Ecuador was plunged into tumult on 9 January as members of criminal gangs ran amok, bursting onto the set of a live television broadcast, taking some 140 prison guards hostage, and killing two police officers in a wave of violence that poses a direct challenge to the authority of President Daniel Noboa, who decreed a state of ‘internal armed conflict’. Noboa has taken a tough line on gangs operating in the country since taking office on 23 November. The mayhem followed the decision by Noboa to declare a state of emergency in response to the jailbreak of the leader of the Los Choneros gang, José Adolfo Macías Villamar (‘Fito’), on 7 January.
President Noboa’s declaration of a state of internal armed conflict empowers the military to combat criminal groups operating in Ecuador. His decree orders the armed forces to “neutralise” no fewer than 22 criminal groups classed as “terrorist organisations and non-state belligerent actors”, including Los Choneros, and rival groups Los Lobos and Los Tiguerones. While it calls for military operations to be carried out “in line with international humanitarian law and respecting human rights”, an upsurge in violence is a distinct possibility.
Noboa was responding to a day of nationwide violence unleashed by criminal gangs. This included the interruption of a live broadcast on the state-owned television channel TC in the port city of Guayaquil by armed men, who proceeded to compel staff to lie on the floor, pleading for their lives, all as the cameras continued to roll. Police stormed the building shortly afterwards making 18 arrests. There were also uprisings in several prisons, with scores of prison guards taken hostage, police officers kidnapped, and violent clashes and looting, especially in Guayaquil.
The actions of criminal gangs look designed to test the resolve of Noboa, who has promised to follow the lead of El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele in cracking down hard on gangs. They followed the escape of Macías Salazar from Guayaquil’s La Roca prison, just days after Noboa had said he would order the construction of two new maximum-security prisons for gang leaders as prisons were currently being used by gangs as command-and-control centres. Noboa has also sent a series of questions to the constitutional court for a proposed national referendum as the government seeks to build public support for its hard-line anti-crime strategy. The majority are security-related, such as the militarisation of public security; reforming the armed forces to give them greater responsibilities for the maintenance of internal order; extradition; and the establishment of a presidential pardon for security personnel accused of excessive use of force.
Noboa declared a 60-day state of emergency on 8 January, including an overnight curfew, after Macías Salazar’s escape. “No longer will those imprisoned for drug trafficking, murder and organised crime dictate the government’s actions,” Noboa said. Another gang leader, Fabricio Colón Pico Sánchez, of Los Lobos, subsequently escaped from prison, in Riobamba, the capital of the Andean highland province of Chimborazo, along with 32 other inmates, just days after being placed in preventive detention on suspicion of plotting to assassinate the attorney general, Diana Salazar. The jailbreaks underscore the need for the overhaul of a prison system afflicted by deep-seated corruption and overcrowding, but this will require significant financial resources.
Surge in violence
Recent statistics suggest Ecuador could have overtaken other countries to become the most violent in Latin America in 2023. According to police data, there were 7,497 homicides in the year to 17 December 2023, indicating the country could end up with a homicide rate of between 40 and 42 per 100,000 members of the population. For comparison the most violent Latin American countries in 2022 were Venezuela (40 homicides per 100,000), Honduras (36) and Colombia (27). In that year Ecuador was the fourth most violent country with a homicide rate of 26 per 100,000.
Paraguay squares up to gangs
Ecuador is far from alone in Latin America in struggling against powerful criminal gangs that have taken over control of the prison system. Paraguay’s President Santiago Peña is battling to curtail the influence of Clan Rotela, a local criminal gang, as part of a concerted effort to clean up the prison system and improve public security. On 29 December Peña promulgated a law pushed through congress a week earlier declaring a state of emergency in prisons and detention centres across the country for one year. This followed a massive raid by security forces to recover control of Tacumbú prison in Asunción from Clan Rotela on 18 December.
The government’s security plan is designed to improve coordination between prison authorities, the justice ministry, and the security forces. “Security is a necessary condition for economic development,” Peña said.
When the justice minister, Ángel Barchini, announced a plan against Clan Rotela to allow the state to resume control of its prisons in October, imprisoned members of the gang responded by taking the director of Tacumbú, 21 prison guards, and some 20 visiting relatives of inmates hostage and set the main entrance and other areas of the prison ablaze [WR-23-41]. Barchini even claimed that his office had been infiltrated by Clan Rotela, and demanded justice ministry officials face polygraph tests to discover who was leaking information.
Peña stood by Barchini, and his prison plan was set in motion on 18 December when 1,100 members of the military and 1,218 police officers launched Operation Veneratio to recover control of Tacumbú. One police officer and 11 inmates were killed during the operation, with another 94 people injured, including more than 20 members of the security forces.
Members of a police special operations unit (Fope) and the military fought their way into a wing of the prison known as La Jungla, a command-and-control centre with restricted access, where Armando Javier Rotela, the leader of the gang, was based with his pregnant partner. They discovered guns, ammunition, explosives, three guard dogs, and various luxuries and provisions. Rotela was eventually captured and transferred to the Viñas Cue military facility, also in Asunción; 700 other imprisoned members of the gang were also moved from the overcrowded prison to other jails around Paraguay. Rotela and seven of his chief lieutenants, were charged with prison riots and transgression of the law on weapons, munitions, and explosives as well as criminal association.
Peña celebrated the successful operation to regain control of “one of the worst 10 prisons in the world” from Clan Rotela. But the real work will start now. Significant financial resources will be required during the 12-month state of emergency approved by congress in order to reform a prison system model, which Peña said currently “turns our prisons into true schools of crime”, and improve security. Clan Rotela remains a force to be reckoned with. A rival criminal gang, Primer Comando Capital (PCC), operates from within prisons in the cities of Pedro Juan Caballero and Ciudad del Este, on the border with Brazil.
Both gangs have used their power to corrupt, coerce, and intimidate prison directors and guards. In 2022, a former director of Tacumbú, Óscar Daniel González Olmedo, was shot dead in Asunción. He had served as director from July to October 2020 when he was involved in a police operation to close down a drug laboratory producing crack and cocaine within the prison. He was removed from his position after receiving death threats. The operation was led by Marcelo Pecci, Paraguay’s special prosecutor against organised crime, who was assassinated while on honeymoon in Colombia in May 2022 [WR-22-19].
