For several months now, drug gangs across Ecuador have executed a series of violent attacks, shaking the country to its core. Ecuador’s homicide rate has soared by 500 percent since a historic low in 2016, and it now stands at 45 murders per 100,000 citizens. Last year, gangs killed an anti-mafia presidential candidate; they have also targeted judges, prosecutors, journalists, and ordinary citizens.
For several months now, drug gangs across Ecuador have executed a series of violent attacks, shaking the country to its core. Ecuador’s homicide rate has soared by 500 percent since a historic low in 2016, and it now stands at 45 murders per 100,000 citizens. Last year, gangs killed an anti-mafia presidential candidate; they have also targeted judges, prosecutors, journalists, and ordinary citizens.
In January, conditions in Ecuador reached a shocking climax when one heavily armed group invaded a live television broadcast to claim primacy over the government, saying, “We are live on the air so that you know not to mess with the mafia!” In response, President Daniel Noboa announced that the country had entered a state of “internal armed conflict” and ordered the armed forces to respond to what he termed the gangs’ declaration of “war.”
The epicenter of violence is Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city and primary port. The coastal metropolis has emerged as the main embarkation point for drug gangs to ship cocaine from Ecuador to North America and Europe. Several of the gangs are aligned with cartels in Mexico and Colombia that harbor long-standing rivalries. For example, Los Lobos and its primary rival, Los Tiguerones, are said to have ties to different Mexican cartels that battle each other. The Ecuadorian gangs have imported their Mexican affiliates’ turf wars. They are killing each other and fighting the government at the same time.
Large-scale narco-violence is new to Ecuador, which has traditionally been an island of relative calm between the two major cocaine-producing countries of Colombia and Peru. Quito’s descent into turmoil is a case study in political ineptitude that began during the 2007 to 2017 presidency of Rafael Correa, a combative leftist and nationalist.
In 2009, Correa terminated anti-narcotics cooperation with the United States by failing to renew a U.S. military base in Ecuador as part of his so-called Citizens’ Revolution. He then made a pact with gangs: If they refrained from violence, he would grant them legal status as “urban youth groups” and “community groups,” Ecuadorian designations for nongovernmental organizations. In a recent interview with an Argentine radio show, Noboa’s interior minister, Mónica Palencia, called Correa’s pacts the “surrender of the country.” She blamed the ongoing chaos in Ecuador on the ex-president.
Correa’s successor (and one-time vice president), Lenín Moreno, who was less ideological and more pragmatic than Correa, tried to restore pre-Correa anti-narcotics policies. But narco-corruption had already begun to infiltrate the Ecuadorian government, as criminal organizations penetrated key ministries and as Moreno ineffectively reorganized police and prosecutorial functions.
Then came the devastation wrought by COVID-19, which precipitated an economic crisis in Ecuador. The country’s economy contracted by nearly 8 percent in 2020 and the poverty rate rose to 33 percent, according to the Congressional Research Service. Criminal organizations were able to consolidate their control of Ecuador’s ports and convert them into hubs for the global transportation of narcotics. And tens of thousands of people were without work or educational opportunities and desperate for money—making them vulnerable to the gang recruitment efforts. By 2021, almost 50,000 Ecuadorians were members of criminal groups, according to the Financial Times. In a country of fewer than 18 million people, this is an astounding number.
In 2021 presidential elections, Ecuadorian voters rejected a further Correa acolyte and instead elected Guillermo Lasso, a conservative banker from Guayaquil. But the ongoing violence was among an array of issues that ultimately drove Lasso from office and forced him to call a snap election in 2023. That’s when voters chose Noboa, a U.S.-educated businessman who was only 35 years old.
Now, Noboa has pledged to “neutralize” Ecuador’s gangs. Many observers have interpreted Noboa’s promise as a sign he might emulate the iron-fisted security policies implemented by President Nayib Bukele in El Salvador. Those have included mass incarceration, the suspension of due process, and the militarization of civil security. The Salvadoran government says homicide numbers fell by nearly 70 percent in 2023, lending El Salvador the lowest homicide rate in the Americas aside from Canada.
However, what worked in El Salvador may not work in other countries. That is in no small part because—as the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS) has found—Bukele’s “mano dura” approach required the Salvadoran government to institute an extended state of emergency that included the suspension of due process and led to a growing number of human rights complaints. CSIS asserts that, in many cases, Bukele also negotiated pacts with gangs to keep homicide numbers low while turning a blind eye to these groups’ more minor abuses. (Bukele’s government denies making such pacts.)
At present, Noboa enjoys an 80 percent approval rating as well as full support in the National Assembly on security policies; even Correísta lawmakers backed Noboa’s decision to grant the military powers to bolster the police on Ecuador’s streets during the state of emergency. But this support may not last. Noboa faces immense pressure to reduce violence—and quickly. His electoral platform included a program he called the “Phoenix Plan” to help Ecuador rise from the ashes of violence. Among other measures, Noboa hopes to amend Ecuador’s constitution to legalize military deployment against “transnational criminal organizations.” Ecuadorians will vote on five possible constitutional changes in an April 21 referendum.
Noboa has requested significant U.S. support for these efforts—reportedly as much as $200 million in security assistance. The Biden administration’s response has been tepid at best. The White House initially agreed to a weapons swap with Ecuador, whereby Quito would send Washington Soviet-era armaments that could then be forwarded to Ukraine. In exchange, the United States would give Noboa the small arms his troops need for their anti-gang fight. But then Russia threatened to ban imports of Ecuadorian bananas and flowers—a significant blow to Ecuador’s economy—and Noboa called off the exchange.
With a dysfunctional U.S. Congress, the Biden administration does not have the spending authority to do much more for Ecuador. In February, a White House spokesperson announced a modest list of deliverables for the country. More significantly, the U.S. government is supporting Ecuador’s request for support from the International Monetary Fund. (The United States is the IMF’s largest shareholder.)
Based on my experience as U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, I am sanguine about Noboa’s prospects for success. My rationale is based on the differences between El Salvador and Ecuador. In El Salvador, criminal groups appeared to retreat when faced with a full-scale assault by the government. But Ecuador’s gangs are accustomed to challenging an ineffective government. They are also well-armed and flush with cash.
But what Ecuador’s gangs do not have is popular support. These criminal groups have alienated the country’s population, while the president enjoys very high approval ratings. Ecuadorians are overwhelmingly in opposition to the chaos of rule by drug gangs. Gangs may soon find that they are battling not a weak government, but a united society.
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