Secondary Factors Affecting Crime Rates in Ecuador

por Jenny Haleen Travelen Publicado el

Previously, we’ve endeavored to clarify reports of widespread violence and chaos throughout Ecuador, exacerbating existing economic instability and threatening to tank the tourism industry. The intent was to soothe concerns of any pending visitors as to the real potential to directly encounter violent criminal activities in concentrated areas of the North and coastline.

Meanwhile, evaluating objective and subjective hazards, and setting thresholds delineating one’s personal limit of acceptable risk is a wise practice off the mountain as well as on, and some adventurists may wish to obtain a clearer image of criminal gang and narcotrafficking activities regardless of whether it exists within areas of their intended travel. One might also wonder, how has violent activity been permitted to escalate to the severity reported within a few concentrated geographical areas, and what is the potential fallout of criminal networks diversifying their sources of income and extending range of influence beyond the present operational zones? In this segment, we wish to underscore the significance of key credible factors contributing to the ongoing crisis; namely, the exceptionally increased lethality in their operations, and how much foreign innovation plays into this phenomenon.

The Situation, or Thereabouts

In the North, matters are somewhat less disturbed. Violent intimidation and reprisal are directed at border forces endeavoring to disrupt transshipment of migrants and fentanyl precursors in one direction and cocaine paste in the other. While the ex-FARC mafia cooperates in the region with a tolerable degree of operational harmony, consolidating mutual goals, they remain a loose coalition of opportunist factions. The two largest FARC dissident groups, namely the Estado Mayor Central and the Second Marquetalia, have conducted peace negotiations and adhered to cease-fires with the current Colombian administration (Crisis Group, 2022). Minister of Defense Iván Velázquez issued literature affirming the more balanced community development-oriented policies of President Gustavo Petro’s National Development Plan (Rubio, 2024). The Plan is similar to strategies enacted in the city of Medellín over 20 years ago, which exploited underlying factors enabling violent conflict. Rigorous military strikes subdued its Escobaran cartel-controlled areas and organisers subsequently revitalised it with an innovative strategy in civic development, one that focused on establishing connectivity and inclusion across geographical, socio-economic and political barriers within the city and reinforced educational institutions. The result is a 94.6% decrease in homicides in Medellín from 1991 to 2015 (Rapid Transition Alliance, 2018). Meanwhile, recent increases in coca production in Southern Colombia still factor into downstream affects into Ecuador, and hardly renders the border area completely secure and stable.

Gang-related violence within the city of Guayaquil, a major drug trafficking transport hub, and the surrounding Guayas Province, are reportedly the result of turf wars amongst 20 competing local gangs and increased trafficking operations from Colombia and Peru to the Guayaquil port areas. In most news sources, homicide numbers do not consistently signify a greater involvement by local microtrafficking gangs, or foreign cartels seeking to control port activity (processing, collection, transportation, security and shipment), where specific ground-zero or no-go areas in Guayaquil such as Durán, Samborondón and Guasmo are often mentioned. According to Homicide Monitor, the city of Durán has a homicide rate of 148 per 100,000 inhabitants for 2023, while Guayaquil averages a rate of 83.8. A cursory glance at a map might inform one that these three areas don’t directly align geographically to major port terminals situated along the West bank of the Guayas River. Their locations relative to port terminals do, however, provide insight into avoidance tactics in transshipment operations. Durán, for example, serves as a convenient evasive off-port loading zone collocated with warehouse and industrial parks on the East bank of a Guayas River distributary, which is navigable by smaller vessels (Austin, 2024).

Other evasive procedures, consistently reported as occurring “at” the ports themselves, in narcotrafficking operations involve the concealment of cocaine both by various methods and shipment phases in similar manner to imported weapons shipments. With the assistance of friendlies within the ranks of port authorities, drugs can be loaded at port terminals, though usually beyond the port or later in transit. Foreign drug traffickers are making use of front companies for shipments, or conceal it in legitimate cargo loads, either mixed with food products or in separate containers. Traffickers employ a diverse support network to facilitate transit, such as customs officials, transport companies, drivers, and other port operations personnel. Some vessel types are more effective than others in transporting large cocaine shipments. For example, in the UNODC 2023 Global Cocaine Report, one self-propelled semi-submersible (SSPS) intercepted in the Atlantic Ocean by the Maritime Analysis and Operations Centre resulted in significantly larger quantities in kilograms of seized cocaine than all the numerous fishing, merchant and sailing vessels destined to Europe and Africa throughout the reporting period. A SSPS vessel has the capacity to transport five to ten tons of product.

