Explained: Ecuador’s spiral into madness

Researched by: Nirmal Bhansali & Aarthi Ramnath

Umm, I don’t know much about Ecuador…

To be fair, we’d only heard of the Galapagos Islands:) Ok here are the basic deets:

• It lies at the heart of South America’s Andean civilisations. Ecuador was first ruled by the Incas—and then the Spanish conquistadores.
• For the longest time, it was an agrarian economy—best known for its bananas—until the discovery of oil in the 1960s.
• It produces around half a million barrels a day—which represent 36% of its exports.

Here’s where it’s located on the map:

The anti-Narcos nation: Contrary to popular stereotypes of Latin American nations, Ecuador was not a drug trafficking hub:

Ecuador was better known for its volcanoes, its rich biodiversity and even as a retirement retreat for US senior citizens enjoying the temperate climate and lower cost of living on their pensions.

And it remained an oasis of relative peace—despite being wedged between two of the world’s largest producers of cocaine: Colombia and Peru.

The era of prosperity: Between 2005 and 2015, Ecuador thrived under the rule of the populist leader Rafael Correa. Money from the oil boom lifted millions out of poverty—as Correa poured into education, health care and other welfare policies. But things started to go wrong when Correa was ousted on corruption charges in 2017. Ecuador has been spiralling ever since—heading for rock-bottom over the past week.

Spiral into madness: The transformation of Ecuador over the space of just five years is shocking. The rate of violent deaths in 2017 was five per 100,000 inhabitants. The rate today: 46—making 2023 the most violent year in Ecuador’s history. Just between 2020 and 2022, the murder rate spiked by 245%. By 2023, the gangs were ruling its streets:

[R]ivalries among criminal groups have spilled into the street, producing a horrific and public style of violence clearly meant to induce fear and exert control. Television news stations are regularly filled with stories of beheadings, car bombs, police assassinations, young men hanging from bridges and children gunned down outside their homes or schools.

Ecuador is now on the path to becoming the most violent country in Latin America.

Point to note: The Ecuadorian president today is 35-year-old Daniel Noboa—the youngest leader in its history. The rightwing leader came to power in November—promising a take-no-prisoners approach to drug warfare. His "Phoenix Plan” includes establishing a new intelligence unit, tactical weapons for security forces, new high-security prisons and reinforced security at ports and airports.

And why is this making headlines now?

Because an already bad situation has escalated into total chaos. Here’s what happened over the past week.

The great escape: The country’s most notorious gang leader Adolfo Macias escaped from prison on Sunday. This triggered riots in prisons across the country—and spread to the streets. There were explosions, burning vehicles, looting and gunfire across the country. 

The on-air hold up: Things became so out-of-control that gang members stormed a live television broadcast—threatening hosts on-air—armed with machine guns, rifles and sticks of dynamite. You can get a sense of the insanity below:

State of emergency: Noboa has declared a state of emergency—and designated 21 gangs as “terrorist organisations.” All shops, schools, government offices and buildings have been shut down—and the military has taken control of the streets:

But, but, but: The drug cartels show no signs of backing down. They have kidnapped a number of police officers—and released a video with one of the hostages reading out their response: "You declared war, you will get war. You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war."

And Ecuador got here in just five years?

Yes. It is a cautionary tale of unintended consequences—bad policy decision making.

Making peace with FARC: In 2016, the Colombian government inked a peace treaty with the guerilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia—aka FARC. When the group dispersed, so did its control of the drug trade:

The FARC had long maintained a de facto monopoly on lucrative cocaine trafficking routes from southern Colombia to Ecuador’s Pacific ports, where it tended to keep violence to a minimum. The group’s demobilisation opened up a power vacuum, even as Colombian coca production reached an all-time high.

That vacuum was filled by far more violent foreign cartels—who moved into Ecuador to control the supply lines:

International organised crime saw a lucrative opportunity to expand operations. Today, Mexico’s most powerful cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación, are on-the-ground financiers, along with a group from the Balkans that the police call the Albanian mafia. Local prison and street crime groups with names like Los Choneros and Los Tiguerones work with the international groups, coordinating storage, transport and other activities, according to the police.

They took advantage of a country that was lapsing into complacency—paying little attention to the dangerous newcomers taking over its prisons and streets.

Kicking out the Americans: Correa also was fiercely opposed to American presence in Ecuador. He shut down a military base—and stopped cooperating with its drug agencies: “As a result, Ecuador’s maritime exclusive economic zone—the fifth-largest in South America, covering over 1 million square kilometers of ocean—was left effectively free of surveillance.”

Ecuador’s ports soon became magnets for the drug trade:

It is little secret what draws criminal groups to this area: the country’s Pacific Ocean ports—especially that of Guayaquil, the country’s most populous city—have become a primary route for exporting Latin American cocaine to Europe and the United States. For drug-trafficking groups, sending contraband within shipping containers is efficient, requires few intermediaries, and often evades detection.

Data point to note: In 2022, officials in Belgium seized an astounding 110 tons of cocaine—with an estimated street value of at least $5.3 billion, was seized in Antwerp—off ships from Ecuador.

Costs of complacency: After Correa’s exit in 2017, law and order did not rank high on the list of priorities for his successor:

Lenín Moreno, prioritized paying off the country’s foreign debt and imposed austerity measures and budget cuts that further weakened the nation’s security apparatus. He eliminated government agencies, including the justice ministry, and slashed spending on policing and prisons, sectors seen as “expendable” in a country that had long been peaceful.

As a result, prisons became hotbeds of gang activity. As many as one-fourth of the country’s 36 prisons are now controlled by drug cartels.

Eye-opening point to note: Macias’ escape from prison was triggered by Noboa’s plan to dismantle his cushy prison life. He was running his empire from the comfort of his cell equipped—as Noboa pointed out—power outlets and routers: “You can see on YouTube that Fito’s cell has four outlets, more outlets than in a hotel room.” 

Macias was doing so well that he even released a music video from prison:

Mariachi Bravo’s “El Corrido del León” — “The Lion’s Ballad” — taunts a government that has proved incapable of seizing control of its prisons back from the increasingly powerful gangs. With a high-production-value video recorded in part in a facility that holds Ecuador’s most dangerous convicts, the criminals are sending a clear message about who’s in charge.

You can check it out below: 

The bottomline: Ecuador's drug cartels have already claimed the life of a presidential candidate—Fernando Villavicencio—who was assassinated in broad daylight last year. It is unlikely that they will be easily cowed by Noboa—not while Ecuador remains a cocaine cash cow:

The outlook for Ecuador isn’t promising. Global demand for cocaine continues to increase and production in Colombia is at a record high. The UN estimates that one-third of Colombia’s illicit coca fields are located within 10km of its frontier with Ecuador. This can only mean that Ecuador’s role in the drug supply chains continues to grow in importance.

Reading list

BBC News has the most details on the violence in the past week. New York Times and The Conversation map Ecuador’s spiral into violence in the last five years. Council on Foreign Relations breaks down all the mistakes that paved the road to hell. Washington Post profiles drug lord and prison escapee Adolfo Macias. Economist (login required) explains the increase in gang violence across Latin America.