Nueva Prosperina is the district of Zone 8 (which includes Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón) that accumulates the highest number of intentional homicides with 295 between January and November 26.
There are 210 more than those that occurred in the same period of 2021. This includes sectors such as Monte Sinai, Nuevo Guayaquil, Flor de Bastión, Fortín, Paraíso de la Flor and Socio Vivienda.
The representatives of the non-governmental organizations that operate in the area come across the violent events caused by the confrontation between gangs over the control of drug trafficking.
In the middle of northwestern Guayaquil is Socio Vivienda II, a planned settlement attempt with basic services that is one of those with the highest levels of violence, even with inaccessible areas guarded by gangs.
The residents report a point around the field where they take kidnapped people, riots of robberies and there is drug trafficking.
From there arise those who face shots in the middle of the houses and against the Community Police Unit of the sector.
“The issue of the legality of the land has not yet been resolved there and there are many unguaranteed services, such as schools that are not supplied and work in camps where there is no quality that guarantees the permanence of the children, which is why there are many school dropouts” , explains Javier Gutiérrez, general director of the Norwegian Alliance Mission.
Added to this is the overcrowding in small houses where eight or more people live in four-by-four houses, he adds.
“They united families that had never had previous contact with each other, so there was a rush to accelerate the transition of the inhabitants of another area of the city who were in a situation of poverty, taking them to the northwest without being clear about the conditions in which they were living. people will receive the services. This generated tension, like a reverberation because they felt abandoned”.
After the transfers to these social interest houses created for these vulnerable families, what occurred was a change of scenery of micro-trafficking.
The situation worsened from 2014 when the state’s economic crisis began, says Gutiérrez, due to the reduction in oil prices.
Then the gangs found a suitable place to take refuge, he adds. “Those who do field work for the NGOs have had their vehicles withheld, they ask them who they are, but since we do social assistance, they finally allow us to enter and work. They have not charged us for ‘vaccines’ as private contractors and business owners denounced at the time”.
A turning point was the appearance of the drug Hache, made with the residues of other drugs and mixed with harmful components.
As of 2008, this consumption began to be evidenced in the northwestern areas of Guayaquil. “In 2014 and 2015 the consumption and sale of hache was already normal, but micro-trafficking with violence emerged with more force from 2017 and worsened in the pandemic because in this last period controls were relaxed due to the touches of remains and the quarantine ”, explains Gutiérrez.
Shootings generally take place at night, early morning and on weekends. One concern is the violence around educational establishments. There are cases of families that do not send their children to schools and colleges.
The Norwegian Alliance Mission has been working in Guayaquil since 1994. At that time they were concentrated on Trinitaria Island, in the south of the city, but since 2002 they moved their projects to the northwest in what is now Monte Sinaí, El Fortín, La Ladrillera and Partner Housing II.
It was the new area where thousands of people arrived in search of work and better conditions, just after the economic crisis of 1999 and at the beginning of the 21st century.
The entrance to these three sites was made from the Perimetral in a trip that could well last more than an hour from the asphalt of this road, especially in winter when the dirt roads turned to mud. There were no paved driveways.
Gutiérrez tells that it was there when he observed the face of extreme poverty. Children under three years of age with a bulging stomach, an indication of the severe chronic malnutrition they suffered with meals once a day, in some cases.
The houses were made of cane and zinc roofs with holes that let the water in. The mud surface during winter extended to the dirt floors of the houses. There were no basic services. The streets were improvised by splitting the dry forest that covered the area.
Newcomers to the city from other cantons of Guayas and other provinces settled there. The historical form as Guayaquil has grown was repeated. Around a main road whose surrounding land is occupied irregularly.
The land traffickers were the ones who arranged where the streets would go and charged the families that were occupying the land.
“In these territories, the conditions were given for drug trafficking networks to enter and include children, adolescents and young people in their illegal activities given the lack of opportunities. They have two options: study with a life project or be part of a criminal gang in exchange for payment.”
In addition to the absence of the State with deficient public services, family disintegration with vulnerable young members is added after the migratory wave at the beginning of the 21st century. “Health and education cannot be offered with the necessary coverage and quality, as in other areas of the country that do have them, so inequality generates violence.”
Access was the main drawback for non-governmental organizations running their social projects. Insecurity was in the background at the beginning of the 21st century.
“Conditions due to the absolute absence of infrastructure and social services were much more difficult than now. The houses were much more precarious, basically made of cane, some of mixed construction. In winter it was almost impenetrable to get there”, affirms Gutiérrez.
The furthest point from the Perimeter was Mount Sinai, which looked like a hamlet in the middle of the woods from the unpaved road.
José was visiting an uncle who had lived in what is now known as the Balerio Estacio cooperative since 1999. He remembers that the streets were like torrents of water and mud in winter that dragged dogs, people’s belongings and even the inhabitants themselves.
“A tanker distributed the water and there was no garbage collection. People came down with their waste from the hills and left it in the central parterre of Avenida Casuarina, which was not yet paved”, he affirms.
The secondary access roads were only paved in 2006, says Gutiérrez. Although there was better infrastructure as of that year, poverty was still the common factor in homes.
The NGO representative recalls that in 2013 he came across the story of a mother abandoned by her partner with five children who did not go to school and who were chronically malnourished in Mount Sinai. “She worked washing clothes, they lived in a precarious house with a mud floor, rainwater leaked through the roof with holes. To sleep they placed a mattress and a canvas. Domestic violence was seen. Many of these families manage to improve in something, others leave, return to their places of origin where their parents are, there is a lot of mobility”.
A situation of abandonment and lack of opportunities was the prelude to the level of violence that persists today in the most troubled areas of Guayaquil and Durán. (YO)
Source: Eluniverso
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