As for local microtrafficking operations, details have emerged regarding the payment in cocaine and weapons to local gangs by their Mexican cartel affiliates. The relatively higher poverty rates of the aforementioned three cantons, triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic, furthermore with the general lack of infrastructure, makes them ideal areas for gangs to focus their microtrafficking and distribution efforts to acquire real capital, with the firepower to maximise enforcement efforts. Extortion of households, street vendors, and businesses, both in the form of “vaccines” or protection payments and reprisals for evading money laundering investment opportunities, can overwhelm small and informal business budgets and negates profitability or solvency. This leads to lack of viable economic opportunity for workers who resort to processing and distributing drugs in their own residential areas (Fadul, 2024; Proaño, 2022).

Cloned Firepower

A vital feature of the ongoing arms trafficking crisis in Latin America and driven by innovation originating outside the region is the arrival of 3D printers in Ecuador from the U.S., along with manuals to print gun components (Toapanta, 2023). While investigative efforts have been successful in some cases in the U.S. thanks to the vigilance of lawful independent gun dealers and chatty straw purchasers, there’s been difficulty in passing U.S. federal regulations outlawing 3D printing of ‘ghost guns’, which enable users to use plastics for unscreened, unserialized, and undetectable acquisition and transport of weapons (Holsman, 2021). For those in use in Ecuador, these tend to be lighter and more reliable than domestically produced artisanal weapons, and gang users can attest to their untraceability as a major factor in preferring their use over artisanal or industrially produced weapons (Álvarez, 2024).

To further comprehend the recent marked increase in lethal efficacy of gangs and traffickers, one can’t ignore operational capabilities. As result of numerous armed encounters between organised criminal factions and state security forces over the past three years, at least until the most recent state security and military forces surge under President Daniel Noboa, we’ve learned that local gangs had achieved operational superiority in firepower, tech, and perhaps also, numbers and tactical proficiency. They achieved nearly complete freedom of movement in the aforementioned relevant zones of Guayaquil (perhaps mitigated somewhat by the reported use of private security teams by some business owners). They established their own communications networks, employed the used of drones, and erected their own visual surveillance networks with sophisticated tech and monitoring centers (Toapanta, 2023). I’ve also noted in a previous installment of this series the permeation of military style weapons and explosives into Ecuador’s prisons. These items, which included grenades and explosive materials such as dynamite and C4, continue to enter via prison authorities, even by first responders removing corpses from the facilities (Álvarez, 2024; Barrios, 2023). A vast majority of industrially produced weapons, which enter Ecuador via multiple avenues from Colombia, from Peru, and from the ports on the Pacific Coast, are manufactured in the U.S., and include various submachine guns, semi-automatic rifles, grenades, and mortars (Álvarez, 2024).

Gangs and their cartel counterparts are also trained in counter-surveillance, and the Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación (CJNG) is trained in counter-UAS, where electronic countermeasures are employed defensively to misdirect or intercept government drones in various parts of Mexico, and drones are utilised offensively to support spotter networks reporting on federal agency movement (Clay, 2016). CJNG use both crude off-the-shelf-components and military grade UAS for tactical offensive use with explosives. These resemble the drones used in targeting prison facilities in Ecuador, which has been reported since 2021 (Toledo, 2023; AFP, 2023). They endeavor to monitor everyone who enters their respective areas of control and track persons of interest, to include agents of rival gangs and targets for kidnapping and extortion. Social media analysis assists with this effort (Cuenca Dispatch, 2023). With the exception of a vague mention of radar capability in a recent radio interview with President Noboa and no apparent use of ground surveillance and tracking assets in these areas, it’s difficult to imagine police-reported homicide numbers in these specific cantons are tracked with a firm degree of accuracy (Herington, 2024). Still, even if one asserts the reliability of databases with unclear or redacted original sources, with homicide numbers such as these, vague references of ‘turf wars for control of the cocaine trade’, or at least routine ones, hardly seems sufficient, minus some analysis on why they sustain themselves following military and police crackdowns attempted in previous administrations.

