“We are in God’s good graces”: the torture of business owners who live with “vaccinators” in the northwest of Guayaquil

The sector known as Las Cañas, in Nueva Prosperina, is accessed from Casuarina Avenue, leaving Monte Sinaí towards La Perimetral, where a Community Police Unit (UPC) is the main reference for someone arriving from outside.

The commercial bustle, from morning to night, sets the pace for those who live in this populous sector. There are vendors that sell chicken, meat and vegetables in the middle of the crowd and the vehicular traffic, since the streets are narrow.

“Clinifying serves to sanction, not to prevent. Penalty reform for the crime of extortion or ‘vaccine’ must be accompanied by a comprehensive public policy”

But there are also businesses in residential areas, where more order is observed. In one of the latter, the trace of a problem that has affected Las Cañas for some time is still visible: the criminal violence of extortionists that does not forgive.

Doña Maritza, who had a pharmacy in the lower part of a two-story building, was murdered at 7:00 p.m. on the previous Friday for apparently refusing to pay for the so-called “vaccines,” a form of extortion by which criminal groups they ask for money in exchange for not attacking their potential victims or giving them supposed protection.

During 2022, more than 6,500 cases of extortion were reported in Ecuador. Meanwhile, in 2021, 2,797 complaints were registered at the country level.

The woman is the most recent victim of this problem that is registered in many sectors of the city. On the roll-up door of the premises until the morning of this Wednesday, January 25, two projectile impacts were still visible.

That day in Las Cañas there was a climate of concern. Seeing unfamiliar vehicles and people go by, both homeowners and businesses became concerned. If they were outside they went inside and if they were sitting down they stood up and walked around the area where they were working, as though avoiding someone strange to them from approaching them.

There was an unusual movement. In front of the building where the owner of the pharmacy, her friend, Doña Maritza, as she was known in the neighborhood, was murdered, a van was parked near which several men dressed in civilian clothes were carefully looking at the place.

Two of them, apparently from the same group, were leaving one of the stores there that operates in a high-rise building. And others toured the area near the pharmacy where the murder of the owner of the pharmacy took place on Friday, which was captured in videos that went viral on social networks and that caused the rejection of the citizenry.

Almost whispering among themselves, the neighbors commented that they were police officers. The owner of one of the businesses there mentioned that in the store from which the men in civilian clothes came out, the owners had received threats from the extortionists.

And that is a problem that plagues other commercial establishments in Las Cañas. ”To all the big businesses, and those of us who are small (local) are in the good graces of God. We are begging that they (extortionists) not come, “commented the owner of an establishment who requested that his identity be reserved, because the situation is” hot “.

The man commented that Doña Maritza had already been intimidated last year. He said that in December on two occasions antisocials came to shoot at the door of the premises and that presumably the now-deceased woman would have refused the request from the vaccinators.

On Wednesday, in the two-story building, the pharmacy and other premises on the ground floor were closed, as were the windows on the upper floors. She was a native of Quevedo and lived with her children, of whom nothing is known in the sector.

“It is not known, it is not known if they are there, it is not known, but I left them. These scoundrels think that because they have that house they have money. They have a lot of debt, people are in debt,” said the neighbor.

In front of the pharmacy, located a few blocks from the Most Precious Blood of Our Lord Jesus Christ Catholic Church, a business called El Cincuentazo operated on the ground floor of a one-story building with a terrace, selling clothing, accessories personal items and a variety of merchandise for $0.50.

The owners of that place have also received threats from the ‘vaccinators’ and that is why it has been closed for some time now. “It was stocked because they (owners) lent ten thousand dollars to the bank, they pay a thousand dollars. So it is not that there is abundance (…) they came to shoot them” said a resident of the sector.

For someone to agree to talk with a person from outside Las Cañas is complicated. There is the fear that the ‘bell ringers’ who get confused among the people who come and go will inform the criminal gangs that one of the victims or potential victims of extortion has been talking too much and then there will be reprisals.

This atmosphere is not only lived in the businesses located near Casuarina Avenue, the main one, but also in the businesses that are more distant, whether they are small or large establishments.

“The absence of the Police, that is, if they pass, it is not that we are going to blame the police either, they do pass, but it is like in every neighborhood, friend. They know the routine of the police and act afterwards (antisocial)”, expressed a resident about the problem of the place that has caused many businesses to close and in others life passes in anxiety.

The extortion or request for ‘vaccines’ is a problem that affects other sectors of the city and at all levels. Small merchants, businessmen, educational establishments and even public contractors are part of the list of victims.

Lines to denounce

At the end of last December, the National Police presented the initiative Stop extortion, through the Anti-Kidnapping and Extortion Unit (Unase), in coordination with the Chamber of Industries and Production (CIP), the Association of Beverage Industries Alcoholics of Ecuador (AIBE) and the National Association of Food and Beverage Manufacturers (Anfab).

They shoot the owner of a pharmacy that was apparently extorted by ‘vaccinators’

The people affected can report the cases through two telephone lines: 1800-DELITO (335486) option 1 and 1800-EXTORCIÓN. The identity of the complainants is kept confidential.

Penalty for the crime

Currently, the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code (COIP) penalizes extortion with a custodial sentence of three to seven years and does not contemplate a pecuniary fine. (YO)