The prison crisis corrodes Ecuador

A relative of one of those who died after the riots in Ecuador, this Wednesday outside the forensic center of Cuenca.FERNANDO MACHADO / AFP

Four simultaneous riots in as many prisons in Ecuador left images on Tuesday that have scared the authorities and citizens of the South American country.

Prisoners recorded with mobile phones how rivals from other gangs who were incarcerated in maximum security areas were dismembered and beheaded.

They used chainsaws, machetes and ruthlessly handled members of mutilated bodies as trophies.

The balance is, until this Wednesday, 79 deaths, all of them inmates, and a new prison crisis in the acting Government of Lenín Moreno, which has not managed to dismantle the dominance of criminal organizations inside the detention centers.

The director of the prison system (SNAI), Edmundo Moncayo, spoke of a fierce struggle for power in which at least six Ecuadorian gangs related to drug trafficking are involved.

They are Los Choneros, whose leader was assassinated by a hit man after regaining his freedom in December, Los Lagartos, Los Lobos, Tiguerones, Los Pipos, and Chonekillers.

Despite having announced in the morning that the situation was under control in the four prisons, the altercations led to the resignation of the deputy director of the penitentiary system, Orlando Jácome in the middle of the afternoon.

At the last minute, the general commander of the Police, Patricio Carrillo, warned that there was a new mutiny in the Guayaquil jail.

The police intervened in the face of "aggressiveness and irrationality," said Carrillo, of the criminal groups.

With a "God protect our staff" closed his message on Twitter.

Citizens have not yet recovered from the horror they experienced Tuesday inside the prisons.

The relatives of the prisoners cried outside, gripped by uncertainty and helplessness.

Riot police entered the four centers with long-range weapons, shields and gas bombs.

The official information, which spoke of attacks in three of the prisons, was extended this Wednesday to another penitentiary center, according to the latest SNAI report.

The altercations took place in two of the largest prisons in the country - No. 4 in Guayaquil and El Turi, in the city of Cuenca -, in another in Latacunga and in a fourth in Guayaquil, which was not mentioned in the first information.

This Wednesday morning, the Government announced that control had already been regained in all of them.

A prison official from El Turi explained, without revealing her identity, that they had asked the police to cut the power so that the prisoners could not use the chainsaws with which they intended to attack about fifty inmates who were in the pavilion high-risk.

According to their version, they did not act in time and they allowed the attack to continue, the largest violent incident in the history of Ecuador's prisons.

Tension within Ecuador's detention centers has been brewing for at least two years.

In 2019, a series of riots in just a month and a half led the president to declare a state of emergency in the prison system.

At the time, the authorities recognized that there was a huge deficit of resources and infrastructure that made it impossible to maintain control and security within the centers.

The cells were without security locks because the prisoners had tools to steal them, the surveillance cameras had mostly been disabled, and there was an accomplice network of officials that allowed the trafficking of weapons and mobile phones.

Lack of protection

The Ministry of Government has drawn attention to the lack of protection of the prison guards, who are not allowed to carry firearms inside the premises.

They can only carry deterrent tools.

In some prisons there are not even dining rooms, and prisoners serving time deprived of liberty receive their meals in plastic containers in their own cells.

Overcrowding has been an officially recognized problem for years, despite the construction of new prisons.

The director of SNAI attributes the deficit to national criminal legislation and the habit of judges to send accused persons to provisional prison when there is a risk that they will not appear for trial.

That does, said Edmundo Moncayo, that those convicted with a final sentence live with people who are still being processed.

The prison population is around 40,000 inmates despite the fact that there is barely room for 29,600.

Just one year after decreeing that state of exception in 2019, the scenes of violence were repeated and the presidential response has always been the same: a state of emergency.

The country has invested 1.2 million dollars (almost one million euros) in reforming infrastructure;

about $ 200,000 in the purchase of approximately 100 airguns;

and $ 150,000 for 35 backpacks containing pepper spray that, in light of this week's events, has not solved the problem of internal violence in Ecuador's prisons.