What was the legalization of gangs in Ecuador during the Correa government (and how the violence then compares to today)

As violence in Ecuador increased in the 2000s and killings worsened, Rafael Correa’s government confronted street gangs with unprecedented policies.

Instead of an open war on crime, he negotiated with prominent gangs, legalized them and supported volunteer gang members to train and work.

The Latin Kings, today declared a ‘terrorist organization’ by President Daniel Noboa together with twenty other armed groups, were given the category ‘urban youth group’; many joined political movements such as the Correísta Alianza País and even a former Latin king, Ronny Aleaga became a national MP.

After the measure was applied, the number of murders decreased. This is stated by the World Bank Ecuador went from 18 to 6 murders per 100,000 inhabitants from 2008 to 2018.

Now, six years later, Ecuador is experiencing an “internal armed conflict,” criminal groups have grown stronger until they invade institutions and the murder rate per 100,000 people has exceeded quarantine levels according to data from the Ecuadorian Observatory for Organized Crime.

Recently, critical voices about Correism have linked this crisis as a possible consequence of the former president’s policies.

During an interview with Radio Rivadavia in Argentina, the current Minister of Government said, Monica Palenciasaid Correa’s peace treaties were a ‘surrender of the land’.

Last August, amid the commotion over the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, Otto Sonnenholzner, former vice president during Lenín Moreno’s government, said the situation was “the result of those who said the gangs needed to be pacified.”

Correa, who recently supported Noboa’s declaration of an internal armed conflict against organized crime, defended himself against criticism.

He told Minister Palencia that she “didn’t seem to know where she stood” and Sonnenholzner responded that comparing the gangs of the 2000s to “the criminal organizations connected to the drug trade today shows complete ignorance or enormous evil was faithful.”

The former president has been on social networks for several days respond to similar allegations.

Analysts polled by BBC Mundo agree that the gangs Correa faced were different from the gangs terrorizing the country today.

What Ecuadorian gangs looked like in the 2000s

“It’s difficult to compare the street gangs of that era to the organized crime groups sweeping into the state today,” David Brotherton, an expert on Latino gangs at the Municipal University of New York, told BBC Mundo.

According to Brotherton, Ecuadorian street gangs emerged in the 1990s in the country’s two main cities, Quito and Guayaquil.

In 2008, the national police discovered that 400 of these groups existed in the province of Guayas alone.

Of particular importance were the Latin kings and queensto whom almost a third of the 18 murders per 100,000 inhabitants in 2008 were attributed.

Until then, Brotherton and Ecuadorian sociologist Gaitán Villavicencio agree, Ecuador’s anti-gang policy focused on persecution and strong-arming.

The gangs were actually fueled by marginalized and unemployed youth. who found in crime not only a source of income, but also a ‘way of cultural expression’.

In addition to the Latin Kings, bands such as Los Ñetas and the Masters of the Street also had national fame.

An unprecedented plan… and controversial

Correa took a different approach than had previously been usual in combating crime in Latin America“with a focus on policing as a reactive solution to the increase in crimes on the continent,” says Brotherton.

“He looked for mechanisms to legalize, institutionalize and recognize the existence of these gangs so that they could have a socio-educational solution,” Villavicencio explained to BBC Mundo.

“A kind of new social contract was established in which the state committed itself to citizens through increased resources in the areas of welfare, health care and education, and in return expected citizens to fulfill their obligations and responsibilities by community cohesion and the relationship between State and civil society,” Brotherton analyzed in a study on the effects of this program.

The results of this unprecedented plan were flattered ten years later by organizations like the Inter-American Development Bank and reflected in the “world’s most sustainable decline in homicide rates,” Brotherton studied.

When BBC Mundo visited Ecuador in 2018 to learn about the fruits of this initiative, a Latin Kings gangster, Manuel Zúñiga, acknowledged that initially there were divisions among the gang members, but little by little more and more members became legal . including rivals the Latin Kings.

Although the number of murders decreasedother key safety indicators were of concern.

The legalization of gangs did not eradicate violence between youth groups, and Brotherton recalls:under the mandate of Correa was unable to alleviate or prevent the worsening of the prison crisiswhose population increased considerably in the last years of his reign.”

As researcher Jorge Núñez of the University of Cuenca in Ecuador noted: Prisons, without meaning to, became a state recruitment center for gangs.

Villavicencio believes that “the political co-optation of gang members has distorted Correa’s policies” and that he also “has not designed a strategy to better treat the gangs that might emerge later.”

The budgetary sustainability of this approach was also questioned It was eventually dismantled with the arrival of Lenín Moreno as president in 2017 and after the harsh cuts demanded by the International Monetary Fund due to the country’s delicate government deficit.

How today’s “terrorist organizations” grew stronger

It is precisely from 2017 that analysts have focused on explaining the deterioration of Ecuadorian security and the strengthening of the gangs that Noboa today classifies as ‘terrorist organizations’.

After the public austerity with Correa’s departure, Villavicencio and Brotherton explain that many young people found their economic support in crime.

Only this time they were no longer feeding street gangs, but powerful associations linked to prominent Mexican and Colombian drug cartels responsible for a highly profitable business, such as drug trafficking.

Ecuador is increasingly playing a leading role in the international narcotics market and is emerging as an important regional center for the storage, processing and distribution of narcotics.

Prisons are the command center of criminal groupsamong which Los Choneros, Los Lobos, Los Lagartos or Los Tiguerones stand out.

They regularly engage in bloody confrontations among themselves for corporate hegemony, but they also fight against the state, institutions and society.

The challenge to the state was prompted by “the penetration of an enormous quantity of weapons from the United States. Los Choneros weren’t that big, but with the arrival of the cartels they became huge,” says Brotherton.

“State austerity and neoliberal policies created a situation where the cartels arrived, adopted excluded youth and now do whatever they want”, adds the researcher.

“Without job creation initiatives, The only lifeline for young people was informality or, in this case, illegality. If you look at the detainees, they are predominantly young people, under the age of 29,” said Villavicencio.

‘Hard hand’ versus ‘soft hand’

Various organizations, including the United Nations, point this out Latin America as the most violent region in the world.

This has been the trend for decades, and during this time Latin American governments have oscillated between “hard” and “soft” policies to combat crime.

Nayib Bukele in El Salvador currently has one of the highest popularity ratings in the region, mainly due to his brutal fight against the gangs who, despite several convictions for human rights violations, The high murder rate that plagued the country decreased.

In a manner reminiscent of Bukele’s strategy, Noboa declared a state of emergency and declared an “internal armed conflict,” allowing the armed forces to act against the gangs as if it were a war.

However, Brotherton considers it difficult to spread the ‘Bukele effect’ in Ecuador.

“El Salvador is much smaller, with only six million inhabitants, compared to Ecuador’s 17 million, which also has a much more complex topographic and border situation. It is practically impossible to repeat Bukele’s strategy here“, said the expert.

Villavicencio also does not believe that the ‘peaceful’ approach that Correa has implemented due to the power that criminal groups have already acquired works at this point.

“It would not be viable unless they put down their arms and submitted to the protection of the state.” (JO)