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Security & Strategic Review - September 2022

ECUADOR: Bomb blast highlights changing tactics by organised crime

The bomb blast that tore through a residential street in Guayaquil’s Cristo del Consuelo neighbourhood on 14 August was perhaps the starkest example to date of how Ecuador’s drug gangs are borrowing tactics from their more seasoned peers in Colombia and Mexico. Labelled an act of terrorism by President Guillermo Lasso, the explosion – allegedly targeted at a local gang leader – left five dead and at least 16 wounded. Faced with a rapid intensification of drug related violence along the length of Ecuador’s Pacific coast, authorities are scrambling to reassert control with increasingly militarised tactics. Meanwhile, tourism-dependent communities in the northwest are facing the prospect of evaporating trade due to the encroachment of the drug wars.

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