The arrest in Ecuador of Luis Rolando Osorio Arévalo, alias Mison, accused by Colombian authorities of helping facilitate the expansion of Tren de Aragua in Bogotá, offered a glimpse into a broader transformation taking place across the Andes.
Osorio was arrested in Ecuador following a coordinated operation between the security forces of Ecuador and Colombia and was transferred to Colombian authorities on April 8 at the Rumichaca International Bridge, which connects the two countries. Colombian authorities say he faces charges of homicide, drug trafficking, illegal possession of weapons, and aggravated conspiracy to commit a crime.
Authorities identify Osorio as the leader of Los Maracuchos and accuse him of facilitating the expansion of the Tren de Aragua in Bogotá since 2018, as well as recruiting Venezuelan migrants for criminal activities. He left Colombia in 2024 and remained in hiding in Ecuador until he was located through an Interpol alert.
The case goes beyond the arrest of a single fugitive. Armando Rodríguez Luna, a member of the Mexican consulting firm Nzaya, which specializes in security, law, and international governance, says Ecuador’s security landscape cannot be understood solely as a matter of territorial expansion by drug trafficking groups.
“What is really at the heart of this is a reconfiguration of the criminal organizations operating in this part of the continent,” Rodríguez Luna told Diálogo. That process, he said, primarily involves interactions among Colombian organizations and Venezuelan, Mexican, and Brazilian groups, placing Ecuador at the center of a regional dynamic that extends far beyond its borders.
Fron transit corridor to contested logistics hub
Ecuador’s strategic importance to transnational organized crime stems from a combination of structural factors. The country is located near the world’s main cocaine-producing areas in Colombia and Peru; it has access to the Pacific Ocean, developed port infrastructure, and a dollarized economy that can facilitate money laundering. Together, these conditions have made Ecuador an important hub for networks connecting producers, transporters, and distributors across several countries.
Since 2020, Ecuador has undergone a process of criminal fragmentation. The Ecuadorian Observatory on Organized Crime (OECO) has documented how organizations such as the Sinaloa Cartel and Balkan criminal networks have sought to establish operations in the country, fueling territorial disputes, contract killings, the circulation of long-barreled weapons, money laundering, and corruption schemes involving public officials. The Global Organized Crime Index gave Ecuador a criminality score of 7.48 in 2025, nearly two points above the regional average of 6.13.
Rodríguez Luna identifies the turning point around 2022, when Colombian and Mexican groups increasingly viewed Ecuadorian territory as a strategic route not only for cocaine trafficking, but also for the movement of chemical precursors and other criminal logistics. Disputes are no longer concentrated in coastal provinces. They have also spread to inland cities, where criminal networks seek to consolidate new corridors and support structure.
Ecuador, Rodríguez Luna said, is no longer merely a corridor for illicit flows; it has become contested territory, fueling violence, corruption, and mounting challenges for security forces.
Land, river, and maritime corridors
Ecuador’s geography allows criminal organizations to use multiple routes at the same time. Studies published by researchers at Ecuador’s State University of the Santa Elena Peninsula (UPSE) identify several maritime corridors, including routes originating in Esmeraldas, Manabí, and El Oro that move shipments through the Pacific toward Central America, as well as routes departing from Guayas that connect with broader trafficking networks. Criminal groups have also used waters around the Galápagos as refueling or resupply areas for vessels moving narcotics through the Eastern Pacific.
Those same strategically important waters are also targeted by China’s distant-water fishing fleet, whose documented illegal, unreported, and unregulated (IUU) fishing activities have become another major maritime security challenge for Ecuador. Together, these overlapping threats underscore the need for persistent maritime domain awareness and regional cooperation across the eastern Pacific.
Drug traffickers also exploit Ecuador’s high volume of legitimate exports to conceal cocaine in containers bound for Europe and North America, making the country one of the main departure points for international cocaine shipments. This use of commercial logistics has increased pressure on ports, customs authorities, shipping companies, and security forces responsible for protecting legitimate supply chains.
Transnational criminal organizations have developed structures that distribute logistical functions across multiple jurisdictions. Transportation, storage, cargo protection, financing, and distribution can operate simultaneously in different territories.
Rodríguez Luna describes connections linking Pacific corridors with routes that extend toward the Atlantic. “Brazilians, Mexicans, and Colombians collaborate to diversify these routes,” he said.
The border with Colombia remains a critical area. Dozens of irregular crossings are used for the movement of drugs, weapons, chemical precursors, fuel, and people. The Ecuadorian Armed Forces also maintain surveillance over river routes in the Amazon region amid growing indications of activity linked to narcotrafficking and other illicit economies.
The OECO has warned that local groups participate in these networks as operational links, providing storage, transportation, contract killings and logistical support. According to Rodríguez Luna, Ecuadorian criminal organizations still lack the capacity to control transnational structures on their own. Instead, they depend on alliances with external actors, including the Tren de Aragua and Mexican criminal groups, to sustain corridors and logistical networks.
At the same time, counternarcotics pressure in Colombia has contributed to the displacement of parts of the criminal infrastructure toward Brazil, Ecuador, and Venezuela, redistributing pressures and capabilities across the region.
Regional cooperation against borderless threats
The operation that led to the capture of alias Mison demonstrated that coordination between Ecuador and Colombia produces concrete results. The exchange of information between security agencies made it possible to locate and transfer to Colombian authorities an alleged criminal leader who has evaded justice for months by crossing an international border.
For Rodríguez Luna, this type of operational collaboration is essential to addressing the current nature of transnational threats. “Security is now understood within this new framework — not only in terms of the security of territorial, maritime, and airspace areas or the security of borders, but particularly in terms of the security of logistics chains and value chains,” he said.
That approach has also shaped Ecuador’s security cooperation with the United States. In June, Ecuador and the United States signed the Secure Border (Frontera Segura) Strategy, aimed at strengthening border security through risk analysis, information sharing, operational alerts, inspection mechanisms, and coordinated patrols and controls. Ecuador’s Ministry of Defense said the strategy also contemplates coordination with Colombia, underscoring the regional nature of the threat.
Rodríguez Luna said cooperation with the United States will remain a central component in confronting these networks. Washington’s role in this effort, he said, is “total; absolute. It’s the main one.”
That cooperation includes intelligence sharing, technical assistance, border-security support, and efforts to strengthen maritime and air-domain awareness, all of which are critical as criminal groups diversify routes and seek to exploit legitimate commercial infrastructure.
The case of alias Mison reflects a reality that security forces across the region can no longer ignore: Ecuador has evolved from a transit country into a strategic hub for transnational organized crime, with logistical infrastructure, active corridors, and local structures increasingly integrated into wider criminal networks.
An effective response requires intelligence sharing, joint operations, and an up-to-date understanding of how criminal organizations redistribute functions across jurisdictions. Strengthening regional mechanisms for information exchange and protecting legitimate logistics chains from criminal infiltration will be essential to disrupting networks that exploit institutional gaps and operate across borders.
