For the third consecutive year, Ecuador has seized more than 200 tons of drugs, the National Police’s Anti-Drug Investigation Directorate indicated. The amount seized makes it the third country in the hemisphere to seize the most drugs, behind only Colombia and the United States, Ecuadorian daily Primicias reported. In recent years, Ecuador has become a key point for global drug trafficking, as mafias take advantage of its ports and coasts to send hundreds of tons of narcotics to Europe and North America.
According to an Ecuadorian Police report posted on its X account, between January and December 2023, authorities seized 206 tons of narcotics in 8,541 operations, arresting 10,843 people and dismantling 82 criminal organizations.
“Ecuador has gradually transformed from being a drug transit country to one that is a drug distribution and storage center, similar to Bolivia, which brings with it the involvement of transnational organized crime,” Peruvian journalist Pedro Yaranga, an expert in comprehensive security and drug trafficking in South America, told Diálogo on January 8. “The activities of organized crime involve the control of drugs, extortion of businessmen, blackmail among gangs themselves, and other illicit activities.”
“In Ecuador, in the decade from 2000 to 2010, an institutional weakness was created, which allowed an evident expansion of organized crime gangs and where they begin to develop networks that lead to territorial control, with drug trafficking as the great element of financing,” Guillermo Holzmann, international analyst and academic at the University of Valparaíso, Chile, told Diálogo. “At the same time, also due to corruption, the Guayaquil Port began to be used as an exit that allows not only to go to the United States but also to Central America, becoming part of the logistics chain of organized crime, particularly of drug trafficking gangs, but also of arms and human traffickers who basically consolidated themselves.”
The Ecuadorian Police highlighted a slight increase in seizures compared to 2022, when seizures totaled 201 tons of drugs. In 2021 and 2020, Ecuadorian Police seized 210 tons and 128 tons, respectively.
Meanwhile, authorities destroyed 467 tons of narcotics in 2023, drugs seized in different operations this past year and previous years, the National Police, the agency in charge of guarding the illicit substances until their elimination, said via X.
ON August 16, 2023, the U.S. and Ecuador signed a letter of agreement to ensure continued cooperation in their fight against drug trafficking, corruption, and other transnational crimes, by training and equipping law enforcement and judicial sector officials over the next 10 years, among other means, the U.S. Embassy said.
“The U.S. stands with Ecuador in the fight against organized crime and the pursuit of justice,” said U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador Michael Fitzpatrick. “We are committed to our partnership in the security, justice, and rule of law sectors today, tomorrow, and for as long as necessary to mitigate the urgent threats facing our countries […]. We stand united.”
Fitzpatrick’s statement came after Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on August 9 while campaigning for the presidency as he left a political rally in northern Quito. Days before the murder, Villavicencio had denounced a series of threats against him and his team by criminal gangs engaged in drug trafficking.
“The Ecuadorian people expect answers from their new authorities in the Assembly and in the Executive, because the corrupt, the narcos, and those who shield and empower them are fighting to capture other sectors of the state, such as the judicial sector,” Fitzpatrick said at the United Nations Convention against Corruption on December 7. “If the corrupt and the narcos and their political and economic protectors know that they are really not going to make money from their illegal plays, they are not going to take the risks.”
“In order to improve the security situation in Ecuador, institutionalism in general must be strengthened, starting with the prosecutor’s offices, the police, and criminal intelligence; specifically to be able to generate the necessary evidence to disrupt the different gangs,” Holzmann said. “In addition, the judicial system must be strengthened, prisons must be created, and they must be truly segregated, corruption must be adequately penalized, and there must be a road map aimed at reducing corruption in the police and at the same time a capacity to protect state agents.”