RIO DE JANEIRO, BRAZIL – Ecuador is experiencing a profound crisis of violence and insecurity. Killings in prisons, hired killings in the streets, and violent robberies are events that are reported daily.
The official version claims that the wave of violence responds to the war against drug trafficking. However, this version could only justify the contract killings and the display of corpses, which according to experts, are practices related to drug mafias.
According to the National Police, in Guayaquil, Durán, and Samborondón, cities on the Ecuadorian coast and where there are seaports where the shipment of drugs camouflaged in containers has been detected, 86% of the crimes are due to disputes between drug trafficking gangs, 8% to interpersonal violence and 6% to robbery.
In addition to these percentages, some collateral victims are also killed or injured because they are in the places where violence occurs, such as the minor who was shot after an attempted robbery on the school bus on which he was traveling.
The first scenario, of crimes between gangs that respond to drug trafficking, supporting the official version, shows macabre acts that have not been seen, such as beheadings, corpses hanging on bridges, drones with explosives, and car bombs, the last of which exploded early Sunday morning, May 29, in front of a police unit.
Cases of hired murders and intentional homicides increased in the first five months of 2022 by 147% compared to the previous year. Up to May, 577 deliberate killings have been counted.
Eighty percent of these murders are concentrated in neighborhoods where the police have detected the sale and transport of drugs, so they attribute the murders to a fight between gangs or executions.
Even this year, there have been murders in areas where these crimes did not occur, for example, in Los Ceibos, northwest of Guayaquil. In this residential area, four people were murdered until May 2022, while in 2021, there were no intentional homicides in the same months. In Samborondón, an area of private housing developments, intentional deaths have doubled.
Alberto Molina, a colonel on passive duty in the Armed Forces, agrees with the government’s version and tells El Universo that the increase in murders coincides with increased drug seizures.
So far this year, authorities have seized 90 tons of drugs, more than double the amount in 2021: “It’s not just Mexico, the increase in murders is due to drug seizures. The immediate reaction is to create terror, to hang the bodies. There are two messages, one to the rival gangs and the other to the citizens and the government,” says Molina.
According to Molina, there are criminal gangs such as the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel, the Sinaloa cartel, and the Italian, Albanian, and Chinese mafias in Ecuador.
According to multiple journalistic investigations, Guayaquil has become the center of confrontation between Albanian gangs seeking to control cocaine trafficking lines.
In the last decade, at least six Albanians have been executed in the hired murder style – a form of murder typical of the mafias. All of them have been linked to drug trafficking.
The last of these executions took place in a restaurant in Guayaquil, where the Albanian drug lord Ergys Dashi was shot.
According to the Albanian Daily News, there is a war between Colombian, Mexican, Albanian, and Russian cartels competing for the lucrative European market in the Ecuadorian port city.
According to the media outlet, Albanian mafias form alliances with the Sinaloa Cartel, which has also been linked to the Choneros, an Ecuadorian criminal gang blamed for bloodbaths in the country’s prisons.
The influence of the Albanian mafia in Latin America is seen in increased shipments to Durres, a port city in western Albania, where over a ton of cocaine hidden in crates of bananas has been seized.
According to authorities ‘ information, the drug, which departs from Guayaquil, is usually hidden in containers. Ecuador is one of the world’s largest exporters of bananas and plantains.
According to several news portals, the arrival of Albanians in Ecuador dates back to the early 2010s. Most of them live in Guayaquil under false identities to avoid persecution in Albania.
The Albanians and the Balkan mafia are believed to have gained influence in international drug trafficking. It coincides with an investigation conducted by the digital media Plan V of Ecuador, which in 2019 already revealed the operation of the Albanian mafia in the country.
According to the journalistic investigation, Albanian criminal groups arrived in the country between 2014 and 2015. They were attracted by the opportunity to establish direct contacts with cartels in Colombia, Bolivia, and Venezuela.
In addition, Ecuador has been considered a vulnerable country rife with corruption, allowing members of these mafias to buy fraudulent documents, such as identity cards and passports.
According to Molina, who told El Universo, these criminal organizations have been operating in the country for at least 15 years and have settled in Ecuador because of the impunity surrounding their crimes.
Ecuador has been identified as an attractive country for drug trafficking because of the routes for sending drugs to North and Central America and Europe.
One of the routes, according to Molina, starts in the Colombian department of Nariño, on Ecuador’s northern border, and runs through Esmeraldas, Manabi, and Guayas, the three provinces now under a state of emergency.
Drug traffickers prefer the ports of Guayaquil and Manta to send drugs hidden in containers exported from there: “85% of the drugs are sent by sea,” Molina said.
With information from Infobae
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