Why Ecuador’s Copy of El Salvador’s Crime Crackdown Is Failing

Defense · Security

Ecuador’s experience suggests the Bukele security model that tamed El Salvador’s gangs does not work everywhere, even as the template spreads across Latin America.

A model everyone wants to copy

Across Latin America, one approach to crime has captured the imagination of frightened voters and ambitious politicians. It is the hard-line strategy of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele.

For readers unfamiliar with it, the formula is blunt: declare a state of emergency, suspend legal protections, arrest suspected gang members in huge numbers, and lock them in vast new maximum-security prisons.

In El Salvador it produced dramatic results, with homicides falling sharply and Bukele’s popularity soaring, even as human-rights groups documented thousands of abuses and a weakening of democratic checks.

Politicians from Honduras to Argentina now invoke his name. Few have embraced the template as openly as Ecuador’s president, who has copied not just the policy but the imagery, down to the leather jacket.

How Ecuador imported the Bukele security model

Ecuador’s turn to the hard line came after a shocking day in January 2024, when gangs launched coordinated attacks and even stormed a live television broadcast as a notorious crime boss escaped from prison.

The president responded by declaring an internal armed conflict against more than twenty criminal groups, labelling them terrorists, sending soldiers into the streets and ordering the military to take over the prisons.

He branded the strategy with its own name and promised mega-prisons, even announcing that the same firms which built El Salvador’s prisons would build Ecuador’s. The borrowing was explicit and deliberate.

A referendum in 2024 showed many Ecuadorians were willing to trade civil liberties for the promise of safety, giving the president a popular mandate to press ahead with the crackdown.

Why it is not working

The problem is that the results have not followed. After an early lull, gang violence revived and then surged, reaching record levels in early 2025 and continuing through the repeated states of emergency since.

The prisons tell the story most starkly. Analysts documented well over a hundred violent deaths behind bars in 2025, with both of the last two years seeing more killings inside jails than before the military took over.

Rather than restoring order, the militarization has produced fresh allegations of abuse. Rights groups report torture, beatings and extortion inside the prisons, with soldiers themselves among those accused.

One prison run under security-force control had to be shut down in early 2026 after repeated riots and killings, a vivid sign that the takeover had not delivered the control it promised.

A different kind of enemy

Security analysts argue the deeper reason is that Ecuador is not El Salvador. The two countries face very different criminal threats, and a tool built for one does not fit the other.

El Salvador’s gangs were largely territorial street organisations that extorted local neighbourhoods. Mass arrests could break their grip because their power was rooted in physical control of streets.

Ecuador’s groups are something else: nodes in transnational cocaine-trafficking networks, fighting over the ports and routes that move drugs to Europe and the United States. Jailing foot soldiers does not stop the trade.

The money and the supply chains survive even when individuals are locked up, and prisons themselves often become command centres rather than dead ends, which is why the killings continue inside them.

Why it matters beyond Ecuador

The lesson reaches well beyond one country. As elections across the region turn on crime, candidates from Colombia to Argentina are promising their own versions of the Salvadoran approach.

Ecuador’s experience is a warning that importing the model wholesale, without matching it to the local nature of the threat, can deliver the political costs of repression without the promised gains in safety.

For investors and businesses watching the region, the takeaway is sobering. Tough talk and emergency decrees do not guarantee the stability that ports, tourism and trade depend on.

The harder work of building courts, police and institutions is less telegenic than soldiers and mega-prisons, but Ecuador suggests it may be what actually moves the numbers.

Frequently Asked Questions

What is the Bukele security model?

It is the hard-line strategy associated with El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele: declaring a state of emergency, suspending legal protections, arresting suspected gang members en masse and holding them in large maximum-security prisons. In El Salvador it cut homicides sharply but drew many human-rights complaints.

Why is it failing in Ecuador?

Violence has kept rising despite repeated emergencies, and prison killings have increased since the military took over the jails. Analysts say Ecuador’s gangs are transnational drug-trafficking networks rather than territorial street gangs, so mass arrests do not break the trade that drives the violence.

Are other countries copying the model?

Yes, widely: politicians in Honduras, Argentina, Colombia and elsewhere have invoked Bukele’s approach, and crime has become a defining election issue across Latin America. Ecuador’s struggles offer a caution that the model may not transfer easily to different criminal landscapes.