QUITO.- A teenager dies while trying to place dynamite in a commercial establishment, whose owner was extorted. Armed and hooded individuals rob a bank and injure the security guard. A merchant is kidnapped amid the screams of several witnesses and a police officer is murdered in his car while doing surveillance.
These were just the most recent episodes of a wave of crimes with which Ecuador closes the most violent year in its history, according to official figures. According to data provided by the police, the 2023 closes with at least 7,592 deaths violentcompared to 4,426 in 2022.
Ecuador is the Latin American nation with the “fastest” and “impressive” growth in the index of homicidessaid Fernando Carrión, professor at the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences, author of the study “Cartelization in Latin America.”
The rate of violent deaths In the Andean country in 2017 it was five per 100,000 inhabitants, the researcher said. Now it exceeds 40, which “makes 2023 the most violent year in the history of Ecuador,” he added.
According to police figures, kidnappings also skyrocketed, going from 40 last year to 122 this year, while violent deaths of minors increased from 204 to 342. For their part, extortions – according to the data until September – there were 5,930, compared to the 3,188 reported in 2022.
Crime diversification
Carrión pointed out that the indices reflect the “diversification of crime”, due to the proliferation of two types of criminal organizations.
He explained that some 1,500 gangs operate in the country that specialize in various types of crimes and that they are subsidiaries of those that form “a global crime network”, linked to large global organizations such as the Mexican drug cartels, the Italian mafias. or the Brazilian commandos.
The director of the Order, Conflict and Violence research program at the Central University, Luis Córdova, said that in light of these red figures, the State has given an “erroneous” response due to the “lack of understanding of the phenomenon we face.”
According to their analysis, violence continues to grow due to “a contagion effect and the enormous social roots” of the crime phenomenon.
The first implies, according to Córdova, that while the government insists on countering crime with more police and military in dangerous areas, “the structures are migrating to other spaces and colonizing territories.”
The second means that “criminal violence is being socially reproduced,” as a “legitimization mechanism” for those who have been marginalized, excluded by the State and the formal economy, he added.
“There is an army of children and adolescents who neither study nor work” and to whom the gangs provide an “emotional territory, weave loyalties” and give them a sense of belonging, the researcher explained. Given this, the State must respond with policies of social, cultural and sports inclusion, he added.
The case of Durán
He mentioned the city of Durán, where homicides went from 119 in 2022 to 407 in 2023. This city makes up zone 8, the most dangerous in the country, along with Guayaquil, Samborondón and Daule, where violent deaths almost doubled: 1,446 in 2022 to 2,560 at the end of this year.
Durán, Daule and Samborondón border Guayaquil through whose ports criminal organizations linked to drug trafficking traffic large shipments of drugs. At the end of 2023, 211 tons of drugs had been seized, compared to 201 in 2022, according to authorities.
According to Carrión’s estimates, almost 850 tons per year leave Ecuadorian territory as a result of an increase in production in Peru and Colombia, which are border countries.
The government of President Daniel Noboa, who took power at the end of November with a transitional mandate of a year and a half to complete the term of Guillermo Lasso, promised the “Fénix” plan to combat organized crime and delinquency, but according to Analysts have not yet seen concrete results.
Source: With information from AP
