Ecuador's reactionary war

[Judi Lynn]

By: Dawn Marie Paley
January 24, 2024

Civil rights annulled. Soldiers in the streets, curfews enforced. Armed men in masks patrol neighborhoods. Packets of marijuana and boxes of money laid out and photographed. US State Department officials in formal dress shake hands with their local counterparts.

Ecuador has recently begun to experience a pattern of violence similar to that of Colombia over the last 25 years and Mexico over the last 15.

Government officials claim that those responsible for the violence in Ecuador are men in criminal gangs, now considered “terrorists,” with nicknames like “Cuyuyuyuy” and “El Ravioli.” In this context, we are told, the military is acting to disrupt organized crime and protect citizens.

Some suggest that a crime boss’s second escape from prison was the straw that broke the camel’s back and that it required an immediate military response. This recalls the so-called escapes of Joaquín “El Chapo” Guzmán. Journalist Anabel Hernández writes that the first time, Guzmán was wheeled out of the front door of the prison in a laundry cart with the cooperation of the guards. In the second instance, he is said to have escaped from a tunnel that the press has never actually seen.

Just as we question official discourse about austerity policies and economic measures that justify extractivism and benefit the one percent, it is important to question the official discourse on violence and, in particular, militarization.

More:
https://newpol.org/ecuadors-reactionary-war/

[Judi Lynn]

1. More worth considering, also in the article:

The content of Executive Decrees 110 and 111, published on January 8 and 9, illustrate how governments create confusion in the context of what has been known as the “War on Drugs” for decades now.

Decree 110 cites a National Police (PN, in its Spanish acronym) report that alleges that 91 percent of the 8,008 homicides committed last year “are attributed to criminal violence, which is mainly related to Threats and Drug Trafficking (both internal and international).” Neither the PN report nor the methodology used to determine which homicides are linked to drug trafficking have been made public.

According to the UN’s Global Study on Homicide 2023, less than five percent of the homicides that took place in Ecuador in 2021 were related to organized crime.

While there is no doubt that Ecuador’s murder rate has risen sharply over the past four years, there is cause to doubt the PN’s move to blame organized crime groups for the increase in deaths. This is especially true when they fail to provide corroborating evidence and in a context of high levels of impunity, particularly in cases of violence perpetrated by security forces.