Ecuador’s worsening security situation deteriorated further in spectacular fashion this week, with gunmen armed with explosives storming a TV station during a live broadcast. The country has been rocked by blasts, police kidnappings and prison disturbances in a wave of violence authorities are struggling to contain. The immediate trigger was the prison escape of one of Ecuador’s most powerful drug lords but instability has been growing for years. Here’s what we know.
Why is Ecuador so violent?
Ecuador, home to the Galapagos islands and a tourist-friendly dollar economy, was once known as an “island of peace,” nestled between two of the world’s largest cocaine producers, Peru and Colombia.
But the country’s deep ports have made it a key transit point for cocaine making its way to consumers in the United States and Europe. And its dollarized economy also makes it a strategic location for traffickers seeking to launder money. Ecuadorian gangs are working with foreign syndicates including Mexican cartels, Brazilian urban gangs and even Albanian mafia cells, fueling the ongoing conflict.
These rival criminal organizations have been meting out brutal and often public shows of violence in the country’s streets and prisons in their battle to control drug trafficking routes.
The prison system has long been the main theater of violence in Ecuador. Security forces have struggled to confront the gangs inside overcrowded prisons, where inmates often take control of branches of the penitentiaries and run criminal networks from behind bars, according to Ecuadorian authorities.
And security and state forces have been badly unprepared for the rise of criminal groups in the country, lacking proper equipment, training and strategy….
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