Images of chaos in the streets of Ecuador. After the escape of drug trafficker Fito and the spectacular hostage-taking live on a television set, Ecuador has fallen into an “internal armed conflict”, its president Daniel Noboa declared on Tuesday. However, less than ten years ago, the country was still peaceful, comparable to an oasis of tranquility in the midst of the violent disorder sown by drug traffickers in Mexico and neighboring Colombia.
How were Ecuadorian cities and their suburbs in turn blighted by dirty drug money and gun violence, especially in such a short time? Many factors come together to explain this reversal. Among them, this observation established by Christophe Ventura, research director at the Institute of International and Strategic Relations (Iris), a specialist in Latin America on the problem of the war on drugs: “The evil is getting worse as let us fight against him. »
Drug traffickers conquer new territories
Nothing new under the Latin American sun. Drugs, their trafficking, their cartels, their weapons have poisoned the region for decades. But if murders in the streets increased by 800% between 2018 and 2023 in Ecuador, it is because the country, so far spared from organized crime, has become the main point of export of cocaine from a partly towards the United States and partly towards Europe.
“A phenomenon that dates back five or six years,” explains Christophe Ventura, facilitated by several elements that make it a territory of choice for drug traffickers: the dollarization of the 2000s facilitated money laundering and attracted drug actors there. organized crime, a geographic location bordering Colombia, the leading producer of cocaine, and Peru, the second largest producer of the narcotic, according to data from the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNODC), which makes it the hub of the circulation of the psychotropic drug and, finally, the development of around ten subcontracting groups controlled by Mexican cartels pushed to expand their territory of activities by the policies of the war against drugs.
Covid-19, corruption and poverty
After the economic crisis which affected Ecuador from 2016, the drastic austerity policy implemented by Lenín Moreno – until the abolition of the Ministry of Justice – put public services at half mast, recalls Lucie Laplace , researcher in political science at Lyon-2 University and the Triangle laboratory. A boon for drug traffickers who were able to take advantage of “the decline of security services, particularly the police” and who came to plug the holes, explains Christophe Ventura. And the Covid-19 health crisis has been an accelerator of the dilapidation of state services. “Drug traffickers have then become protective criminals who compensate for the absence of public policies,” points out the research director. By offering work and guaranteeing security, they have, in fact, replaced the State. »
Poverty also ravages Ecuadorian society and affects around 27% of the population, according to the latest report from the National Institute of Statistics and Censuses (Inec). A fertile ground for corruption which affects all strata of the State, from the small prison guard to former president Rafael Correa who was sentenced to eight years in prison for corruption in 2020. To this, we add the legalization of guns for all by the previous president, Guillermo Lasso.
Between rivalry and show of force
As a result, two main drug cartel groups oppose each other in Ecuador today: Los Choneros, led by Fito and under the control of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, and Jalisco nueva generación. The final events worthy of an episode of the series Narcos took shape in a context of intense rivalry between these two groups. “But there is not one who dominates the other so the clashes take different forms, until now, mainly in prisons and the streets of working-class neighborhoods,” explains Lucie Laplace.
Prisons are thus regularly the scene of this demonstration of force between the two rival camps. In 2021, several riots and clashes that broke out in several prisons in Ecuador left 79 people dead in one day. “It is also a technique of intimidating the State and dissuading any other person in the justice system, the police or journalism” from taking an interest in the situation, adds Lucie Laplace. “They show that the State no longer controls anything,” she emphasizes. With a particular context: a new president who has declared war on drug trafficking has just been elected, recalls Jimena Reyes, director for the Americas of the International Federation for Human Rights (FIDH).
The observation is dry. “The war against drug traffickers is lost in advance: since the 1960s, drug consumption around the world has exploded and intensified despite the militarization of the fight,” says Christophe Ventura. It is an illusion to think that destroying the supply would be enough to solve the problem of drug trafficking. » To which, personally, Jimena Reyes responds that the radical solution would be to “legalize all drugs globally” and thus pull the rug out from under the noses of all criminal profiteers.