At least 11 people were killed last weekend in Ecuador despite the state of emergency

RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – During the last Labor Day holiday in Ecuador, and despite the State of Exception declared by President Guillermo Lasso, which allowed the mobilization of more than 9,000 police and military personnel into the streets, at least 11 murders were reported in the cities of Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, which make up zone 8 of Ecuador and which have become the epicenter of violence in the country. The criminal acts have not only left dead but also injured.

On Monday, for example, the body of a foreign man was found wrapped in jute bags in a building in downtown Guayaquil. The body was in an advanced state of decomposition, authorities announced. With this crime, the number of murders in Zone 8 increased to 466.

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A 14-year-old minor was also killed after being shot in the forehead, in Bastión Popular, a Guayaquil neighborhood where violent acts are constantly recorded. The reason for the murder would be that the minor did not want to be part of one of the gangs that control the sector. That same day, a couple was saved from death after a man shot at the vehicle they were in. The car would have been armored.

Also on Sunday, two men who were in a vehicle were shot multiple times. One of them passed away. It all happened in a neighborhood in the northwest of Guayaquil. In addition, the murder of another man who was linked to micro-trafficking was recorded, according to the first police reports.

In Duran, on the other hand, a man was shot to death. The family of the deceased said that the man had already received death threats.

Other deaths were also recorded last Saturday, including that of an active-duty police officer who was killed by gunmen. In the attempt to escape from him, the agent suffered a rollover with his car. A prison guide was killed in the same way, just a few hours after the attack on the policeman.

THE DEATHS AND THE DRUG

Hand in hand with drug traffickers, crime in Ecuador grew, with 1,255 dead -among them beheaded and mutilated- in the first quarter of this year compared to 2,500 in all of 2021 and 1,400 in 2020.

In January alone, the number of violent deaths tripled compared to the previous year, while drug seizure figures doubled. So far in 2022, 34 tons of alkaloids have been seized, while in the same period of 2021, 18 tons were seized, which represents almost half. 80% of the deaths correspond to criminal violence, according to the police. Five of the seven ports in the country are located in the cities of zone 8.

It is precisely in the Ecuadorian seaports where drug mafias manage to send tons of cocaine to Europe and the United States. Members of organized crime contaminate the containers that will leave from the port that has become the “main logistics hub for cocaine going to Europe and the rest of the world,” according to a report by the United States Bureau of International Narcotics Affairs.

The US State Department had already identified Ecuador as an attractive country for drug trafficking due to the routes for sending the drug to North American and European countries. Although Ecuador is not considered a producer country, it is among the two largest producers of cocaine: Colombia, to the north, and Peru, to the south.

Drug traffickers “prefer the port of Guayaquil because the majority of exports to Europe and the United States leave through here,” Major Richard Riera, head of the National Police Ports and Airports Information Unit (UIPA), told the press.

With information from infobae