Other analysts have also suggested a de-prioritising of penal approaches which favor mass incarceration, proposing increased interdiction efforts at the border, seaports, and beyond (Barrios, 2023). There are numerous evasion tactics employed in Guayaquil by foreign criminal actors directing transshipment operations, to include CJNG and the Sinaloa cartel, as well as Albanian criminal groups known collectively as the Albanian mafia, consisting of a smattering of smaller groups and clans operating both independently and collaboratively. Two identified groups are known as “Kompania Bello” and Clan “Farruku». Former President Rafael Correa’s administration is often credited with the proliferation of Albanian criminal presence and activities due to its immigration reforms removing visa requirements for a number of nations. Additionally, infiltration of collaborators into immigration offices ensures residency credentials for Albanian criminal groups under false identities. It is common knowledge amongst residents as far north as Nogales, Sonora that many Mexican cartel agents with dual U.S. citizenship can freely enter virtually any Central or South American country to perform their operations coordinating or accompanying cocaine, weapons and leveraged tech shipments.

Noted contributing factors which DO enable sustained gang/cartel operations over time, particularly in the Guayaquil area, are the concepts of dispersion and reorganisation which tends to occur following a government crackdown, inter-cartel massacre or any series of events causing turnover in the higher command echelons. In the opinion of Inspector General of the National Police, Ramiro Ortega, recent homicide numbers in Ecuador can be attributed to the ongoing reorganisation of local gangs following the decease of key leaders. While he credits Los Lobos for causing escalations in violent territorial enforcement in Guayaquil, Los Cheneros experienced a power vacuum following the death of Jorge Luis Zambrano in 2020, and an outbreak of violence resulted in the prisons in February 2021. Much of Los Cheneros splintered into competing factions in defiance of their two new leaders, alias ‘Junior’ and alias ‘Fito’. This enabled Los Lobos to successfully compete for and attain more freedom and power to market their product locally, especially as they formed alliances with CJNG and in part with former rival gangs also falling under CJNG’s hierarchy (Proaño, 2022; Fadul, 2024).

Alternative Governance and Historical Context

While reading and interpreting mainstream news media covering violent catastrophic events, although human loss is always disconcerting, we must keep in mind that violence is not always employed as an end in itself, nor does it necessarily indicate dominance of a targeted sector. Within criminal organisations it has a variety of functions, principally as an intimidation tool as part of a greater psychological warfare effort. We know that as organised criminal groups, especially cartels, expand to new geographical areas, they rely heavily on extreme violence to assert new tacit agreements and impose their interests—usually free range of movement along trafficking routes—upon local government institutions, neighborhoods, and the private economic sector as well as rival criminal groups.

Although Mexican cartel groups had previously funded terrorist organisations in Peru and Colombia, we began to see their own use of terrorism as a tactic of influence unfolding in the 1990s, notably by Los Zetas and Knights Templar cartels, having successfully recruited thousands of seasoned Mexican special operations forces trained in tactical specialties. The Knights Templar precursor, La Familia Michoacana, recruited elite Guatemalan “Kaibiles”. Many had undergone joint tactics training with other Western elite forces. Their training camps combined intensive elite paramilitary and guerrilla warfare tactics and employment of brutal extremes as both messaging optics and enforcement measures. “Security analysts and cartel sources agree that a key factor in the transformation of underworld rivalries into a full-throttle war has been the cartels’ recruitment of elite soldiers.” (Ernst, 2018).

