The Cocaine Trail

At the beginning of January 2024, criminal organizations in Ecuador began an all-out civil war. During the occupation of an Ecuadorian television station — as well as in several prisons — hostages were taken, shootings erupted, and car bombs were set off. Since then, the country has been in a state of shock.

President Daniel Noboa immediately declared war on these armed gangs and deployed the military onto the streets. His heavy-handed approach and “war against drug traffickers” has garnered him a lot of popular support. However, the security he promises has yet to materialize, and most of the country is still paralyzed with fear.

Between Manta in the north and the large harbour city Guayaquil in the south, Ecuadorian gangs have been fighting intense battles for control of the streets and neighbourhoods. In the border city of Durán, for example, the Chone Killers, Latin Kings, and Los Lobos are at war with each other, and despite massive military intervention, some 200 people have been killed by gang violence since the beginning of the year in this city alone.

Nevertheless, President Noboa recently announced that his government had “brought peace back to Ecuadorians”, and praised his own successes, in particular the tens of thousands of arrests carried out and falling homicide rates. However, many consider these figures implausible, as the reality on the ground tells quite a different story.

More Military Power

The government is now getting tangled up in a web of its own contradictions. On the one hand, it has to demonstrate success in the war against drug trafficking, while on the other it needs to justify its continued deployment of the military to the Constitutional Court. In May, Noboa asserted that criminal gangs had retreated to the coastal provinces because of his state military offensive, and then proceeded to declare martial law in these areas, allowing the military to search homes without a warrant.

This kind of heavy-handed approach also makes it easier to label all criminals as “terrorists”. Law Professor Luis Córdoba opposes the respective decree, which succinctly states: “Non-governmental warring parties, who hide among the civilian population and attack the state, must be neutralized.” Córdoba criticizes this, saying: “Since the enemies disguise themselves as civilians, the answer is ... to go from house to house in order to find the criminals hiding among ordinary citizens.”

These drug gangs, comprising an estimated 50,000 people in Ecuador, are part of an international network. They work for transnational criminal entities such as the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación drug cartels, but also for European mafia organizations.

There is evidence that the Ecuadorian military — until recently the institution with the highest level of public trust — is becoming increasingly corrupt.

Ecuador now threatens to follow the same mistaken path in the war against drug-related violence as Mexico and Colombia, where deploying soldiers against drug gangs led to a staggering increase in violence. Mexico in particular has been increasingly militarizing its fight against drug traffickers since 2006, during which time 116,000 people have disappeared and 460,000 have been killed.

As in Mexico, the Ecuadorian military is operating under a special legal status. According to Decree 206 passed in March 2024, all military contracts will be kept confidential for a period of five years. This was a demand made by the US government, which in return now delivers equipment, training, and spyware to the Ecuadorian military. Herein lies another parallel with Mexico, where the US military provided the spyware Pegasus, which was subsequently also used against civilians and government opponents.

In Mexico, the army itself has long been a part of the drug business. Now there is evidence that the Ecuadorian military — until recently the institution with the highest level of public trust — is also becoming increasingly corrupt.

An Iron Fist

One feature of the militarized war on drugs is that activists are also frequently attacked. This affects líderes sociales (social leaders), or individuals who campaign for environmental, human, and labour rights. This has also been the case in Colombia, where the state left drug traffickers in peace for decades in exchange for doing their dirty work, i.e. murdering undesirable members of the opposition. Large international companies have also often been involved. Only in July of this year, corporate banana producer Chiquita — a financer of Colombian paramilitary groups — was ordered to pay 38 million US dollars in compensation to the families of murdered workers in Colombia.

Meanwhile in Ecuador, there have been mafia death threats against trade unionists and human rights defenders as well. There, banana exporters have always made a practice of threatening their own plantation workers, and have even hired gangs of thugs to help do so. Now organized crime gangs, in close cooperation with the police in plantation areas, have taken over this “service”.

The current government of Ecuador, only in power since November 2023, is also using the war on drugs to violently advance the interests of transnational corporations, and companies owned by the presidential family are directly involved with some of these corporations — the Noboas are, after all, the richest family in the country. Shortly after the president signed contracts with Canadian mining companies in March, the military brought charges of “terrorism” against two rural communities that fought back against their plans to mine silver, gold, and copper from the region, despite the Ecuadorian courts having blocked this previously. In the end, 20 residents were seriously injured and 70 were charged as “terrorists”.

