The government of Ecuador again declared a state of emergency in the city of Guayaquil, where the country’s main port is located, after an explosive attack that killed five people over the weekend.
One of the main measures of the decree is the suspension of the inviolability of the home, allowing the police to inspect the homes of residents. It also outlaws gatherings in the city and neighboring Durán and Samborondone, and gives authorities the power to examine items sent by mail.
“It’s important that we gather a lot of information,” Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo said on a visit to Cristo del Consuelo, the popular neighborhood where the incident took place.
On Sunday (14), two people aboard a motorcycle launched an explosive package, which killed five people – all without criminal records, according to police – and wounded 17, two of whom are in serious condition. In addition, the bombs destroyed walls of nearby houses and damaged four vehicles and a motorcycle. The minister said the artifacts were homemade.
The site dawned blocked by security cordons and patrolled by dozens of agents, who arrived after the decree of state of exception. According to the minister, Guayaquil, with 2.8 million inhabitants, is “the region with the highest number of intentional homicides” in the country, accounting for 32.5% of the cases. This year alone, 861 people were murdered in the city.
Carrillo said that since the imposition of the state of exception, 11 incursions have been made in the city, with the arrest of five people. Explosives, weapons and drugs were also seized, he added, without elaborating.
The attack was classified as a terrorist act by the authorities, who offered $10,000 to anyone who could provide information about it — the case is far from the first with explosives in the country; between January and August, the police reported 145 such cases, of which 72 occurred in the district of Guayaquil.
For Carolina Andrade, security analyst and former undersecretary of Intelligence, the state of exception is a palliative solution. The government of Guillermo Lasso determined the same measure in April in the provinces of Guayas (whose capital is Guayaquil), Esmeraldas and Manabà due to drug trafficking.
According to her, the government has not yet managed to deal with organized crime in a structural way. “When there is no access to state services, drug trafficking is present and takes its place, so it is important to prevent it.”
Billy Navarrete, director of the Permanent Commission for Human Rights, shares this view. He states that “responses to the latest criminal events in the country have been quite anachronistic and are limited to reinforcing police and military control.”
Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s largest cocaine producers, Ecuador has already seized more than 100 tons of the drug in the first half of 2022.
In recent years, the country has seen an increase in the presence of national and foreign organized crime factions, in a crisis exacerbated by the peace agreement between the Colombian state and the FARC (Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia) guerrillas in 2016. Since then, dissidents who refused to disarm sought refuge in countries in the region.
