example, overflowed in 2009 amid a violent struggle between rival outfits. But it is far more startling in Ecuador, a country that has no major homegrown guerrilla movements or history of drug production. By the mid-2010s, it was a relative oasis of peace in the region, with just five homicides per 100,000. Now, it is on a path to becoming Latin America’s most violent country.

More than half of all murders in Ecuador take place in the coastal provinces of Guayas, Esmeraldas, El Oro, and Manabí. It is little secret what draws criminal groups to this area: the country’s Pacific Ocean ports—especially that of Guayaquil, the country’s most populous city—have become a primary route for exporting Latin American cocaine to Europe and the United States. For drug-trafficking groups, sending contraband within shipping containers is efficient, requires few intermediaries, and often evades detection. Large quantities of drugs still get confiscated: in 2022, an astounding 110 tons of cocaine, with an estimated street value of at least $5.3 billion, was seized in Antwerp, one of Europe’s largest ports. But much more continues to leak through all the same.

Port security in Ecuador is lax. In Guayaquil, the full installation of electronic scanners, used in many international ports to detect contraband and drugs, has been held up by various poorly explained delays, leaving a team of dogs to do its best to sniff out illicit substances. Criminal forces have also shown no mercy in forcing port workers to work for them. In June, one port employee told his family that a trafficking group was pressuring him to smuggle drugs into loading areas; a week later, he and four other workers were massacred by armed men.

In essence, control of the ports has become a core part of the business model for Ecuadorian drug runners, just as control of the U.S. southern border is for their Mexican counterparts. By dominating these zones and ensuring safe passage for cocaine consignments from Colombia and Peru, trafficking groups can reap soaring returns from the international market. A convicted Colombian drug trafficker told International Crisis Group in August that transport was the most expensive part of the drug trade. “So if you can get the product out safely and close to the exit point, that’s best,” he said.

The slaying of Villavicencio, the presidential candidate, may itself be tied to drug gangs’ efforts to control Ecuadorian shipping. In his campaign, Villavicencio had proposed a plan to impose military control over the ports. Christian Zurita—a journalist who worked closely with Villavicencio and took his place in the first round of the presidential election, where he came in third—has conjectured that the murder was a response to that plan.

GUAYAQUIL’S GANGS AND GUNS

Ecuador’s rapid rise in the transnational drug trade is not just a function of its access to the Pacific. As in several other of the newest frontlines of violence in Latin America—certain previously peaceful cities in Mexico, the port of Rosario in Argentina, parts of Panama and Costa Rica—the country has found itself caught between international market forces and deepening joblessness and economic decay. The former is diverting more drug supply routes to Ecuadorian soil, while the latter has fed gang recruitment and violence. Between these forces stands a state that has often been oblivious, distracted, or simply corrupt.

In 2016, when Colombia struck a peace deal with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia, or FARC, the decades-old guerilla group, Colombian drug traffickers saw no reason to stop their trade. Almost all the coca crops in the country, the world’s largest producer of the raw leaf, had already moved to border provinces, above all Nariño and Putumayo (next to Ecuador) and Norte de Santander (on the frontier with Venezuela). As the end of peace talks approached, government promises of payments to uproot coca crops drove soaring production in these areas as rural farmers sought to cash in before the measures took effect. Meanwhile, rival armed groups competed to take over former FARC-held territories.

At the time, Ecuador was enjoying a sustained fall in violence under the government of President Correa, thanks in large part to economic growth, a sharp increase in the jail population, and efforts to pacify an earlier generation of urban gangs by decriminalizing them and helping their members gain lawful employment. In those years, Ecuadorian gangs had fewer ties to the international drug trade and to imprisoned bosses, and reintegrating their members into civilian society seemed to offer a promising way forward.

Every year since 2020, the number of violent deaths in Ecuador has doubled.

