5 Key Details Being Missed About Ecuador’s Security Crisis
World of Crime explains five key facts about why an armed gang attacked a TV station, the problems with President Noboa’s security plan, and why the international community needs to be worried.
Ecuador is now the deadliest country in Latin America. Its prisons are gang headquarters, armed gunmen can take over prime-time TV shows live on air, and a new president faces an impossible challenge.
But although the situation has been worsening for years, Ecuador’s crisis remains largely misunderstood.
World of Crime explains five key facts about Ecuador’s gangs, the consequences of President Noboa’s security plan, and why the country’s neighbors need to be worried.
Names to Remember:
Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito,” 44. The last founding member of the Choneros, once Ecuador’s largest gang but now on the losing end of a brutal war. Fito’s fellow Choneros leaders have been wiped out and his power base is very uncertain. Fito escaped prison on January 9 to avoid being murdered by the Lobos or their allies.
Fabricio Colón Pico, alias “Capitán Pico,” 44. Boss of Ecuador’s largest criminal group, the Lobos, in the capital Quito. A veteran of multiple prison stints, he was arrested on January 5 for allegedly planning to assassinate Ecuador’s attorney-general, Diana Salazar, Pico escaped prison on January 9.
Daniel Noboa, 35. President of Ecuador since November 2023 and only elected for an 18-month mandate, Noboa was hoping for a different start to 2024. His flip-flopping approach to organized crime may have emboldened gangs to take more extreme actions, such as kidnapping and killing police officers and taking over the TC Televisión studios.
Why Did Armed Gang Take Over TC Televisión?
The targeting of TC Televisión’s studio during the live airing of the El Noticiero programme was no coincidence. The channel is one of the two-stated owned TV stations in Ecuador. El Noticiero is one of Ecuador’s most popular television shows, commonly seen by about 16 percent of the country’s population. Its journalists, including Mauricio ‘Caterva’ Ayora who was falsely reported to have died in the assault, are household names. Its studio is in the middle of downtown Guayaquil, right next to the airport.
Taking it over sent a clear message. No institution is safe. The arsenal being toted by the masked gang members drove the point home. Automatic weapons, shotguns, handguns, grenades, and what appeared to be dynamite were all visible on camera. Whether this was a pre-planned attack or was quickly carried out in response to Fito and Pico’s escapes, the mobilization of personnel and resources was impressive.
Police responded swiftly to the attack and claim to have arrested 13 members of the gang. Early unconfirmed reports claim the attack was carried by Ecuador’s largest gang, the Lobos. This would fit a pattern of behaviour by the Lobos and their allies who have courted infamy. In the wake of the assassination of presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, the Lobos released a video in which around 20 hooded men toted machine guns as they denied killing Villavicencio. The Chone Killers, close allies to the Lobos, also pioneered grisly displays of violence in Ecuador, hanging the bodies of slain victims from bridges.
It may be no coincidence that the Lobos’ closest international partners are Mexico’s Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG). The media-savvy CJNG regularly make brazen public shows of strength. Its members have posed for photos, their faces bare, with advanced weaponry and military vehicles. The CJNG were also the precursors of using drones to bombard their enemies from the skies, even publishing video footage of these attacks.
It may have taught the value of these tactics to their Ecuador partners, the Lobos.
Did Fito’s escape from jail start all this?
No. Fito’s escape from prison in Guayaquil on January 9 has been heavily covered in the media where he was named Ecuador’s most dangerous kingpin. But it was not unusual.
Ecuador’s maximum-security prisons serve as headquarters for its gangs. Weapons and drugs are smuggled in with ease, and prison violence is rampant. Escapes are unremarkable. Fito reportedly lived in a bunker behind bars from which he controlled the Choneros’ operations in other prisons and across the country. When he decided to escape, he did so down a long tunnel that had been built beforehand.
He was reportedly about to be transferred away from the Litoral prison where he had spent much of his life since being jailed in 2011. His intended destination, a prison known as La Roca which has been declared to be unfit for human activity. Ecuador’s gang leaders do not want to go to La Roca.
Previous transfers of gang leaders to La Roca have led to outbreaks of prison violence, threats, and even legal protests. They were quickly reversed.
But Fito may have had more pressing reasons. While his Choneros gang is still a powerful force in Ecuador’s underworld, it is on the decline. Since 2020, the Choneros have been losing a war against an alliance of three gangs, the Lobos, Tiguerones, and Chone Killers.
Fito was one of three men who ran the Choneros. He’s the only one left alive. And the Lobos are trying very hard to kill Fito. A Lobos member tried to murder Fito in 2021, and since then, his daughter has been kidnapped, while his son and other family members have survived assassination attempts.
Fito may have fled prison to save his own life.