The bulk of Europe’s cocaine arrives in fruit containers from Ecuador, and with such massive amounts of cocaine landing on the continent’s shores, even drug traffickers occasionally lose track of shipments.

It is therefore no wonder that Mexican and Colombian human rights activists warn that what happened in their countries could also happen in Ecuador. Nevertheless, Ecuadorian organizations have the ability to prepare for what lies ahead by, for example, documenting human rights violations and providing safety shelters and legal advice. However, there is now more at stake, and people are asking whether emancipatory politics is even still possible or whether it will simply be eroded as violence between the army and paramilitary drug gangs escalates further.

All of this is closely tied to rampant poverty in the country, which remains ignored by Noboa’s government and makes it easy for drug cartels to recruit new gang members. In slums and other low-income areas, some parents have already stopped sending their children to school for fear that they will be recruited as drug mules in the playground.

Only a third of the working age population in Ecuador has formal employment — a 40-hour contract with an income of at least 460 dollars per month (the country’s minimum wage) — and unemployed youth and young professionals feel they have no prospects. Given the ubiquitous poverty and violence, surveys show that almost half the population is now considering emigrating.

Europe’s Coke Habit

The dramatic situation in Ecuador is directly linked to Europe — more specifically, Europe’s demand for cocaine. Europe is the largest market for the drug, the consumption of which has tripled on the continent since 2015. One indication of this increase is the sheer amount seized by customs authorities. In the past year, 3,000 tonnes of cocaine were confiscated throughout Europe. Of this, 35 tonnes were found in Germany — seven times more than five years earlier — primarily in the port of Hamburg.

The bulk of Europe’s cocaine arrives in fruit containers from Ecuador, and with such massive amounts of cocaine landing on the continent’s shores, even drug traffickers occasionally lose track of shipments. In spring 2024, warehouse workers in several supermarkets in Berlin and Brandenburg were left rubbing their eyes in disbelief when they found a total of 220 kilos of cocaine in banana crates from Ecuador.

Around the port of Hamburg, a black market has long been developing around cocaine — a network of criminal entrepreneurs, investors, real estate brokers, carriers, drug bunker operators, money launderers, and providers of “services” such as blackmail and contract killing. According to German journalist Benedikt Strunz, in the past 15 months there have been at least 12 shootings linked to organized crime around the port. In short, the international cocaine trade is getting more and more out of control, with violence spreading to Germany and beyond.

Let the Big Ones Go

Is there any alternative to this cycle of violence in the war against drug trafficking? Putting one money launderer in prison can turn more than 200 gang members against the mafia, says Mexican professor Raúl Benítez:

We have to see who ends up in prison. If it’s just more gang members, the problem will never end. You have to attack the points where the drug trade grows. The money has to be laundered through a bank, through loans to the accounts of entrepreneurs, the middle class, and so on. Only when we attack the criminal economy — those who support it, the corrupt — will we be successful.

Given that billions of euro are at stake, an effective anti-drug policy is needed that specifically targets those who profit from this business. However, there is a lack of will to do so. Instead, anti-drug policy mainly goes after the wrong people: the poor.

Cristina Vega is a professor in Ecuador’s capital, Quito, and supports organizations that legally represent those who regularly suffer from hunger and blackmail in prisons, some of whom even end up getting murdered behind bars. “Criminal capitalism has several levels”, says Vega.

At the very bottom are the youth who join gangs. At the very top are those behind the entire Latin American drug trade and the collusion of Mexican drug cartels with Europe and the US. The military and police response of the Ecuadorian government only focuses on the lowest level. The criminal elite, on the other hand, remain untouched. This creates the impression that our security or lack thereof depends on the behaviour of the poorest sectors of the population, not on those in the upper echelons, whom we know to be involved in their own way with the State and its security forces.

If nothing else, this makes the war on the drug mafia a class war waged from above. One thing remains certain, though: continued militarization will not put a stop to the gangs.

This article first appeared in nd.Aktuell in collaboration with the Rosa Luxemburg Foundation. Translated by Guerrilla Media Collective.