The Tragic Collapse of Ecuador

Last year, Ecuadorians watching the popular television show El Noticiero were shocked when chaos erupted on screen. Masked intruders with shotguns, handguns, and explosives stormed the live set, forcing the anchors and crew to the ground at gunpoint and flaunting their weapons to the camera. The rampage was broadcast across the country to a horrified audience. The dramatic episode was just one of the more visible instances of social decay in a country that is slowly being crushed beneath the weight of violence and criminality. With a murder rate of over 45 people per 100,000 in 2023—nearly nine times that of the U.S.—Ecuador is the most dangerous country in Latin America and one of the most violent countries in the world. Only Jamaica has a higher rate of intentional homicides.

It was not always like this. In 2017, Ecuador was one of the safest, most stable countries in Latin America, with a murder rate equivalent to that of the United States and an economy that had doubled over the past decade. The left-wing Carlos Correa had just finished a long and prosperous presidency over the small nation, which benefited from the increasing development of its oil and mineral reserves, and looked set to grow steadily and peacefully under his hand-picked successor Lenín Moreno.

That dream has since gone up in smoke and ashes. The past several years have seen a veritable explosion of crime and corruption that has drowned out any capacity for government response.

The catalyst for the explosion is Ecuador’s location and its status as a major exporter of agricultural goods—a useful front for the transportation of cocaine. To exploit the opportunities available in the country, narcoterrorists have filtered south from neighboring Colombia, while Albanian crime lords have steadily infiltrated the country from overseas. Local organized crime, which had long been a set of weak gangs, has secured connections with the cartels of Mexico, providing them with a massive influx of cash and weapons.

The Ecuadorian government was completely unprepared for these developments. Under Correa, Ecuador’s policies were reflexively anti-American, and the president closed the American military base in Manta that was used to conduct drug interdictions and surveillance. He even dissolved the country’s U.S.–trained anti-narcotics police unit. Correa also loosened Ecuador’s drug laws, legalizing possession of otherwise illicit drugs below a certain amount—a move that was supposed to end prosecution for the supposedly victimless crime of mere drug use, but instead enabled wider drug use and a dramatically expanded network of micro-dealers and drug transportation.

Now, cartels openly control prisons, threaten government officials, and seize live television stations. The port of Guayaquil is controlled by the Albanian mafia, which generously pads Ecuadorian banana exports to Europe with cocaine from Colombia. One-quarter of all the cocaine seized in Europe originates from Ecuador. 

Opposing them too openly can prove fatal: In 2023, the right-wing politician Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated by Ecuador’s largest domestic organized crime ring, Los Lobos, after calling for a major crackdown on crime as part of his presidential campaign.

The consequences for the common people of the country have been severe, as well. “The situation in Ecuador is fatal,” one citizen told The American Conservative. He has since left the country and brought his family to live in the much safer country of Paraguay. 

“We are living through insecurity because of all the crime,” said Caroline, a resident of Guayaquil. “If you have a small business, like a hardware store or an encebollado stand, or any business big or small, these evil people want to live from whatever money you get as your meager income.” The demands of organized crime have been devastating to the regular economy: “Most people have closed their businesses, because if you don’t give them what they ask for every month, they will send people to kidnap or even kill you.”

Many of the people TAC spoke to mentioned “the infamous ‘vaccine,’” the slang term for the extortion payments emboldened criminals extract from local businesses under the guise of protection. Ana Cristina, also from Guayaquil, recounted how one of her neighbors has struggled to make a living with her small business, a restaurant that sells encebollado—a seafood soup that is one of Ecuador’s national dishes—under the menace of local gangs. “Currently, she pays… but if she doesn’t pay, they’ve threatened to take the life of someone in her family. So for now, they pay money every week for the supposed ‘protection’ of these people—but of course, they don’t offer any protection. So they have to pay every week to keep the store open, but [the criminals] also rob the people who come to the store.”

“We have to live in fear,” she said, “the fear, and the knowledge, of the situation of the country—the murders, the robberies, the extortion.” 

It’s an exhausting way to live, and one that falls hardest on the most vulnerable. Ana Cristina is the mother of a 3-year old girl, and worries about what could happen to her daughter if she or her husband become the victims of the violent crime that has become ubiquitous in the city. She also worries about the growing influence of crime and gang life on her daughter and future children as they grow older: “In this neighborhood, which is one of scant resources, [the gangs and cartels] do a lot of recruiting… tragically, the youth become delinquents and even murderers by the age of 14, [even as young as] 11.”

Efforts by the government to clamp down on crime have been ineffective. The current right-wing president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, has taken a forceful stance towards the rising crime wave, declaring a state of emergency, classifying 22 organized crime groups operating in the country as terrorist entities, and deploying the military, but has had little success in arresting the country’s slide into lawlessness. The Ecuadorian military forces are poorly trained and equipped, and corruption has become endemic within the government and the police, making it almost impossible to effectively administer justice even when gang leaders are tracked down and captured.

The fate of two local drug lords demonstrates the difficulty facing Noboa and his allies attempting to stabilize the country. Adolfo Macías, head of the Los Choneros cartel, ran his criminal enterprise from the Litoral prison in Guayaquil, where a combination of corruption and lax security enabled him to operate with relatively few constraints. When the government made arrangements to transfer him to a maximum security prison, he escaped, precipitating a major conflict that caused Noboa to declare the country to be in a state of internal war. Just two days later, Fabricio Colón Pico, leader of Los Lobos, also escaped after having been arrested for planning the assassination of Ecuador’s attorney general. Both were almost certainly assisted by police officers and prison guards, frequent targets for corruption by the cartels.

Noboa’s failure is another illustration of the difficulty inherent in putting an end to organized crime, which often resists attempts by governments and militaries to shut it down by force. The example of Nayib Bukele in El Salvador is exceptional, but hard to apply when faced with the resources available to strong criminal enterprises like the ELN in Colombia or the CJNG in Mexico. Cartels are experts at employing the generous incentives available to crime rings: the enticement of generous benefits from the profitable drug trade, and the threat of violence against the target and their family members. If they cannot be deeply compromised in a single blow, they often corrode the capacity of the government to combat them effectively. 

The situation currently facing Ecuador is one that even much stronger and more developed countries like Mexico and Colombia have struggled to confront effectively, and threatens to turn the small nation into a failed state. But if the country continues to fail in bringing crime and corruption under control, the costs will be immense, both to its own citizens and to the victims of the drugs and crime that sail from its ports to the rest of the world.