In the last five years, Ecuador has gone from being a drug transit point to one of the hemisphere’s most important international narcotrafficking hubs, shipping cocaine from Colombia and Peru to North America and Europe, InSight Crime, an organization that studies organized crime in Latin America, indicated in a recent report. Ecuadorian authorities have been relentlessly combating Mexican, Colombian, European, and other transnational criminal organizations (TCOs) that have embedded themselves in the country to commit crimes.
“Ecuador has always been a transit point for drugs, never a producer country. But that grew abruptly in recent years, becoming a strategic territory for the cocaine market value chain,” Daniel Pontón, a professor at the School of Security and Defense of Ecuador’s Institute of Higher National Studies, told Diálogo. “This means that drug trafficking in Ecuador is growing more and more, offering logistics services such as storage, warehousing, transportation, the introduction of narcotics on ships, and a series of mechanisms that criminal organizations use to introduce illegal products into the main consumer markets.”
As numerous TCOs use the region for their illicit activities, they also compete for strategic narcotrafficking routes. The route that connects producer countries Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia, passing through land via Brazil or Venezuela, and by river through Paraguay, Uruguay, and Argentina bound to North Africa, was among those that expanded during 2024, the International and Ibero-American Foundation for Administration and Public Policies of the Spanish government indicated in a report.
Another important route uses Ecuadorian ports, which handle a high volume of cargo. It is estimated that 50 percent of the tonnage of drugs trafficked northward leaves through the country’s busiest port: Guayaquil. When there is high port movement, the cargo is contaminated with narcotics, making it difficult to trace due to the high number of containers, Ecuadorian news site Primicias reported.
Authorities, however, are working full steam ahead to achieve resounding successes. In November 2024, for instance, Spain, with the support of Ecuadorian intelligence, made the largest cocaine seizure in the country’s history. This operation is the second largest intervention in all of Europe — the largest in a single container — and one of the most significant worldwide, with the seizure of 13 tons of cocaine hydrochloride that were hidden in boxes of bananas from Ecuador, a major daily export product of that country, Ecuadorian news site Expreso reported.
Production chain
Colombia continues to be the world’s largest producer of coca, the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime’s (UNODC) November report Coca Cultivation 2023 indicated. “In 2023, crops increased by 10 percent, harvesting a total of 253,000 hectares, to reach a production of 2,664 tons of pure cocaine,” the UNODC reported. This is equivalent to more than 354,342 professional soccer fields. “A third of this drug produced in the Colombian departments near Ecuador is trafficked across those borders, that is, some 390 tons of cocaine each year,” Ecuadorian news site Nexo Digital reported.
“Some 89.5 percent of the coca [harvested] is in the same territories where it has been in the last 10 years. However, the difference between zones of concentration and deconcentration continues to widen,” UNODC reported.
“There is always a significant risk in this situation, since coca is produced on the Colombian side of the border, where there is obviously a high level of vulnerability,” Pontón said. “Organized crime in Ecuador has specialized: Its territory is a kind of ecosystem for exporting drugs, but not for their production. Under that logic, even if Ecuador does not have the conditions to grow crops, we have to look at it very carefully using systematic monitoring, because there is always going to be a risk.”
All-round partner
Organized crime in the region not only engages in drug trafficking, it has also extended to human trafficking, extortion, kidnapping, illegal mining, illegal logging, wildlife trafficking, and smuggling. These activities come with violence, homicides, and forced recruitment.
As the Ecuadorian government sought help in early 2024 from partner nations in its war against organized crime, the United States promptly responded and reiterated its support throughout the year. Of late, in early December, the United States trained more than 60 Ecuadorian law enforcement representatives who specialize in these crimes, with support from the Bureau of International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Affairs of the U.S. Department of State and the Department of Homeland Security, the U.S. Embassy in Ecuador indicated.
As an all-round partner in the region, the United States also recently transferred two vessels to reinforce the Ecuadorian Navy’s anti-drug operations, Ecuadorian newspaper La República reported. Meanwhile, on November 21, U.S. Southern Command (SOUTHCOM) delivered a boat, two pickup trucks, and accessories to support the work of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces in the fight against illicit activities on the country’s northern border, the U.S. Embassy indicated.