And while Fito has received the lion’s share of coverage, another escapee warrants just as much attention. Fabricio Colón Pico, head of the Lobos in the capital, Quito, had just been arrested for planning the murder of Diana Salazar, the attorney-general. The fact that he was able to escape mere days after the government hailed his capture shows how dire the country’s prisons have become.
What is President Noboa doing to stop the violence?
Gangs in Ecuador have been emboldened by the new president’s inconsistent approach to organized crime. On the campaign trail, he spoke of community policing and job creation opportunities. After the murder of presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, Noboa promised to exile gang leaders to prison ships offshore.
Once in office, he took weeks to provide any clarity about his Phoenix security plan, aggravating crucial partners. In early January 2024, he took a page out of El Salvador’s controversial security crackdown. He announced the construction of two new maximum-security prisons to house thousands of inmates, as Nayib Bukele has done in El Salvador.
This backfired. Instead of being part of a broader, sweeping package of reforms, the new prison announcement fell flat. Angry gangs immediately began an upsurge in violence, perhaps seeking to shock the government into backing off. Even if they are built, it is unclear how the new prisons would help, if not accompanied by other structural reforms.
Yes, El Salvador’s crackdown has led to a large sustained drop in violent crime, but at a cost. Over 100,000 people are behind bars, with murky due process at best. The targeted gangs, the MS13 and Barrio 18, are far more cohesive and easy to target than the Lobos or the Choneros. Bukele’s unparalleled popularity means he may remain in office for years to come.
Noboa has none of these advantages. His term runs out in 2025. Ecuador’s prisons are run by gangs, who kill and bring in weapons with impunity. 500 inmates have been killed in three years of massacres. Six men who allegedly murdered Villavicencio were gunned down in their cell within weeks.
When Fito was transferred away from a prison in Guayaquil in August 2023, inmates wrote in large letters “We want Fito back! With Fito, we will have peace!”
Embarrassingly, just days after Noboa’s new prison announcement, two of Ecuador’s most dangerous gang members are both able to escape. Would his new prisons really be any different?
What does an internal armed conflict actually mean?
Noboa’s next step has been to declare a state of internal armed conflict in Ecuador. Schools are closed and people are urged to work from home.
But beyond being a scary-sounding term, what does declaring an internal armed conflict actually change? Well, not much.
In his statement, Noboa stated that the armed forces and police would be deployed nationwide to fight against transnational organized crime and terrorist organizations. Again, this might sound ominous but the police and armed forces have been doing this for years.
Ecuador’s police is gutted, lacking in personnel, equipment, funding, and leadership. Horrific recent videos of prisoners shooting or hanging police officers and prison guards in recent days won’t help morale.
The army has been deployed regularly in the streets, prisons, and ports to stop gang activity by the last three presidents of Ecuador. They haven’t made a dent.
Is Ecuador’s security crisis an international problem?
Very much so. Ecuador’s gangs are evolving at an almost unprecedented rate. As recently as three or four years ago, these groups killed each other in localized clashes for control of domestic drug trafficking routes. But now, the Lobos, Choneros, Chone Killers, Tiguerones and more are threatening the mechanisms of state in Ecuador and threaten to export their violence abroad.
In 2023, one of Fito’s closest allies and a founding member of the Choneros, Junior Roldán, alias “JR,” fled to Colombia to avoid assassination attempts by the Lobos. He was shot dead weeks later in the department of Antioquia.
In 2022, a Chilean fisherman was taken hostage by a gang in Guayaquil and his family received a ransom demand of US$100,000. He was released after five days, but not before two fingers from his left hand were cut off. Chile has also tracked Ecuadorian gang members in the country.
The Lobos or the Choneros may begin looking at opportunities abroad.
The closest parallel to this is Venezuela. That country’s gangs were once firmly domestic, working for larger transnational criminal groups. But in the last decade, such groups used the mass migration of millions of Venezuelan citizens to export their criminal activities.
How? In exactly the same way these gangs already made money at home.
These migrants provided plenty of ways to make a buck, whether by paying extortionate fees to cross borders, being made to work as drug couriers, or being drummed into sexual exploitation. Today, Tren de Aragua, Venezuela’s largest criminal group, is a security risk in half a dozen Latin American countries. Smaller Venezuelan gangs, like the Melean, have also exported their criminal activities to Colombia.
With tens of thousands of Ecuadorians now leaving the country annually due to violence, the ground is set for Ecuador’s organized crime to also set up a presence abroad.
World of Crime is a media and publishing company focused on revealing the inner workings of transnational organized crime across the globe. Our first book, World of Crime’s Guide to the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (CJNG), will be published in February 2024. For consulting or media inquiries, please contact cdalby@worldofcrime.net.