The day of terror experienced on Tuesday in Ecuador with the takeover of a television channel and riots with hostages in prisons was preceded by the alleged escape of José Adolfo Macías ‘Fito’, the boss of ‘Los Choneros’, the largest criminal gang in the country and one of the most violent. Adolfo Macías Villar had been in prison since 2011, sentenced to 34 years for organized crime, drug trafficking and murder.

He is the leader of Los Choneros, one of the most violent prison gangs in Ecuador. He has directed the criminal group since his entry into prison and contributed to it going from being the armed wing of a Colombian cartel to the main prison gang. In prisons they handle everything: not only drug trafficking on the streets, but also behind bars: they put everything from drugs to weapons and charge prisoners up to 1,300 euros per month for cells. If they don’t pay, they sleep on the floor.

However, since 2021 the power of the band is diminishing. The rest of the criminal gangs are fighting to unseat the Choneros. Their biggest rivals are Los Lobos. His ringleader, Fabricio Colón Pico, is also on the run from prison. His gang, allied with the Tiguerones and the Chone Killers, tries to put an end to the Choneros.

The last public image we have of ‘Fito’ is with abundant hair and a copious and scruffy beard with which he seeks to resemble a lion, with which he identifies himself and, therefore, the rest of ‘Los Choneros’, a gang dedicated according to the authorities to transporting cocaine produced in Colombia to the Mexican cartels. .

According to the same authorities, ‘Los Choneros’, who were born in the coastal city of Manta in the 90s, are currently dedicated to drug trafficking, extortion, hitmen and arms trafficking, among other crimes, although they deny being behind the violent episodes that have occurred in the last two days.

If the evasion is confirmed, This would be the second time that ‘Fito’ mocks Ecuador’s prison system, Well, he also did it in 2013 when he escaped from La Roca prison, in Guayaquil, after having been sentenced in 2011 to 34 years in prison for crimes such as drug trafficking, murder and organized crime.

In that first fugitive adventure he accompanied José Luis Zambrano ‘Rasquiña’, the then boss of ‘Los Choneros’, but both were captured two months later, and since then the power of ‘Fito’ within the gang has increased as other ringleaders were murdered, including ‘Rasquiña’ himself in 2020.

A pulse to Noboa

This apparent new leak is a challenge to the heavy hand that the new president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, wanted to impose in prisons to isolate the leaders of criminal gangs that dispute control of drug trafficking and other illicit activities in maximum security prisons or even in barge prisons on the high seas, as promised during the election campaign.

In an interview given this Wednesday to Radio Canela, Noboa He assured that ‘Fito’ went in and out of jail whenever he wanted, “like Pedro at home,” and that, if he did not return this time, it was because of his administration’s intention to isolate him in a maximum security prison. Until now ‘Fito’ was held in the Guayaquil Regional Prison, a prison where he was the master and lord of what was happening inside, being under the apparent control of ‘Los Choneros’.

Proof of the comfortable life that ‘Fito’ has led so far in prison is that he could celebrate his anniversary with fireworks at a big party inside the prison, while in his cell it was a small apartment, television, internet modem and paintings that decorated the walls.

This was revealed during one of the interventions carried out by the Police and the Armed Forces at the Guayaquil Regional Prison and other prisons where they seized large arsenals of weapons held by these gangs. especially in the neighboring Litoral Penitentiary.

With own ‘narcocorrido’ Also tHe even has his own ‘narcocorrido’, titled ‘El corrido del león’, performed by Mariachi Bravo and Queen Michelle (daughter of ‘Fito’). The musical piece glorifies the figure of the boss of ‘Los Choneros’ in the purest style of the Mexican ‘narco’, by presenting him as a good and honest man who “is not as they misinform.”

In his lyrics he narrates that ‘Fito’ He has suffered the loss of a brother, the kidnapping of his daughter and an attack on another sonbut “he is the boss of bosses”, “the leader of Los Choneros”, who together with his brother “takes care of his family like lions.”

After the murder of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, the first suspicions They focused on him, since the politician and journalists had reported in previous days death threats apparently coming from ‘Fito’, but the investigations seem to go along different lines.

Drone bomb took him out of La Roca However, In those first moments he was transferred along with other criminal leaders to the maximum security prison of La Roca, also located in the Guayaquil prison complex, but he immediately returned to the Regional Prison thanks to a drone bomb of unknown origin that blew up the roof of the prison courtyard.

Detonated in a controlled manner by the Police without trying to move it to another place where it would not cause so much damage, This episode allowed a riot in the Regional Prison to cease. where the prisoners climbed onto the roofs with banners to demand the return of “Papá Fito.” During his time in prison he has studied law and has legally sought a way to be acquitted of the multiple processes that are pending and that are still in force, which is why the Ecuadorian authorities are trying to capture perhaps the most valuable prisoner for the third time. from Ecuador.