80 guards without weapons for 8,000 inmates: what is happening in the Litoral Penitentiary, the Ecuadorian prison that adds almost 190 deaths in two massacres

In the Litoral prison, in the north of Guayaquil, time is measured in deaths.

BBC Mundo visited him days after the September 29 massacre and days before the November 12 massacre. Between one day and another, the confrontations in the penitentiary did not stop.

Between both dates, President Guillermo Lasso decreed a prison state of exception (on September 29, after registering almost 120 deaths) and a state of national emergency (October 18), but nothing seems to work against this wave of violence.

The two days add up to almost 190 deaths, among members of criminal gangs who fight for control of the prison, but also common criminals, defendants without a sentence and sentenced whose sentences had ended long ago, as in the case of Jorge Leonardo González.

“He fell in October 2020 and they sentenced him to eight months, on June 17 he served his sentence, but he never left despite the writings we present,” says his widow, Vanesa Ávila, at her home in the Bastion Popular neighborhood of Guayaquil, while holding his photo.

González leaves an 11-year-old boy with her and a 15-year-old girl from a previous relationship. In such a dehumanized scenario, his widow rescues at least one detail:

“Thank God we were able to get him out of the entire morgue, he had no beatings, he had nothing, no torture, he only had a shot in the head, that was all.”

Jonathan Burbano’s family was not so lucky. His body had burns on his arm and face and he was, according to his brother, “black with smoke”.

“He died of a cerebral hemorrhage, as he had neither a perforation nor a cut, it is presumed that it was due to a grenade explosion,” his brother Alex tells BBC Mundo, while walking along the Malecón del Salado.

Both González and Burbano died in the riot of September 29, both were in pavilion 5 of the penitentiary that has put Ecuador in the focus of international news.

“Hell”

When we got to the outskirts of the prison, a woman who distributes little pieces of paper with biblical prayers hands us one with the title “Place of torment” that reads “Did you know that there is a horrible place called hell (Saint John 3: 16-17-18) ”.

Armored army tanks surround the jail and, that day, the military has allowed some women to leave clothes and other objects for their loved ones.

A mother complains that the most that has been promised is to put everything in a warehouse until the conditions are conducive to deliver the things to her son.

Nobody is very willing to talk to journalists until a seller of fried food and fast food, who has been working around the prison for 7 years, tells us how the relatives of the prisoners live every day between massacre and massacre.

“Here in the peni (tenciaría) everyone knows me as El Chino, in addition to selling food I give them taking care of their belongings when they come. Now the visitors are afraid to come here and there are inmates who do not want them to come, but the mothers who have their children in there are the ones who come and who suffer the most out here ”.

The thing that hurts Chino the most are the prisoners who do not have a final sentence and die in confrontations that they do not even understand:

“There are a lot of innocent people here, there are people who are for about 8 or 10 months without a sentence, who are there for pleasure, practically; but when these things begin, the one who is and the one who is not falls ”.

As reported by journalist Karol Noroña in the Ecuadorian media GK, 70% of the prisoners do not have an enforceable sentence “And lives in precarious, unworthy, inhuman conditions.” Overcrowding reaches 52%.

80 vs. 8000

Pablo Arosemena, governor of Guayas, the province where the prison is located, points out that the Ecuadorian government combats overcrowding in three ways: by transferring inmates to other prisons, with pardons and with the deportation of foreign prisoners.

The governor explains to BBC Mundo that the Litoral prison currently has approximately 8,000 inmates divided into 12 pavilions, between 600 and 700 inmates per pavilion.

“How many members of the SNAI (National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Offenders) are controlling that penitentiary? I would say that about 80 people or less, designated to guard 8,000 inmates ”.

Arosemena adds that Prison officers, furthermore, by law, are unarmed, and they must confront gangs that “have managed to camouflage and put weapons in that penitentiary.”

These local criminal gangs – such as the Choneros, the Lobos, and the Tiguerones – dispute territories inside and outside the prison, as well as the favors of Mexican cartels (Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación) and the distribution of narcotics inside and outside of Guayaquil.

