In Ecuador, the guns are aimed at the poor

Detail of a military weapon displaying the national coat of arms of Ecuador six days after the declaration of the "internal armed conflict", in Guayaquil on January 15, 2024. Photo © Vicente Gaibor.

Reportage • Lisbeth Moya González • June 6, 2024 • Leer en castellano

Ismael Bernal Espinoza knows a thing or two about violence, and his knowledge comes from first-hand experience.

Bernal Espinoza is a young Afro-Ecuadorian man from the department of Esmeraldas, on Ecuador’s coast. In his view, the militarization promoted by President Daniel Noboa is not a new attack on the people of Esmeraldas so much as the culmination of policies that various governments have pursued since 2018. That was when "a car bomb exploded at the San Lorenzo police barracks in Esmeraldas," said Bernal Espinoza, injuring 23 people and damaging 37 houses. 

"It was then that national security broke down and a wave of violence began that has only gotten worse," said Bernal Espinoza. The violence in Esmeraldas was an alarm bell for Ecuador. The country had been among the safest nations in Latin America for decades, but things have shifted sharply in recent years. 

Last year, Ecuador had the highest number of violent deaths in Latin America, with 7,878 homicides and a homicide rate of 46.5 per 100,000 inhabitants, according to Corporación Participación Ciudadana. Thus far, this year’s homicide rate has risen to 62.13, a very high ranking according to the collaborative database Numbeo. 

On January 8, after the leader of the Los Choneros gang escaped from prison, violence in Ecuador flashed onto television screens across the globe. Organized criminal groups took over prisons, kidnapped guards and even seized a television station in Guayaquil.

President Daniel Noboa issued Executive Decree 111 the following day. In it, he decreed that the country is in internal armed conflict, identified various crime groups as targets, and declared a 60-day state of national emergency. Media and official discourse about security and the fight against drug trafficking became even more alarmist. The government deployed troops across the country. On March 7 the President extended the state of exception for 30 more days, and on May 22 decreed a state of emergency in Los Ríos, Guayas, Santa Elena, Manabí, El Oro, Sucumbíos, Orellana and the Ponce Enríquez Canton. 

Bernal Espinoza says that criminalization is racialized in Esmeraldas, where the state treats the entire population as criminals. "The military doesn’t ask questions or investigate who is part of [criminal] groups when it carries out raids," he said. "They enter Esmeraldas the same way that organized crime does. Anyone can be a target of state violence." 

State of incarceration

Ecuadorian authorities detained more than 10,000 people in the two months following the passage of Decree 111. The latest figures reported in the press are from February 25. In just two months, the Armed Forces and the National Police claim to have carried out 126,436 operations.

Ecuador’s prisons have also been an early warning system. The impact of violence in prisons has been felt with particular intensity for years. Relatives of imprisoned people indicate that, since 2021, the state has committed acts of violence and violated human rights in prisons, which criminal groups had previously carried out.

Over 90 percent of the 31,321 prisoners surveyed in Ecuador are male, according to the 2022 prison census. The majority are serving sentences for trafficking in illicit substances, followed by robbery and homicide. The same census indicates that nearly one in five have not been sentenced.

As is the case elsewhere, violence in Ecuador has a greater impact on marginalized communities. 

This has to do with race, class and ethnicity, but also gender, since it is women who support and care for their incarcerated relatives, while also caring for those on the outside.

The Mujeres de Frente collective has worked in Quito's prisons for more than 20 years. They understand their efforts as a form of feminist anti-prison research and activism and they have increasingly become national spokespeople on the issue.

"Authorities have detained our family members for being Black and targeted female street venders," said Elizabeth Pino, a member of Mujeres de Frente. "Those of us who have criminal records are afraid to speak out because we know that we can be accused of terrorism."

Pino notes that after declaring the existence of an internal armed conflict, the government criminalized and imprisoned activists. "This government does not respect human rights."

Military personnel overseeing the entry of people during an operation in the "La Chanchera" sector of the Nuevo Horizonte cooperative, in the city of Durán, Ecuador, on February 1, 2024. Photo © Vicente Gaibor.

Social struggle and militarization

Martha Collaguazo, who is also a member of Mujeres de Frente, says that militarization enables the state to crack down on any type of protest, including those led by workers, students and land defenders. There have already been attempts to stigmatize and criminalize Mujeres de Frente, she says, by alleging that their support for incarcerated people actually aids organized crime and is thus an attack on the population.

Another clear example of the impact of the state’s policy of militarization and polarization occurred in Palo Quemado, in the Sigchos Canton in the province of Cotopaxi. There, on March 19, police wounded at least 20 community members when they attacked a demonstration against the La Plata mining project of the Canadian Atico Mining Company. 

The community began protesting the project last year and, on March 20, the Indigenous and Peasant Movement of Cotopaxi announced the activation of the parish’s community guards as a form of resistance.

"[The government] imposed this new regulatory framework and used repression against the community, even violating international treaties," said Fernando Cabascango, a former Pachakutik party congressperson and member of the Kitu Kara nation, referring to Decree 111.

Cabascango says that, for his community, violence is not something that suddenly began early this year. 

"We’ve seen military intervention against Indigenous peoples and nations since Rafael Correa’s presidency and it has been continued by subsequent governments," Cabascango said in an interview with Ojalá. "Repressive forces have historically been used to enter [Indigenous] territories and carry out neoliberal agendas." 

Academic and activist Andrea Aguirre, who also works with Mujeres de Frente, argues that the logics of militarization and securitization at work in Ecuador today have penetrated left organizations. Although leftists debate the excesses of military and racist violence, she says that they still endorse militarization as a way to guarantee security.

The hegemonic discourse on security in Ecuador suggests conflicts will be resolved through militarization and incarceration. Following in Mexico and Colombia’s footsteps, Ecuador’s strategy against organized crime has plunged the country into a dynamic of punitivism in which the poor are criminalized and the state offers no remedy for economic precarity. 

The Indigenous peoples and nations of Ecuador, Afro-Ecuadorians and Mujeres de Frente are just some of the collective voices seeking a way out of the conflict based on the construction of effective public policy and a community-based approach to security and care. All feel the consequences of militarization in the flesh. And they know that today all the guns are aimed at the poor.