But the gains were transitory. Ecuador’s borders remained porous, and its economy, which had been dollarized in 2000 to prevent economic freefall, became an inviting place for criminal groups to park dirty cash. A decade ago, speaking from the dark corner of a Guayaquil restaurant, one leading public figure listed for one of us (Briscoe), all the local businesses and politicians that were propped up by drug money. “Lucrative permissiveness” between criminals and elites, he said, was the city’s new way of doing business. A survey released in March 2023 found that Ecuadorian courts were handing down an average of only three sentences a year on money-laundering offenses.

In August, Colombian President Gustavo Petro observed that a six-mile strip of land on the Colombia-Ecuador border has become the world’s largest cocaine-production site. Much of it is destined for Ecuador’s ports and then on to Europe, as demand in the United States has shifted toward fentanyl. According to security experts, numerous drug traffickers have benefited from Ecuador’s transformation into a narcotics hub. Albanian, Colombian, and Mexican groups have formed alliances with local gangs to store and move drug shipments, transmitting their own blood feuds into Ecuador, where the most powerful gangs, Los Choneros and Los Lobos, are locked in conflict.

According to police, a large percentage of murders is now caused by clashes involving around eight local groups operating in the country. But the slide into narco-violence has also been abetted by social and economic crisis. Consider Guayaquil, a city that faces growing poverty and drug use alongside gang violence. Local demand for hard and noxious drugs, many of them “cut,” or adulterated with other substances, has become of the hallmarks of the city’s spiraling crime. Some 60 percent of its youth have reported that it is easy to buy drugs, among them “H,” a highly addictive mixture of heroin and anything from cement to rat poison, which is sold for a dollar a gram; “plo plo,” a blend of coca paste and baking soda; and “crispy,” a mixture of marijuana and cocaine.

Another symptom of the country’s decline can be found in its violent prisons. Over 450 inmates have been murdered since 2021. In August, the government announced that police and armed forces had seized 96 firearms, over 26,000 rounds of ammunition and eight grenades from the Guayas Penitentiary Complex, Ecuador’s most dangerous. Hostage taking of prison guards and police has also become alarmingly frequent.

Meanwhile, the government’s security strategy has been woefully ineffective. President Lenin Moreno, who succeeded Correa, serving from 2017 to 2021, slashed state spending on security as part of an agreement with the International Monetary Fund. In turn, Moreno’s successor, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, has declared ten states of emergency, allowed citizens to use guns in self-defense, and cycled through six prison directors and four interior ministers. But little has been done to halt corruption in jails, the police, and the customs service. Growing public dissatisfaction with economic conditions and government policies led to mass protests in 2019 and 2022, as well as efforts to impeach Lasso. In short, not only has the government failed to articulate an effective anticrime policy but many officials also appear less than committed to the cause.

THE LIMITS OF THE IRON FIST

Now that it has directly touched Ecuador’s political elite, the violent struggle among the country’s criminal gangs poses a threat to the very writ of the state and triggered alarm across the entire region. For one, the alleged involvement of the Los Lobos gang in Villavicencio’s death—and the group’s fight for supremacy with Los Choneros, whose leader was moved to a maximum-security jail soon after the killing for his threats against the candidate—suggests that gang wars have reached such intensity that high-profile figures are now being used as pawns for reprisals. But it also shows that the state has become so weak that the culprits assumed there was little risk of a backlash.

In campaigning for this month’s final round presidential election, rival candidates González and Noboa have both embraced a hybrid approach to security. They have proposed strengthening the police, reasserting control over prisons, beefing up community-based prevention, and addressing the socioeconomic causes of violence—although Noboa has also said he would also deploy the military to safeguard ports, roads, and borders. But despite the pervasive violence, candidates who advocated hardline policies, such as former soldier Jan Topic, did relatively poorly, suggesting there is  limited public appetite for the controversial “iron fist” approach taken by Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele. As a result of his policies, mass incarceration of suspected gang members has caused murder rates to tumble in El Salvador, but at the cost of growing human rights abuses and jail overcrowding, as well as an overconcentration of executive power.

