Ecuador, one of the most violent countries in Latin America, extreme security against elections

Ecuador, one of the countries with the highest rates of violence in Latin America, extremely extremely President, Daniel Noboa, to combat organized crime.

And in 2023, the country came to register the highest homicide rate in Latin America with around 47 per 100,000 inhabitants, a figure that in 2024 decreased by 15 %, when it passed to an index of 38 violent deaths. However, despite that reduction, the level of violence remains high and other crimes such as kidnappings and extortion have risen.

In the city of Guayaquil, the most populous in the country and one of the epicenters of criminal violence, police officers and soldiers of the Armed Forces make patrols in the streets and neighborhoods with the highest criminal rates.

There they checked cars, criminal records of the drivers and also climbed to urban transport units to carry out weapons and drugs.

«We carry out this work in random hours so as not to alert the criminal groups either. We are present in all sectors of the city, ”a military man in charge of operations told Efe.

Alert for elections in Ecuador

The patrol that had her command toured several neighborhoods in southern Guayaquil, where murders perpetrated by alleged hitmen that the police attribute to fights between criminal gangs for territory disputes, and arrested several vehicles and people for a review.

The police forces, on the other hand, were located in various parts of the north to also make records in the streets, and entered several sectors with the aim of intercepting possible extortiers or microtraphors.

On one of the tours, the agents arrested a man with several envelopes of the possible ‘H’ drug, a dangerous heroin mixture with cement residues, poison for rats and other substances, widely used in the city for its low cost ( $ 0.50 per dose) and high addiction level.

They uploaded it to the police vehicle and the detainee led them to a neighborhood home where this and other drugs were supposedly marketed.

Ports militarization

Last Tuesday, President Noboa ordered the immediate militarization of the ports as an additional security measure for the celebration of Ecuador’s general elections, so the Armed Forces intensified their operations in the port terminals of Guayaquil.

The largest commercial port in Ecuador has been converted by the mafias of drug trafficking into one of the great cocaine trampolines that arrives in Europe and North America from South America, through international maritime trade, where large amounts of that drug are camouflaged.

In 2024, the police seized 294 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine, of which 277 tons were destined for international traffic and intended to leave from ports such as Guayaquil.

«The mission that we have in the port facilities is to give both internal and external security, preventing containers from being contaminated, that people who are not of the facilities and other operations that help guarantee the safety of these sites, which are which are Strategic infrastructure for the country, ”added the military.

With the aim of trying to enter the drug in the containers, the criminal groups extort the drivers of the vehicles that arrive at the place, the security guards and the terminal officials and even threaten them with death.

Greater supervision of prisons

The military chief also stressed that during these days they will strengthen security in prisons, where more than 500 prisoners have been killed between 2021 and 2024, and where they already carry out operations from the declaration of «internal armed conflict» with the aim of avoiding disputes between bands that end in Matanzas for the control of the centers.

The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, told the country under «internal armed conflict» since the beginning of 2024 to face the violence of criminal gangs, which he passed as «terrorist groups.»

To do this, he ordered a series of states of exception where he put the military to fight criminal organizations, which included the militarization of prisons, so far controlled by these criminal structures such as Choneros, Los Lobos, the Chone Killers or the Tiguerones , among others, some of them allied to Mexican posters such as those of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación.efe