Arosemena maintains that the government has acquired a scanner to detect the entry of this weapon into the prison, which could reach Ecuador before the end of the year, but how did these weapons, such as the grenade that would have killed Jonathan, entered the penitentiary until today? Burbano?

For Abraham Correa, a former police officer and prison expert, corruption has contributed to the fact that today “prisons are controlled by inmates.”

“The leaders of these local criminal gangs, who are part of these international drug trafficking organizations, have entered an armament that is better than what the police have; so the corruption of these prisons is another element to take into account ”, he tells BBC Mundo from a private urbanization in Samborondón.

Arosemena responds that the enemy is not within the rule of law: “The enemy is well identified, it is outside, but of course we run the risk that there may be some kind of contamination, so we have to act.”

Condolences and divergences

Through his account on the social network Twitter, President Lasso expressed his most sincere condolences to the families of the prisoners who lost their loved ones, but used the same tweet to say that it is not possible to guarantee the right to life “yes the public force cannot act to protect ”.

This claim is part of a confrontation between the president and the Constitutional Court of Ecuador, after the declaration of the state of emergency. The government had requested two months, while the court limited it to one.

In addition, the state of emergency allowed members of the armed forces to contribute to internal security tasks, together with the police, in the streets of the country.

But when it comes to prisons, the Constitutional Court determined that military action be limited to the outer perimeter of the prisons, including the first filter of entrance to the enclosures.

After the last massacre, the president indicated that “this is a call for attention to the institutions of the Ecuadorian State, especially to the Constitutional Court. We need suitable constitutional tools to protect the population, regain order in prisons and fight the mafias that profit from chaos ”.

The court did not take more than 24 hours to respond: “The Constitutional Court of Ecuador rejects the statements made by the President of the Republic, who has called for attention to this body, thus seeking to evade its own responsibilities.”

Fernando Recalde, commander of the Marine Corps, told BBC Mundo during a military operation in the streets of Guayaquil that the armed forces are subordinate to the government entity where it is ordered:

“In the penitentiary we have control of the external perimeter, as the armed forces have given us this task, I can tell you that on the external perimeter we have not had any signs of people deprived of liberty trying to escape.”

But the Guayaquil assembly member of the Pachakutik movement, Patricia Sánchez, explains that the confrontations respond to another logic that is not flight.

“The penitentiary is the office where they solve what happens outside in the city.”

“They kill us if they don’t come”

The September 29 riot that killed Jorge Leonardo González and Jonathan Burbano was not the first they suffered in 2021. In February 79 people died in different Ecuadorian prisons and on July 22.

“My brother was in the riots in February and July, that’s why he felt that concern and asked my mother to pray for him, because he had a presentiment that at some point they would arrive and kill them all,” recalls Alex Burbano.

On the night of the 29th Jonathan called his mother from jail and told her that he was still alive, but he did not cut the phone. His mother listened to the gunshots and explosions for several minutes until the call died..

“We try to keep my mother from entering the morgue because those sounds that Tuesday were already traumatic. Also, outside the morgue, the guard shouted the name of the deceased as if he were in a market, as if he was selling something, ”says Alex.

On the morning of the 29th, Jorge spoke with Vanesa.

“He called me at 6 in the morning with such insistence that it surprised me, because he always knew how to write 7:30 or 8 in the morning. He asked me why they still hadn’t dispatched it and I told him not to worry, that I had written a letter, that God willing and nothing happens this week it comes out. “

This same anguish was repeated in this last riot when the inmates left messages on the phones of relatives and even some local journalists.

“It was 9:21 p.m. from Friday to November 13, 2021. A voice note came to my cell phone that said: ‘I want you to do me a favor, I want you to send the law, call the military, everything he is a policeman, because today they kill us if they don’t show up, ”wrote Karol Noroña.

But some 68 prisoners died without help arriving. Some of his messages were even broadcast live on social media.

The piece of paper with biblical phrases that was delivered to BBC Mundo in the prison says that “in hell the fire never goes out (Mark 9:48-49)”, but the evangelists were not the only ones who dared to describe this place.

Dante Alighieri, the Florentine writer, imagined in medieval times a door that had a phrase written in black words that could also be applied to the Litoral prison.

“Leave all hope at the entrance.” (I)