Gang war has turned Ecuador’s largest city into a “desert”: “We are in shit”

The streets of Guayaquil, a normally bustling Ecuadorian port city of about 3 million people, remained eerily quiet on Thursday after a spate of arson attacks, car bombings, shootings and prison riots across the country left 15 people dead, The Guardian reported.

Street corners filled with piles of trash after recycling plants, as well as schools, universities and government offices, suspended operations. There was little traffic on many of the city’s usually clogged roads, and those motorists who did venture out drove at high speeds to reduce the risk of getting hit. Most shops and businesses remained closed despite a nationwide 11pm to 5am curfew imposed in response to this week’s violence. There was hardly a soul in sight after dark on Wednesday.

“Guayaquil is a desert,” said José Luis Calderon, a local television journalist who was taken hostage live on Tuesday when more than a dozen armed men stormed his station’s headquarters in the city.

Shortly after this daring bandit attack on the TC television channel, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict.” “We are at war and we cannot give in to these terrorists,” Noboa said Wednesday as security forces tried to regain control of the streets and prisons of Ecuador, where the government says 178 guards and workers are still being held hostage by gangsters associated with Mexican drug cartels.

While patrolling the coastal Caraguey seafood market in Guayaquil on Thursday, navy spokesman Marcelo Gutierrez insisted that authorities are resisting and will prevail.

“These criminals can rest assured that we will not hesitate for a second when it comes to protecting our citizens… If we have to give our lives to protect the population, we will do it,” Gutierrez, 38, vowed as his fighters advanced through the market with machine guns in hands.

A navy spokesman said the situation in Guayaquil was under control and that the port city was gradually returning to normal, although Guardian reporters saw few signs of security forces on the city’s streets on Wednesday and Thursday.

The epicenter of this week’s violence was the maximum security prison La Regional on the northern outskirts of Guayaquil, where until recently one of Ecuador’s most notorious criminals, José Adolfo Macias Villamar, was held.

Macias, the leader of Los Honeros, a powerful gang linked to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, reportedly disappeared from his cell over the weekend, his alleged escape triggering an incredible wave of bloodshed and chaos that has rocked a country long considered one one of the most peaceful in South America.

After Macias, whose nickname was “Fito,” disappeared, prisoners took dozens of prison guards hostage. Sickening videos of security officers being killed – some clearly fake – have spread like wildfire on social media. On Tuesday, at the height of the violence, at least eight people were killed and two wounded in what one newspaper called a “day of terror” in Guayaquil.

“Tuesday was disgusting. It was like an earthquake or a tsunami or some kind of natural disaster,” said Marco Flores, a 43-year-old newspaper salesman, as he stood outside the Regional Jail on Thursday lunchtime, surrounded by soldiers with rifles.

The tabloid Extra has released a chilling snapshot of the violence engulfing Ecuador, where murders have risen sharply over the past five years thanks to a growing key role in the international cocaine smuggling trade between South America and Europe.

One story told of a heroic security guard who rushed a bleeding schoolgirl to hospital on Tuesday after she was hit by a stray bullet. Another told how 35 riot police successfully recaptured the TC Television studio and freed its journalists. A third article claimed that vigilante groups armed with machetes and baseball bats were challenging gangs in the capital, Quito. The fourth told how shopkeepers in Guayaquil and Quito abandoned their businesses to avoid looting – or worse. “We’re safe, but we’re in shit,” one frustrated trader is quoted as saying.

An editorial in the same Extra newspaper called on Ecuador’s nearly 18 million citizens to support Noboa, who was only elected last October, in what he described as his unwavering commitment to defeat more than 20 “terrorist” gangs, including the Wolves. Latin Kings”, “Chone Killers” and another one called AK47. “Now, more than at any other time in our history, it is imperative for the entire Ecuadorian society to unite to continue this unprecedented war,” the publication notes, concluding: “We have reached a critical point, and there is no other way to save our country.”

Human rights and security experts fear Noboa’s campaign to “neutralize” gangs could lead to more carnage, not less. “The short-term response will be a massive crackdown,” predicted Chris Dolby, director of World of Crime, an investigative reporting group that specializes in organized crime. “I think he [Нобоа] is going to increase the number of victims, and in the elections he should do this, although I would not agree with this.”

Dalby believed this week’s attacks were a planned attempt by gang leaders to intimidate Noboa, who is Ecuador’s youngest-ever president, after the 36-year-old hinted he would pursue a crackdown inspired by El Salvador’s authoritarian President Nayib Bukele.