Ecuador

The streets of major Ecuadorian cities are full of soldiers with orders to arrest or kill members of the organized crimes gangs who have taken over many of Ecuador’s prisons, television stations, and universities.

The criminal gangs are mostly affiliated with Mexican drug cartels active in the country. 

Ecuador’s prisons have long been hotbeds of corruption, with imprisoned gang leaders effectively running them in exchange for bribing prison officials.

This corruption includes the sale of beds and food for a payment of between $1000 and $1500 per month by prisoners to gang leaders who also run their drug empires from prison with the connivance of prison authorities. 

When I served as consular officer for the Canadian government for Latin America, we always recommended to families of imprisoned Canadians to transfer such amounts monthly to their imprisoned family members so that they could avoid sleeping on concrete floors and starving. There was no alternative given the institutionalized corruption in most Latin American prisons.

Newly inaugurated President Daniel Noboa decided not to give into the blackmail of these crime lords and declared Marshall law instead. 

Many observers unfamiliar with the realities of Latin America are asking why these crime syndicates wield so much power, and why most governments seem to cower before their power.

Lee: Conflicto en Ecuador: Conoce lo más relevante

The late Colombian drug czar Pablo Escobar summed it up nicely when he would offer officials “plata” (money) or “plombo” (lead –a bullet) in the 1980’s. This remains the reality today, and these levels of corruption continue to paralyze the justice systems in many Latin America countries.

The only two exceptions to this modus vivendi appear to be El Salvador and now Ecuador.

President Nayeb Bukele of El Salvador has imprisoned tens of thousands of criminals during the past year and has declared war on the gangs known as “maras” who plagued the country for decades. Salvadorans can now walk the streets of their cities safely – a major change in just a few months. The result is that Bukele’s popularity is immense and, if he runs in the next election, should be reelected with an overwhelming majority.

Now President Noboa seems to have taken a page out of Bukele’s playbook and appears to share the Salvadoran President’s concern for results that provide citizens with security and freedom from crime rather than to satisfy international human rights organizations whose policies in cases such as these oftentimes appear more concerned with the rights of criminals than those of citizens.

Latin American leaders often prefer soaring rhetoric to results based performance. 

This applies to most Latin American countries, whose politicians and judicial officials prefer to receive wages for their collaboration rather than risk death by fighting the cartels and providing security for their citizens. 

Latin America has the highest per capita rate of armored car ownership in the world, and the wealthy tend to be followed by ubiquitous bodyguards and live in heavily fortified compounds.

It remains to be seen if President Noboa can reverse this trend.

Are his military and police part of the problem or part of the solution?

Can he purge the judiciary of corrupt elements and guarantee the rule of law in the face of the dangers that this holds for many Ecuadorians?

The next few months will be crucial in assessing whether he can succeed in the way that President Bukele did in cleaning up the streets and ridding the country of powerful criminal cartels.

He will also have to resist the pressures brought on by international human rights organizations while he reassures the population that the measures are necessary by showing results to maintain their support and establish a solid base for governance.

One hopes that Ecuadorians themselves will have the fortitude to support Noboa’s efforts and reclaim their security and their country from these powerful criminal gangs. 

If not, Ecuador, like most of Latin America, will be doomed to live with spiraling criminal violence and weak and ineffectual governments.

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Keep reading: Reflections

Edition: Estefanía Cardeña