Ecuador is in total chaos. After the raid by an armed group in a television studio in the port city of Guayaquil and the taking of hostages, which fortunately ended in a short time with their release and the arrest of the attackers by the police forces, other episodes of violence occurred in the country and resulted in the deaths of at least 10 people and the wounding of three people. Among the victims are two agents of the Ecuadorian national police.
The officers managed to arrest 14 people suspected of having participated in the clashes that broke out when a group of hooded armed men broke into five hospitals and the TC Televisión headquarters. The country’s Prosecutor’s Office reported on
President Daniel Noboa declared that the South American country is in an “internal armed conflict” and ordered the “neutralization” of criminal groups involved in drug trafficking with a decree published today. The police who intervened in the television studio branded the action as “terrorist”. Several armed attacks have been recorded in several areas of Guayaquil, Mayor Aquiles Alvarez announced. Five hospitals in the city were also attacked, according to the newspaper First fruits. Mayor Alvarez launched a call for national unity to address this crisis. In total, 29 buildings were targeted. The head of US diplomacy for Latin America, Brian Nichols, expressed his “extreme concern”: “The United States – he wrote on social media – supports the people of Ecuador . We stand ready to provide assistance to the Ecuadorian government and will remain in close contact with President Daniel Noboa’s team regarding our support.”
There were lootings, robberies and shootings in commercial areas. But it was a day of terror that devastated numerous other cities, including the capital Quito. In the north of the capital, several individuals shot at vehicles passing by, causing the death of five people and injuring a student from a school in the area. Nearby, an armed group broke into a spare parts warehouse and killed three people.
The US State Department said on Tuesday that it was “extremely concerned” about the violence in Ecuador: “I am extremely concerned about the violence and kidnappings today,” the top US diplomat for Latin America, Brian Nichols, wrote in X adding that American officials “will remain in close contact” with Noboa’s team. “We are in close coordination with President Noboa and the Ecuadorian government and stand ready to provide assistance,” a State Department spokesperson added.
The same source confirmed that Joe Biden’s administration is “closely monitoring” reports of “violence, kidnappings and a series of explosions in Ecuador.” “We condemn these brazen attacks,” underlined the US diplomatic spokesperson. Meanwhile, China has announced the suspension, starting today, of public operations in its embassy and all consulates in Ecuador.
For a long time, Ecuador was a peaceful haven, sandwiched between major cocaine exporters, Colombia and Peru. However, recent years have seen an explosion of violence as rival gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels compete for control of the territory.
Who is Fito, the trafficker who holds Ecuador in check
Bearded, pursed lips, fixed gaze and the word “wanted” superimposed: the face of Adolfo Macias, alias Fito, is the best known in Ecuador today. The police forces are hunting the most dangerous man in the country who, after having escaped from prison where he commanded the nation’s main criminal gang, has plunged Ecuador into chaos and violence. Little else is known about the leader of Los Choneros other than his humble past as a taxi driver and the high potential for delinquency which led him to be classified by the government as a “criminal with extremely dangerous characteristics”.
Behind him he left a cell adorned with images that enhance his own figure, weapons, dollars and lions. The police, who activated a plan to capture him, found themselves at war within a few hours with the exponents of a narco-criminal gang that emerged in the 1990s in the coastal province of Manabì (south-west), strategic for trafficking of drugs to the United States and Europe. The government believes that he may have escaped “hours before” the intervention of the police in the regional prison of Guayaquil, where they reign supreme and where, not surprisingly, the violence of the last few hours has been concentrated, including the attack on a TV with the taking hostages of 13 employees.
Fito’s detention was rather sui generis, comparable to that of Pablo Escobar in Colombia in the 1990s: videos are circulating showing celebrations inside the prison with musicians and fireworks displays, but also a ‘narcocorrido’ in his honor on a patio , starring a mariachi and his daughter, who introduces herself as Queen Michelle. In the recording he appears waving, laughing and stroking a fighting cock. Fito exercised “significant internal control of the penitentiary center,” the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) said in a 2022 report. Fito’s rise to the top of the gang, made up of about 8,000 people, was made possible by the deaths, in rapid succession, of his predecessors. He assumed command of the organization in 2020, after the killing of his associates Jorge Luis Zambrano and Junior Roldan.
Fito even earned a law degree in prison, where he was serving a 34-year sentence for weapons possession, drug trafficking, organized crime and murder crimes. His rise to leadership of the gang was accompanied by the fragmentation of the group, which until Zambrano’s death had brought together most of the smaller organizations. According to thensight Crime, the latest changes in Los Choneros’ leadership “triggered infighting within the group and its subgroups.” Gangs like the Tiguerones and Chone Killers broke away and came into conflict with each other. The study center underlines that the Choneros “have progressively lost power in favor of an alliance led by Los Lobos”, whose leader also escaped from a prison in Riobamba.
The choneros, once dedicated to traditional crime with acts of piracy on the high seas, then created links with Colombian and then Mexican drug traffickers. According to the Ecuadorian Observatory on Organized Crime, they currently have links to the Sinaloa cartels, the Gulf Clan (the largest cocaine exporter in the world) and Balkan organizations. On social networks, Los Choneros present themselves as Robin Hood-style benefactors and produce videos praising drug trafficking, threatening journalists and issuing warnings to other gangs.
For his part, Fito is accused of instigating the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was shot dead in August by a Colombian hitman. Fito was not convicted of that crime, but the government of then President Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023) ordered his transfer to a maximum security prison, in a spectacular law enforcement operation that sparked protests from prisoners. But after a while, thanks to a series of legal technicalities, Fito returned to his fiefdom, the regional prison of Guayaquil. Now the photograph of him with the words “wanted” is circulating again throughout Ecuador, along with a long trail of blood.