Once trafficking organisations learned from former Mexican President Felipe Calderon in late 2006 that they could no longer co-exist with government security forces on their own coerced terms, they extended their sphere of control to include public compliance and support as well as government entities. Violent crime numbers, though confined to their own states of operational relevance in the 1990s, exploded from a rate of 8.17 per 100,000 inhabitants to 23.84 within the first five years of President Calderón’s War on Drugs (Gleditsch, et al. 2021; Macrotrends, 2024). Despite major victories in the kill or capture of major cartel leadership, the combined effects of dispersal and reorganization proved all too compelling and the Knights Templar, aided by an alliance with CJNG, expanded their territory along most of the gulf coast and contested for control of corridors through Arizona (Vullaimy, 2009). Their decentralized hierarchal composition organised in a series of smaller groups or cells enhances adaptability and enables them to remain highly mobile. This also affords them the flexibility to outsource some of the lower-returns, higher-risk secondary enforcement activities to non-drug criminal contacts and marginalized youth (Barria Issa, 2010).

Brutality and influence inflicted by drug trafficking organisations can extend beyond the range of contested and sensitive trafficking routes and into the public consciousness through various media. Propaganda which frames isolated and exceptional, opportunistic violent acts within the context of a desired message of dominance, regardless of a criminal organisation’s capacity to exercise them habitually, is a tactic rivaling other tenants of conventional warfare in importance, such as all other routine technical tactics and procedures (Guevara, 2013). Their efforts were oft rewarded in establishing notoriety and at least temporary compliance—for example, in 2010, three Televisa media stations were attacked with explosives in an apparent harassment/reprisal operation in response to their coverage of the discovery of 72 trafficked persons and subsequent police investigation, though the attacks were conducted at night (Reporters without Borders, 2010). Between 2006 and 2010, 30 journalists were killed (Committee to Protect Journalists, 2010).

Mexican Psyop Influences in Practice

Literature cites a timely convergence of other factors contributing to the explosion in homicide rates in conjunction with the War on Drugs, such as a NAFTA-related deregulation creating resurgence and improved infrastructure of the black market, drug market displacement to Mexico as result of closure of Caribbean routes, improved tech and ability to infiltrate and control private and public institutions. The counter-intuitive effect of the mechanisms of expansion within an illicit drug market is that extreme violence for intimidation and optics purposes does not compel compliance amongst competing groups but reprisal in kind. Additionally, competition for resources does not reduce the number of suppliers due to the rate of demand and profitability (Pereyra, 2012). This also gives ample leeway to spend an increasing amount of profits on personnel and disruptive tech and other equipment (Guerrero Gutiérrez, 2011). Along with dispersion and expansion comes greater emphasis on diversification of enforcement actions and income sources, in the form of kidnapping, extortion, money-laundering, human trafficking and the longer term investment of targeting uncooperative justice ministry and political figures, in which the three main cartels, especially Los Zetas, effected with impunity in Mexico. While it’s simpler to show a correlation indicating that state involvement could provoke a marked spike in magnitude and geographical spread of violent organised crime, once we understand varied forms and purposes of gang and narco-trafficking related violence, then we begin to see how homicide rates alone do not necessarily act as an indicator of military failure, if we apply long-term, comprehensive security recovery plans to a wider scope.

Information operations which serve to amplify both the overt explicitness and severity of violent encounters while simultaneously implying lack of effective state intervention are critical in the mission to discredit government officials and institutions. Prosecutor César Suárez was reportedly shot more than 20 times in broad daylight while investigating the 9 January attack on the TC Television studio in Guayaquil (Quesada, 2024). In a video of disputed authenticity claiming responsibility for the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in August 2023, leaders purportedly of Los Lobos claimed Villavicencio had been on their payroll. It may require a longer-term study to measure psychological impact of the betrayal of a prominent former journalist with an anti-corruption track record such as his. However, former President Guillermo Lasso at least took into consideration the event’s potential to disrupt as fundamental a democratic institution as a presidential election and publicly affirmed it would take place as scheduled.

