The worsening of violence since previous years has provoked numerous and conflicting reactions. The media informs us that the crime rate has reached 49 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Between January 2022 and June 2023, 15,671 complaints of extortion and 1,556 of kidnapping have been registered, of which only 59 cases have resulted in a conviction. To this, we must add that the latest estimate from the Strategic Center for Geopolitics (CELAG) put the dirty money that was laundered during 2021 in Ecuador’s financial system at $3.5 billion.
To do? Father Pedro Pierre contributes with interesting reflections:
“We kill each other. This goes for the police and the military as well as for criminal groups. More and more people and groups are rising up to denounce the abuses of ‘the war’ against poor young Ecuadorians: Mothers of young people arrested and mistreated, other groups denounce disrespect for human rights, the bishop of Esmeraldas denounces the death of an imprisoned young man , neighborhood officials acknowledge dozens of missing people, lack of information about places of detention, the death of 13 people on the first day of joint operations by the police and the army. And the rest of the days?
That’s why I ask: Why are so many young people dedicated to supporting drug trafficking, contract killings, robbery, extraction…? when it is known that it is a bet for death, many deaths: deaths of consumers with so much damage to their families, deaths of innocent people due to the spiral of violence, deaths in gangs that are fighting for more territory, deaths now of so many young people in the hands of the police and the army… while the real perpetrators live peacefully in private and exclusive developments or in luxury residences in the United States. “We know well that the war on drugs is little more than a pretext to maintain US imperial dominance, but those who pay the price are the poor, especially the young.” How long will we allow such massacres?
Monsignor Luis Cabrera, archbishop of Guayaquil, recently presented his point of view on the current situation of violence in our country at the closing of the XXVIII Inter-American Congress of Education. “When I talk about this topic, all the hundreds of thousands of children who are in these areas without education, without work, without health come to mind… What are they going to do? Of course, I do not want to justify them in any way, but they are conditions that explain their actions… Violence is a symptom of something deeper… It begins with the lack of education, health, housing and work. This is the breeding ground where organized groups easily make children and young people easy prey to turn them into hitmen and extortionists. They are structural problems that come from decades ago, completely abandoned towns and that breaks our soul. Perhaps the main cause, the most challenging, is poverty.”
“I believe that we must raise awareness with concrete facts, real expressions, in such a way that it does not remain sentimental, a chimera, a distant dream because in the end people will continue to die of hunger and we will do nothing… I invite the authorities to go to the causes of the problems… I urge the State to invest in health, education, housing and work, so that people have the dignified means to live as human beings and do not look for other solutions. We invite state entities and civil society to unite forces, wills and hearts, so that people can recover peace.” The commitment is clear: It is that of state entities and that of civil society.”
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