Ecuador decreed prison exception after riot left at least 116 dead | New massacre reveals the country’s prison crisis



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A bitter gang clash for control of a prison in Guayaquil has left at least 116 dead, 80 injured and the prison system across the country in a state of exception, as established by President Guillermo Lasso. The massacre, the product of a clash between criminal gangs at the Center for the Deprivation of Liberty No. 1 in Guayaquil, highlights the prison crisis that the country has been going through for at least three years.

Beyond alleged links of these gangs to powerful drug cartels underlying the dismantling, first under the command of Lenin Moreno and now in the continuity of Lasso, policies implemented by the government of Rafael Correa which succeeded in reducing. “If the state does not have the control and administration of prisons, there is definitely no rule of law in Ecuador”, says Jorge Vicente Paladines, professor at the Central University of Ecuador, in dialogue with Page 12.

A large military contingent arrived at Guayaquil Penitentiary on Wednesday, realizing the situation was far from over. Lasso himself confirmed on Wednesday evening that there had been at least 116 dead and 80 injured, and that all the victims were in detention. A few hours earlier, the new director of the Ecuadorian prison system (SNAI), Bolívar Garzón, estimated that there would be more than 100 dead and that with the police, the prison authorities continued “to penetrate into the districts of the conflict and to find more corpses. “

The mutiny, according to the SNAI, has its origins in a fight between gangs for control of the prison, a situation which has been repeated in recent times. “What is happening in Ecuador is that the state does not have control or the prison administration. Prisons are in the hands of criminal organizationss“, warns in this sense Paladins. “There is a systematic massacre. The number of people killed, dismembered, beheaded in prisons is increasing under these components which are clear signs of drug trafficking that the Mexican cartels have learned from the paramilitary groups and the Colombian drug trafficker,” adds the lawyer.

A crisis prolonged in time

The most serious incident to date occurred in February this year with a riot in four prisons at the same time, which left 79 people dead. September 22 During a search of a prison in Guayaquil, police found three firearms, 150 ammunition, a grenade, 12 sticks of dynamite and more than 200 ammunition of different caliber. “The Ecuadorian public prosecutor’s office must investigate whether this military weapon has entered prisons due to the corruption of state officials,” says Paladines in this regard.

The prison crisis in Ecuador has been occurring at least since 2018, when murders started to occur inside prisons and also others linked outside. Mario ramos, director of the Andean Center for Strategic Studies (CENAE), assures this newspaper that before this latest massacre, Ecuador already had a very high per capita death rate in Latin American prisons. “Brazil was in the lead, but it’s a country with a much larger population. Now Ecuador is surely already ahead”Ramos said, considering that so far this year there have already been more than 200 people killed in riots.

The dismantling of the policies of Correísmo

Ecuador has developed, under the Correa government, a public policy that tried to solve pressing problems in prisons. To this end the Ministry of the Interior was created, which was devoted to security issues and gave political direction to the police. The Ministry of Human Rights has also been installed, dedicated to prisons, and a school of prison guides is being created. “All these problems have disappeared in the Moreno government. All these public policies that have been implemented should not be seen as left or right, they were common sense,” said Ramos.

Due to the prison crisis, fueled by overcrowding, corruption, insufficient guards and violence, the army has devoted itself for months to the external control of prisons. Paladines explains that “prisons are militarized and monitored”, but the strong arm strategy has had negative consequences. “More police in prisons, more soldiers in prisons, more violence and this goes hand in hand with military cooperation with the United States in the name of the war on drugs», Explains the criminologist.

Lasso’s promises

Ecuadorian prisons house more than 39,000 inmates, a figure that has tripled in the past three decades. In addition, the overcrowding index has reached 36 percent in recent years and is currently around 30 percent. Paladines notes that around 1,500 people provide penitentiary security in Ecuadorian prisons, while there are no more than 62 social workers. “There are more prisons than social workers in Ecuador”, highlighted. To improve the critical condition of the prison system, President Lasso announced that he would allocate $ 75 million over the next four years.

Beyond what has been promised, which would serve primarily to repair the property damage caused by this year’s riots, Paladines believes it is important that international instruments such as the so-called Minnesota Protocol be applied to investigate the role of the state in the massacres. . “If the State has not respected the duty to protect legal assets, for example the life, security, health of persons deprived of their liberty, then the State must be sanctioned”, explains the lawyer and maintains: “You can’t watch a horror movie every time there is news about prisons in Ecuador”.

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