2023-09-01 01:01:55
Two car bombs that exploded in a commercial and financial area from the north of Quito and another two in the south of Ecuador once again exposed the seriousness of the violence that corners the Andean nation, which suffered the assassination of a presidential candidate a few days before the recent general elections.
The attacks did not leave victims or injuries. But the shadow of the growing presence of the drug cartels hangs over these terrorist episodes that have a classic mark of the behavior of these mafias in the style of those of Colombia or Mexico.
The strongest explosion occurred early Thursday morning outside one of the offices of the National Service for Attention to Persons Deprived of Liberty located in front of a university. Hours before, another vehicle had exploded in a nearby area where the same prison system control institution previously operated, the police reported. That office confirmed that two other vehicles exploded around midnight on Wednesday in the province of El Oro, on the border with Peru.
The first in the small town of Casacay, 370 km southwest of Quito, and the other in the area known as Bella India, also without leaving victims. Domestic gas tanks were used in both.
These facts are considered warnings by the cartels, particularly those in Quito. They would be related to the transfers of gang leaders of the prisons where they have their barracks and carry out the logistics of their operations. The police anti-drug investigation director, Pablo Ramírez, confirmed that several of these individuals moved in the hours before the attacks.
Around the case, six people of Ecuadorian and Colombian nationality who had a history of extortion, robbery and murder were apprehended. Three of them had been arrested 15 days ago but were released by justice. Ecuador is experiencing an increase in violence in line with with the escalation of drug trafficking activity with the presence of two large domestic gangs that fight for control of the country and are linked to the largest drug cartels in Mexico.
Security Secretary Wagner Bravo told a radio station that the escalation of attacks is a reaction to the actions of the State to control the prisons and the transfer of six prisoners who are considered “involved in the murder of the former candidate” President Fernando Villavicencio occurred on August 9. A fact that shocked the country.
explosions
Bravo did not give more details about the mobilization of these inmates, but revealed that another act of intimidation against the State took place since Wednesday with the kidnapping of a group of about 30 policemen and custodians in a prison in the south of the country.
Among the remains of the explosions in Quito as well as those in El Oro, gas cylinders for domestic use, fuel, slow fuses and wads of dynamite were found, Ramírez said.
Ecuadorians are besieged by the violence that the authorities attribute to clashes between gangs that routes and territories are disputed for the sale and distribution of drugs. Ecuador is the world’s largest exporter of cocaine, a drug that comes from Peru and Colombia.
The remains of a car, which authorities say was loaded with two gas tanks and then exploded when the suspects set it on fire. AFP photo
Hence, the most serious acts of violence have occurred mainly in coastal cities such as Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, whose ports are used for the transfer of drugs to the United States and Europe. A kilo of cocaine in that region costs $2,000. but placed on the other side of the Atlantic it climbs to 30 thousand dollars. About 700 tons per year are trafficked from Ecuador, according to specialists.
The prison system has lost control of large prisons in recent years, which have been the scene of violent riots that have left dozens dead, and has opted to transfer inmates to reduce conflicts between gangs. At least 420 inmates have died since 2021.
Authorities attribute the increase in this mafia violence to a power vacuum caused by the 2020 murder of Jorge Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL”, leader of the local gang Los Choneros linked to one of the Mexican drug cartels. Its members carry out contract killings, extortion operations, kidnappings, move and sell drugs, and govern prisons. They also hang enemies of the organization from bridges.
Villavicencio, the slain candidate, who had a notoriously tough stance against organized crime and corruption, was gunned down at the end of a packed political rally in northern Quito despite having a security group that included police and bodyguards. He had accused Los Choneros and one of his leaders, Adolfo Macías, whom he denounced as an ally of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, of threatening him and his campaign team days before the murder.
The mobster had warned him that stop naming him in his campaign as an example of the danger gangsters in the country. The politician ignored him.
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