Maersk, the world’s second largest shipping company, has temporarily suspended its services to Puerto Bolívar due to insecurity. The pirates shot one of the tugboats that docked alongside the ships and demanded a $50,000 vaccination per shipment. The cargo in Puerto Bolívar is mainly bananas, which are large and perishable. In addition to the loss of the shipment that was not made, El Oro banana growers will have to bear the additional cost of transporting their bananas to the port of Guayaquil along the country’s main export highway, which is down and at risk from El Dijeta.

This is not an isolated incident nor is the insecurity limited to problems at the port. Recently, Nutreco, the second largest exporter of shrimp, announced the theft of 30 thousand pounds given by thieves to a cooperative, whose spokesmen answered the exporter’s question about how they could prove that the cancer was theirs.

Cordex, which brings together exporters on the Coast, quantifies insecurities this year at 500, caused losses at 5 million dollars, and investments in security services and equipment at 200 million dollars.

The incident in Puerto Bolívar is an indication of the escalation of insecurity. The escalation threatens to spread to the ports of Guayaquil.

Port insecurity is nothing new. In 1990, the celebrated American journalist, John McPhee, boarded the liner Lykes serving the Pacific coast of South America. He was shocked when the ship was boarded by pirates in the port of Guayaquil. The captain of the ship explained to him that it was routine, that all liners were attacked, that they stole the goods that disappeared through the mangroves, plus all the metal they could take, without the police doing anything. A few years later Lykes stopped serving Guayaquil.

McPhee wrote an extensive article on crime in Guayaquil for the influential New Yorker magazine, an article that I translated and published in EL UNIVERSO. He then wrote a book about his voyage, with great publishing success, in which the Gulf of Guayaquil is compared to the Straits of Malacca (Malaysian pirates) and the Gulf of Benin in the Gulf of Guinea.

Delivery to the port in the Gulf is in danger. It is necessary to adopt a comprehensive strategy…

Uncertainty and its price reduce competitiveness. The ports of the Gulf of Guayaquil from Posorje to Bolivar as a whole are the ones that handle the largest volume of exports in the world of bananas and shrimps, the third for cocoa beans, an important part of tuna (Manta leads in this area) and of all ports Ecuador’s copper exports. Insecurity threatens the largest part of the country’s exports, the main source of foreign exchange earnings and employment.

Delivery to the port in the Gulf is in danger. A comprehensive strategy needs to be adopted to bring it under control. It is true that the work is difficult, as long as the courts remain on the thesis that the Constitution establishes that criminals should not be imprisoned, but released in shackles. Should we, like in 2000, reach the bottom for our politicians to react and take radical measures?

I thank everyone who wrote or called me in solidarity with the threats I received by e-mail, addressed to all of us who form an independent opinion and the media in which we express ourselves. (OR)