At about 2pm local time on Tuesday, a live news broadcast on an Ecuadorian TV channel was interrupted by a group of masked men carrying guns, grenades and sticks of dynamite. The intruders pointed guns at employees and made them lie on the floor. “Don’t shoot, please don’t shoot,” one person shouted. One of the attackers said the attack was the result of “messing with the mafias”. The TC Televisión broadcast continued for at least 15 minutes. Then the signal was cut off.
Thirteen gunmen were later arrested, and the hostages taken to safety. The astonishing scenes in the city of Guayaquil were part of a series of audacious coordinated attacks by members of Ecuadorian gangs that have killed at least 10 people. They follow the prison escape of the country’s most feared gang leader, Adolfo Macías, and the new president, Daniel Noboa’s subsequent declaration of a state of emergency. And while the situation is evolving rapidly, it appears to represent a declaration of war on the country’s fragile democratic institutions.
What happened on Tuesday?
As well as the attack on the TV studio, a series of apparently related incidents took place across Ecuador. At least seven police officers were kidnapped. A vehicle was set ablaze at a petrol station in the capital, Quito. Explosives were used in further attacks in the provinces of Esmereldas and Los Ríos. There was a jailbreak in the city of Riobamba. Five hospitals were also taken over.
All of this followed riots in at least six jails on Monday, with guards taken hostage and threatened with death if soldiers were deployed to take control. Videos disseminated on WhatsApp purported to show guards being lynched, though they were unconfirmed.
As schools, shops and public buildings closed down, the streets were in gridlock as people fled to the safety of their homes. Noboa declared a state of emergency. “We are not going to negotiate with terrorists,” he said.
The response from the gangs was unambiguous. In one prison video, a guard read out a message with a gun pointed at his head. “You declared war, you will get war,” he said. “You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war.”
Who did this, and why?
The immediate spark for the chaos of the last couple of days was the escape on Sunday of Macías, alias Fito, from his cell in the prison complex in Guayaquil, the country’s largest city and its chief port.
Macías is the leader of Los Choneros, one of the most powerful criminal gangs in Ecuador, which is believed to have links to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel. He was serving a 34-year prison sentence, and previously escaped for several weeks in 2013.
He was said to have been tipped off shortly before he was due to be transferred to a maximum-security facility. Macías was living in a spacious cell decorated with murals and had been shown in a music video, for The Lion’s Ballad, relaxing in the prison courtyard and petting a fighting cockerel.
On Tuesday, Noboa decreed 22 gangs were now classified as terrorist groups.
How strong are gangs in Ecuador?
Four months ago, Dan Collyns, who is covering the crisis for the Guardian, reported from Guayaquil on Ecuador’s “nightmarish descent into violence” in recent years. The gangs have operated with impunity within the prison system and used jails as bases for their operations.
There was a mass hostage-taking in six prisons in September and a wave of violence including car bombs and a dynamite attack on a bridge after a senior gang leader was transferred to a new jail. The increase in violence led to the assassination of presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, who was shot dead in August as he left a campaign event. Villavicencio was an anti-corruption candidate who had accused Los Choneros and Macías of threatening him in the days before he was killed.
The murder rate in Ecuador has jumped almost 500% since 2016, with police attributing 80% of the killings to gangs, according to the thinktank International Crisis Group, one of the highest rates in the world. Local news reports regularly describe beheadings, public hangings and police assassinations as rivals vie for control of the drug trade.
The increase in gang violence has been attributed to the killing of Los Choneros’ previous leader, Jorge Zambrano, in 2020. That sparked a struggle for control over drug-trafficking routes and territory. At least 400 inmates have died in the country’s prisons since 2021.
Meanwhile, cartels from as far afield as Albania have sought a piece of the Ecuadorian drug trade and are financing local operations. Central to the chaos has been the export of cocaine, a major source of wealth for Ecuador’s gangs because of increased cultivation in neighbouring Colombia and years of lax policing.
How has the government responded to the violence?
Noboa, the 35-year-old heir to a banana fortune, won the presidency in October after Villavicencio’s assassination. The centre-right politician pledged a hard line on gang violence. Shortly after Noboa took office, Jaime Enrique SC, the alleged leader of the Los Choneros splinter group Los Lobos, was arrested. That was viewed as a statement of intent and prompted reprisals against local police.
Other measures included a policy of naming judges and prosecutors who release captured gang members, and the construction of new maximum-security prisons. Last week, Noboa announced plans for a referendum on further action including an expanded role for the military. In December, he proclaimed the success of his strategy, saying in an interview: “We have captured leaders of criminal groups in recent weeks, from the most important [groups]. One of the groups … has even asked for a peace deal.”
But the events of this week suggest that such optimism has been premature. After the TV station was stormed, Noboa said Ecuador was now in a state of “internal armed conflict”.
