Thirteen prisoners were killed and at least two wounded at Bellavista prison in the Ecuadorian city of Santo Domingo on Monday, Ecuador’s penitentiary agency said, in the latest incident of prison violence in the country.
The number of victims of the riot, however, could be higher — a final count is yet to be carried out by the attorney general’s office.
In May, in this same prison, located about 80 kilometers west of Quito, the violence left 44 dead and 11 injured, two Venezuelans and one policeman. At the time, 220 prisoners escaped, but almost all of them have been recaptured.
The police and the armed forces are regaining control of the institution, the prison agency SNAI said on its Twitter profile, after classifying the incident as a “dispute”.
The government of President Guillermo Lasso attributes prison violence to fights between gangs over control of territory and drug trafficking routes. Ecuador faces a wave of violence that leaves decapitated bodies hanging from bridges, Mexican cartel-style, after spending many years relatively safe from the violence of its neighbors Colombia and Peru, the world’s two biggest cocaine producers.
In 2020, Ecuador seized 6.5% of the cocaine captured in the world, behind Colombia (41%) and the United States (11%), and above Brazil (6.4%) and Belgium (4.9% ). Last year, the country seized a record 210 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine.
In this scenario, the murder rate has exploded — in 2021, there were 14 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, almost double the previous year. The population of Ecuador is 17.6 million people.
Some 33,900 people are being held in Ecuador’s prisons, 12.5% above maximum capacity, according to official figures. Since February 2021, there have been a dozen massacres in prisons, with around 400 inmates dead.
According to the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights, Ecuador’s penitentiary system is hampered by the abandonment of the State and the absence of a comprehensive policy, in addition to precarious conditions for detainees.
