Opinion • Daniela Game B. • January 10, 2025 • Leer en castellano

On December 8, four Black boys between the ages of 11 and 15 were picked up by the army in the city of Guayaquil, Ecuador. Steven Medina, who was 11, Nehemías Saúl Arboleda, who was 15, and brothers Ismael and Josué Arroyo, were 15 and 14, had just finished playing a game of soccer in the Las Malvinas neighborhood of the coastal city. The boys were walking home when 10 soldiers forced them into to bed of an army truck.

The Ecuadorian government initially denied army involvement in the disappearances, but video evidence forced President Daniel Noboa to acknowledge reality. Protests to demand the four boys be returned alive were organized in Guayaquil and Quito. On December 24, police found four charred bodies showing signs of torture. Just after midnight on the last day of the year, authorities confirmed the bodies were those of the four disappeared youth. 

The boys were buried on January 1 at a massive funeral that drew thousands, and protests continue. To date, 16 soldiers have been criminally charged, at the same time, Ecuador’s Minister of Defense has denied the army’s participation in the enforced disappearances. One year ago, Executive Decrees 110 and 111 formally militarized Ecuador under the rubric of the war on drugs.

The tragic disappearance and killing of Josué, Ismael, Saúl and Steven has transcended Ecuador and woken up society. We’ll keep covering this important story, but for now, we leave you with a short reflection by writer Daniela Game B, a pencil drawing by Diana Enriquez, and powerful images from the funeral by Vicente Gaibor. —Eds.

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We’ll call them by their names

They'll call them collateral damage.

They'll call them “false positives.”

They'll say it was an accident. A mistake made in the heat of war.

They’ll say it’s the price to pay for being brave.

They’ll call them heroes, because they only understand the homeland when it’s dripping blood.

They’ll call them juvenile delinquents.

They’ll call them kids who were up to no good.

They’ll call them careless, and blame their parents for not looking after them.

But you tell me, how do you teach a child to watch out for a soldier, a cop?

How do you tell them, in a heat-filled neighborhood, that they can’t go out to play soccer? That it’s forbidden to go outside and cool off on a summer night?

They’ll call them negritos.

They’ll call them the Black boys who disappeared. They’ll say they feel sad, but when they look at their own skin color, they’ll know no soldier would take their children away.

And many will continue to support this war.

They have always believed that the solution to violence is even more violence.

They’ll call them poor children.

They’ll call them petty thieves.

They’ll say it was confusion.

They’ll say it was a settling of scores.

They’ll say “never again” with blood on their hands.

They’ll call it a sacrifice.

They’ll call them heroes of this war, at the same time international companies that sell us arms via bilateral agreements fill their coffers with our meagre budget.

Perhaps at some point, in a few years, that budget will fund a plaque with the names of the boys. To repair the irreparable.

They’ll call them young people, to avoid calling them children, but they’ll repeat that Human Rights only serve to defend criminals.

While they call them by a thousand names of political misery, while they disdain and stumble in their complicity, we will continue to call them just as their mothers and fathers did: Josué, Ismael, Saul and Steven.

We’ll call them by their names.

We’ll call them children.

We will shout their names, until justice is achieved.

We will follow the example of Pedro, Luz Elena and Fernanda Restrepo Arismendi, who taught us not to forget Santiago and Andrés, with every shout, every banner, every Wednesday in the square.

We’ll call them Josué and Ismael Arroyo, Saúl Arboleda and Steven Medina.

We will call them children so that silence does not push them to oblivion. So that the disappeared that this war produces appear. 

This war will not bring peace. We know it, and they have known it for a long time.

May the truth be known; truth that is not only justice, but also a path towards a state that seems like a utopia, and that is for that very reason, necessary.

We’ll call them to play soccer.

We will shout their names so that silence does not erase Josué, Ismael, Saul and Steven. So that history stops repeating itself, history that cries out: they were taken alive.

We will call them by their names so that one day we will understand the poet Adoum, who, out of honest pain said "...in war, it is always the people who mourn their dead and pay the cost for weapons and destruction.”

We will call them children, we will call them by their names.