At least 43 prisoners died this Monday (9) in a new clash between factions in a prison in Ecuador, about 80 km from the capital, Quito. Just over a month ago, a similar conflict left 20 dead in another prison in the country.
According to Interior Minister Patricio Carrillo, Monday’s riot began at dawn, when members of the gang known as Los Lobos clashed with others from the R7 faction. There are still no details on how the two groups met inside the prison or how the murders took place.
Upon noticing the unrest in the penitentiary, the police acted first in the common pavilions and then carried out operational actions to control the maximum security area. According to Carrillo, 40 detainees managed to escape, but were recaptured by security forces.
Wounded, many of them from beatings, were transferred in vans and ambulances to receive medical attention. Relatives of the prisoners swarmed around the prison looking for news, according to the AFP news agency.
In the afternoon, with the situation more controlled, the authorities plan to carry out an inspection of the building in search of weapons. The leaders of the gangs involved are expected to be transferred to a prison in the southwestern coastal province of Guayas — a penitentiary that has also recorded recent massacres; a riot in September left at least 116 dead.
Clashes in prisons have become frequent in Ecuador, which the government attributes to fighting gangs linked to drug trafficking. Since the beginning of 2021, 350 detainees have been murdered, according to AFP.
Outside the prisons, the climate is also one of insecurity: in the first four months of the year, 1,255 violent deaths were recorded in the country. In the entire year of 2021, there were about 2,600.
At the end of last month, President Guillermo Lasso again declared a state of emergency in the country, citing precisely the violence driven by drug trafficking. With the measure, the provinces of Guayas, Manabà and Esmeraldas will have greater policing and a 60-day curfew.
Lasso said 4,000 police officers and another 5,000 armed forces would be distributed among the three provinces to “enforce peace and order”.
Lasso also declared a state of emergency across the country last October. At the time, the Ecuadorian, a former banker involved in the Pandora Papers case, even threatened to enact the mechanism known as “cross-death”, which allows the president to dissolve the Constitutional Assembly.
With it, within seven days of the publication of the decree, the National Electoral Council must call elections for all positions in the Legislature and for the Presidency. Until then, Lasso would rule by decree.