Other homicidal acts where, if not the exact motive, at least the messaging intent is clear, is the desecration of corpses. The Chone Killers, for example, have made efficacious use of bridge corpse displays in their clashes with rival gangs in Durán, though in some cases with conflicting reports of likely motives. Reprisal and intimidation attacks upon police and government entities occurred to varied success. The Durán city mayor, Luis Chonillo, was attacked on his first day in office and works remotely; meanwhile, the mayor of the coastal city of Manta, Agustin Intriago, was shot and killed. Several gunmen attacked a police barracks in Puerto Bolívar presumably in retaliation for the arrest of a Los Lobos leader who was subsequently released (Dalby, 2022, 2024; Primicias, 2023). While facts are appreciated, when we have a subsequent analysis containing sweeping generalisations of leaderless chaos by some media outlets perhaps less informed on the cartel media liaison and psyop action arms, your mouthpiece works for the opposition. Such outlets present key events as confirmations of the degree to which local gangs and cartels have achieved power and control over legitimate authority all throughout Ecuador, rather than as simply a preferred means to pursue it long-term. There are various avenues drug trafficking organisations will exploit toward leveraging control of government institutions, though sufficient evidence is lacking to assume these incidents were intended as petty acts of «party» discipline for nonfulfillment of some terms or other of an existing non-aggression pact. Taking into consideration their historic aims, what is more probable are acts of reprisal in response to asserted noncompliance of the victims.

Another example where such a consideration is in effect is the reported decline in homicides in Venezuela. The homicide rate in 2017 was 89 per 100,000 inhabitants and declined to 26.8 in 2023 (Statista, 2024). There are various ideas as to how this occurred, or came to be reported as such, either referencing the state narrative of intensified security forces operations, corruption, or the migration of criminal organisations abroad to focus on human trafficking operations. While the outflux of criminal groups can hardly be disputed, an additional observation articulated in academic and NGO institutions taking charge of tracking violent crime numbers, is the co-opting of police and military decision-makers by trafficking organisations. According to the Venezuelan Observatory of Violence (OVV), homicide numbers are only reported for incidents where criminal proceedings have been initiated, according to an artificially narrowed criteria qualifying incidents for any investigation at all (Ayuso). In OVV’s Annual Report on Violence 2023, one of the primary findings factored in the migration of both organised criminal organisations and their primary victims—younger residents. Perhaps more to the point however, another primary conclusion pertained to the geographical distribution of organised violence, where a direct correlation was noted between lower crime rates and areas where greater cooperation between authorities and criminal organisations subsisted, and “in municipalities where there are no such agreements or where criminal control has not been fully established, violent events continue to occur.” (OVV, 2023).

Significant violent events in Ecuador’s recent history have often been disturbing and horrific in their magnitude–effectively by design. However, considering the history of deceptive tactics habitually employed by a common enemy aimed at the public, there is yet plenty cause for optimism against media hints at supremacy of the narco-state. One statistic, or apparatus which gives some confidence as an indicator of a true state of affairs is the ECU-911 emergency response system, which logged 724 calls reporting extortion from various sources in the first trimester of 2024 for Zone 8, which includes Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, representing a 476% increase from the same period of 2023. In addition to operational successes reported in the significant drop in homicides and capture of at least eight high-value and 20 medium-value targets within the first month of Noboa’s January state of emergency surge, extortion numbers present both a challenge and opportunity in containing extraneous gang-related violence within their respective zones (Cuenca Dispatch, 2024). While numbers are still somewhat comparable to fourth quarter 2023, one notable feature is the sharp spike in January 2024 of 301 incidents, compared with numbers in the low 200’s for the months of November and December 2023 (Garcia, 2024; Cuenca Dispatch, 2024). Again, while indeed disturbing, especially if there has been follow-up action, since report numbers have stabilised in the subsequent months in 2024, I see no cause to mechanically attribute extortion spikes to significant and sustained advances in control over the populace more than a temporary, perhaps desperate, response to a measured surge in military operations beginning in early January, foreseeably to result in mass arrests and seizure of tech and tactical assets. One explanation could be the effect of dispersal and reorganisation as result of the numerous arrests which did occur in January, provided such a phenomenon is so immediately reactive. More likely, as we don’t have details of the nature of extortion terms demanded or the specific errant behavior to be modified, the practice was used as intimidation specifically to warn off potential informants to the hundreds of security forces patrolling Zone 8.

References

Jenny Hale

Jenny is a guest author providing insight and analysis for safety-conscious travelers. Jenny is a researcher with 12 years of operational experience in the field of counterterrorism, specifically in the disciplines of HUMINT, counterintelligence, and counter trafficking support.

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