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At least 118 dead and around 80 wounded, all prisoners.
This is the balance left this Wednesday by the last clash between rival gangs at the Number 1 Center for the Deprivation of Liberty in Guayaquil, Ecuador, an event that has become the bloodiest in the country’s prison history.
Tuesday morning, a large number of gun detonations and explosions in various pavilions of the enclosure triggered alerts from the authorities.
After a police intervention, the police found shot dead bodies and fingerprints left by hand grenades in the prison blocks.
According to the local press, several victims were mutilated. In five cases there was beheadings. In others, limb cuts.
Thursday morning, the authorities regained “total” control, according to the National Service for Global Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Teenage Delinquents (SNAI).
Henry Coral, national director of the scientific technical direction of the police, assured that the task of identifying the victims is difficult and specified that as of Thursday afternoon only four bodies had been fully identified and handed over to their families.
“We are worried because everyone in the neighborhood is supposed to be dead and we don’t know anything about him yet,” Alexandra Jara, one of dozens of people worried about not having a baby, told BBC Mundo. news of his family held in Guayaquil prison. . . .
It is the third riot to be recorded in an Ecuadorian prison so far in 2021, after those that occurred in February and July, which killed 79 and 22 respectively.
In this article we explain 4 keys that explain what is behind this new massacre.
1. Power struggle
President Guillermo Lasso He described as “regrettable” that the criminal gangs “intend to make prisons a territory of power disputes”, before decreeing a state of national emergency in the prisons.
Later, the prosecution confirmed that the main triggers of the clashes were the struggle “for hold the power“in the penitentiary and the authorities’ intention to transfer the leaders of criminal organizations to other prisons in the country.
Several criminal gangs operate in Ecuadorian prisons and each of them seeks to seize the maximum power of the prisons and is linked to the Mexican narco.
“One is the Los Choneros mega-gang, which is linked to the Sinaloa cartel; others are the Tiguerones, Los Lobos and Los Largartos, which are linked to the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel,” the colonel told BBC Mundo. Mario pazmiño, former director of military intelligence and now security and defense analyst.
“These gangs fought for territorial control. They tried to take Pavilion 5, in which there was already a criminal structure. This sparked a clash. They killed a few at first and then went come the reprisals, “he summed up.
In Pavilion 5 alone, there were more than 60 deaths. But the violence quickly spread to other parts of the No.1 center for deprivation of liberty.
2. Drug trafficking
Los Choneros, Los Lobos, and Los Largartos, among other gangs, aren’t just fighting over the running of the prison.
The specialized portal Insightful crime explains that Ecuadorian criminal groups traditionally operate in a fragmented manner, mainly acting as contractors to foreign criminal organizations.
Ecuador’s Strategic Intelligence Center director Fausto Cobo told Reuters the violence was “linked to other serious issues” when asked if the clashes were linked to drug trafficking.
“This is a problem that goes beyond the issue of prisons, it is a threat against the Ecuadorian state.”
What the Ecuadorian gangs are fighting for is not anything. As also pointed out Insightful crime, in recent years, Ecuador has become the “cocaine highway to the United States and Europe.
According to anti-narcotics sources cited by the portal, following changes in strategy by Colombian drug traffickers, “more than a third of the growing cocaine production in Colombia is currently reaching Ecuador”.
Last year, the national police seized 128.4 tonnes of drugs, the biggest seizure of the past decade, according to data from the Ecuadorian government ministry.
These figures show that drug trafficking in Ecuador is on the increase.
“Groups need to stay in control, especially in the prisons of GuayaquilBecause there is the main road and the starting point: the Gulf of Guayaquil and the port of Guayaquil, ”explains the former intelligence chief Pazmiño.
“More than half of all the cocaine that comes in from Colombia comes from there,” he adds.
Pazmiño recalls that, as the Sinaloa cartel and the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel operate in Guayaquil, each associated gang “must scare” its rival.
“They have to establish territorial control and that’s what they are doing base of fire and blood. This situation is not only seen in prisons, but it is a palpable reflection of what is going on in certain neighborhoods of the city of Guayaquil, in which there is constant fighting for the other problem: micro-trafficking. . ”
3. Corruption
According to the report “The crisis of the penitentiary system in Ecuador”, published in 2006 by the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (FLACS)In Ecuadorian prisons, there is a system of corruption based on a personal relationship between officials and inmates.
Colonel Mario Pazmiño assures us that, 15 years later, not only is this still the case, but that corruption has intensified.
“Fifteen years ago there was not such a large penetration of transnational organized crime in the country. I think this type of action in the prison system has increased due to the presence of mega gangs that directly control the prison system“he says.
According to the expert, the gangs animate a first circle, which includes the National Police, but also circles which involve prison guides and the administrators of these centers “threatened by mega gangs”, he specifies.
Last July, Fausto Cobo, then director of SNAI, the institution that governs all prisons in Ecuador, warned that the country’s prison crisis was the result of the influence and infiltration of drug trafficking. in all state authorities.
One of the forms of corruption in Ecuadorian prisons is through the smuggling of goods.
As the food delivered to the centers is generally of poor quality, many detainees depend on their families for food.
But the income from food is not free.
“Skip a bottle of water can cost around US $ 4,” says Pazmiño.
And the trade is not limited to food products: “(Enter) a cartridge can cost up to US $ 5, a revolver up to US $ 4,000, a rifle can cost over US $ 15,000, and a phone can cost over US $ 500. Either way, everything has a price. ”
4. Overpopulation
Although reduced from previous years, overcrowding continues to hamper the proper management of Ecuadorian prisons.
According to the Standing Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDH), the Ecuadorian penitentiary capacity is 28,500 people.
But in May 2019, when the government declared the first state of emergency, the number of detainees stood at 41,836, an overcrowding of 42%.
Since then, the number has dropped, but not enough.
According to SNAI figures, the few 38,000 prisoners under the current system, they are 33% overcrowded.
And the prisons of Cuenca, Guayaquil and Latacunga concentrate 70% of all these prisoners.
As the specialized site explains Insightful crime, prison overcrowding is a regional phenomenon that leads to human rights issues and lack of control on prison systems.
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