Ecuador was one of the calmest countries in Latin America until about three years ago. Now, criminals prowl wealthy and working-class neighborhoods, and last week, a candidate in a special presidential election was killed despite a security detail.
“No one is safe from the insecurity in the country,” Anthony Garcia, who packs shrimp, said after the Villavicencio assassination. “We are at the hands of drug trafficking, of evil in its entirety.”
Shopping and dining is a different experience these days. Convenience stores, auto part shops and pharmacies have floor-to-ceiling metal bars that prevent customers from entering from the sidewalk. Malls have metal detectors at the entrances. The bars and restaurants that survived the pandemic have fewer tables and close early.
Ecuadorian authorities attribute the unprecedented violence to a power vacuum triggered by the killing in December 2020 of Jorge Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL,” the leader of Los Choneros. Founded in the 1990s, the group is the country’s largest and most feared gang. Members carry out contract killings, run extortion operations, move and sell drugs, and are the law inside prisons.
Guayaquil is the epicenter of violence. About a third of this year’s violent deaths took place in Ecuador’s second-largest city, home to the country’s main commercial port and a large prison complex. The neighborhood’s police station is surrounded by bags of dirt placed as protection after a shootout earlier this year. Save for a handful of officers chatting by the door, the building looks abandoned.
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