Gangs battling for control over port city leaves Ecuador broken Premium

Guayaquil, a port city of Latin American nation Ecuador, struggles with rising crime rates, cartel wars and organised crime.

With slow yet heavy steps, Herlinda walks through the rubble of what used to be her house. Her footsteps reverberate in what was her room, now empty, the windows covered with sheet metal. A nervous gaze scans the bare walls and the tangles of metal that slip between the walls.

The humble two-story building was blown up a year ago in an attack by criminal gangs who fought over the port city of Guayaquil, known as Ecuador’s gateway to the Pacific, located some 400 km south of capital Quito. Five neighbours lost their lives and dozens were seriously injured, including Ms. Herlinda, who lost an eye in the explosion.

“Thank God, I fell at the impact of the explosion, but I was not unconscious. I rushed out, I saw many people destroyed, injured,” recalls the 44-year-old cook, as she struggles to dust off her kitchen, which she is trying, very slowly, to rebuild.

Nothing has been the same since that day. “I liked to work, dance... but now I am seeing the doctor daily. I am constantly dizzy, and my head hurts. My life has totally changed”, she laments, closing the metal door of her home, located in the Cristo del Consuelo neighbourhood, while avoiding the curious glances of her neighbours.

The highly populated place, made up of rows of humble buildings and narrow streets, is one of the areas where criminal gangs fight each other in Ecuador. In recent years, the South American country saw a major jump in violence.

In 2017 Ecuador was one of the safest countries in Latin America, with a rate of 5.4 murders per 1,00,000 inhabitants. Today, it is the fourth most violent country in the region, only surpassed by Venezuela, Honduras and Colombia, after marking 25 murders per 1,00,000 inhabitants. In 2022, it saw 4,603 homicides, almost double the previous year’s numbers, a record. To put the figure in context, India, according to the World Bank, registered three murders per 1,00,000 inhabitants in 2021.

Violence was not limited just to the streets of Guayaquil. Prisons that keep inmates belonging to the feared Mexican drug cartels such as Tijuana and Jalisco Nueva Generación, often witnessed gang wars. More than 400 people have been murdered in Ecuadorian prisons since 2020. The bloodiest of them broke out on September 28, 2021, at the Guayaquil Litoral Penitentiary, when 119 inmates were killed in a single day.