Ecuador, the most violent country in Latin America: a person dies almost every hour

Although the insecurity crisis has been dragging on for almost three years, Ecuador It hit rock bottom in 2023 and will end with a violent death rate of more than 40 per 100,000 inhabitants, making it the most violent country in Latin America.

And it is that in Ecuador Almost every hour a person dies in a context of criminal violence, with a volume of 7,497 violent deaths in the year, only until last December 17.

Therefore, it is very likely that Ecuador will end this year with a rate of between 40 and 42 violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, which would place the once peaceful country as the most insecure and violent of all. Latin Americaaccording to security issues specialist Carolina Andrade told Efe.

In fact, in the Nueva Prosperina sector, a neighborhood in the south of Guayaquil, the capital of the coastal province of Guayas, the rate reaches 114 per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest rates on the planet.

The murder at the hands of hitmen last August of the then presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio – when he was leaving a proselytizing rally in Quito – as well as that of Agustín Intriago, mayor of Manta, in July, are two of the cases that have resonated the most and moved the country by the political scope.

But the continuous massacres in prisons have also generated anguish, due to cruel disputes between criminal gangs fighting for control of the prisons or the string of shootings in popular areas where ‘micro-trafficking’ mafias operate or the murder ‘by mistake’ of children who slept in their home in a poor neighborhood of Guayaquil.

And as a culmination, just look at the headlines from the newspaper El Universo on December 30, when it highlighted the “night of terror” that the city of Esmeraldas experienced the day before, the capital of the coastal province of the same name and bordering Colombia, where “incinerated vehicles” appeared and several shootings were heard.

”Hitmen shot a vehicle outside the shopping center in Daule (neighboring city of Guayaquil) or “Prosecutor’s Office (in Quito) protects its facilities due to alerts to possible attacks,” the newspaper reported in other headlines of the day.

The escalation of violence is also due to the context of the economic crisis that the country endured under the Presidency of the conservative Guillermo Lasso, who governed between August 2021 and November 2023, almost half of his term cut short by himself to avoid his censure in the Parliament for a case of alleged corruption.

During his period, alleged mafia links of high police and military authorities were reported, in what was called the case of the ‘narco-generals’ and whose name arose from the United States Embassy in Quito itself.

According to Andrade, drug trafficking is the main trigger for the explosion of insecurity in the country, with its tentacles that not only subject population sectors, but also institutions such as the financial system and the State itself.

It is known that drug trafficking mafias use formal export systems in Ecuador to send drugs to Europe and the United States, the large consumers.

According to experts, 70% of the money generated by drug trafficking is laundered or laundered in the financial system and only 30% is diluted in the informal economy.

A report of United Nations recently revealed that between 30% and 50% of the drugs that arrived in Greece and Turkey this year came from the port of Guayaquil.

Therefore, for Andrade, the fight against microtrafficking – the retail trade that is sold on the streets of the country – is not the greatest challenge, but rather the fight against the large drug trafficking mafias that, according to research, have infiltrated institutions. formalities of the country.

For all these reasons, Andrade, who heads the Security Secretariat of the Municipality of Quito, saw as a “good sign” the fact that the country’s new president, Daniel Noboa, has made important changes in the command leadership of the Armed Forces. and the Police as a measure to stop the spiral of violence.

The specialist considered that, in addition, the insecurity crisis affects, above all, the children and youth population, which is the recruitment target of the large mafias.

40% of Ecuador’s prison population ranges between 18 and 29 years old, and 37.2% of women who have been imprisoned are between 18 and 22 years old.

The majority of the prison population has a level of schooling below basic education and 59% of those who have died in the recurring massacres that have occurred in prisons are young people.

The enormous school dropouts in the country and high emigration are other factors that make the child population vulnerable in the context of the crime boom, Andrade added.

For the expert, the fight against insecurity has to be comprehensive and determined.

For this reason, he asked President Noboa to specify the allocation of equipment and resources to the Police for the fight against crime. drug trafficking and the organized crimea vital task that his predecessor left pending.