El Salvador’s hardline policies are unlikely to work in Ecuador.

Still, the next president, once in office, may be tempted to adopt a Bukele-like approach. In crime-plagued areas across Latin America, residents point to the authoritarian in San Salvador with awe. Yet Bukele’s apparent success is not easy to emulate. Quite apart from his firm control over police and law courts, and the ability to override political opposition—none of which is likely to hold true for Ecuador’s next president—Bukele is confronting a different criminal threat. In their prime, El Salvador’s gangs controlled communities, commanded members’ undying loyalty, and deployed extreme violence. But compared with their counterparts in neighboring countries, they were also poor, marginal to the international drug trade, and reliant on extortion from local businesses for much of their cash.

By contrast, taking hard measures against criminal groups financed by the international drug trade risks fueling a violent backlash and further efforts by crime bosses to co-opt political and security officials. A better example of what might happen in Ecuador is provided by Mexico after 2006: as then President Felipe Calderón’s administration launched an all-out drug war, many criminal leaders were arrested or killed, but violence rose in the aftermath. A more targeted use of force can still serve a purpose. In both Colombia and Mexico, powerful criminal organizations have been defenestrated. But without sustained efforts to address endemic poverty and corruption, strong-armed measures will be at best short-lived and at worst counterproductive.

One more promising approach, as distasteful as it may seem, is to try to engage with criminal groups themselves. As has been shown in Medellín and Ciudad Juárez at stages over the past two decades—and more recently in the troubled Colombian port city of Buenaventura—negotiations or unspoken pacts with criminal groups to end fighting between them can achieve real results. Even before Bukele’s crackdown began in El Salvador in March 2022, his government’s informal arrangements with the gangs had reduced violence sharply. These understandings tend to fall apart over time, but at the very least, Ecuador’s authorities should give them a try. In Guayaquil and along the coast, for example, the government could forge truces in urban areas and persuade gangs to demobilize peacefully—in exchange for better prison conditions and economic opportunities.

A PIECE IN A LARGER PUZZLE

Four decades of drug wars in Latin America show that there is no golden solution and success rarely last long. Deeper, well-funded reforms to clean up, professionalize, and modernize police, prosecutors, and the courts, as well as increasing international collaboration, remain by far the most effective approaches to tracking and arresting criminals. Guatemala’s strategy of reducing impunity for the perpetrators of serious crimes, backed by the UN and foreign donors until 2019, is a standout example. The country’s success in lowering the murder rate and indicting corrupt high officials, including a former president, was rooted in a campaign to strengthen the prosecution service, establish vetted police units, and boost investigative powers—including by using wiretaps and enhancing incentives to suspects who inform on their criminal bosses.

But much depends on leaders and their administrations having sufficient resources as well as broad political backing. Foreign donors such as the United States and the EU should start by offering the next Ecuadorian government far greater security support. This could include helping develop intelligence capabilities, reinforcing port security, and protecting and empowering prosecutors to tackle drug trafficking and state corruption. But the effect of any such support may be limited, given that Ecuador is scheduled to face fresh elections, and a possible further political change, in a little over a year.

Ultimately, Ecuador’s crisis is the natural outcome of the shift of crucial international drug routes to cities and regions that are unable to resist the economic incentives of organized crime. But the country’s struggles are not just of its own making. They have also been magnified by the flaws of a global regime of drug prohibition that again and again encourages powerful criminal outfits to prey on the most vulnerable populations and the most pliable authorities. To end the immediate cycle of violence, a successful runoff between the two candidates is the country’s best hope; a far-reaching reform of Ecuador’s security institutions must follow soon after. But ultimately, the country’s predicament is a statement of the larger failure of current approaches by Latin American countries and their partners in Washington and elsewhere toward the narcotics trade. A rethink is long overdue.