Impunity covers the dead and wounded of the 2019 protests in Ecuador

Patricia Mosquera does not forget the anxiety she experienced when she arrived at the hospital.

A call had alerted her that her brother, Édison, had been injured during the day of protests that Quito experienced on October 7, 2019. “We knew that he was ill, but we did not know the magnitude,” she recalls.

Doctors rushed in and out of the hospital ward until they called Patricia to tell her that Édison had been hit by a projectile on the left side of the head, in the lower part of the ear.

Five days later Édison died, at the age of 30, when a third stroke struck him down.

Today, Patricia knows that the ammunition that caused the death of her brother was a rubber pellet.

“How can a rubber bullet come in doing so much damage, lodged in this way?

A rubber bullet!

If it is a non-lethal weapon!” she questions.

In these demonstrations there were six deaths, according to the report of the Special Commission for Truth and Justice (CEVJ), which was formed by the Ombudsman's Office and which took as reference an investigation by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights.

This team confirmed that four of those deaths were caused by the impact of non-lethal munitions.

It also verified that 22 people named in the CEVJ report suffered permanent and long-term physical injuries caused by the same type of ammunition.

Most lost an eye, became blind or had skull fractures that generated some type of disability.

The Police, meanwhile, counted 470 police officers attacked and 208 uniformed officers kidnapped.

They were the most violent demonstrations in the last 15 years.

The statistics of the Prosecutor's Office reflect the level of impunity behind the violence of October 2019. This institution received 743 complaints related to these protests, most of them for damage to property, but in only 66 cases have people been prosecuted.

So far, 19 have received a conviction.

Official documents show that the attacks against the protesters occurred in the midst of a shortage of tear gas canisters and rubber bullets, which gave rise to opaque public contracts that do not appear in the Public Procurement portal or in the transparency pages of the institutions. governmental.

In addition, the Ecuadorian Police had the help of their counterparts in Colombia and Peru to stock up on non-lethal ammunition, loans that had not been revealed before.

A month after the crisis, the Ecuadorian government lent Bolivia the same type of material to contain the protests triggered by the departure of former President Evo Morales and the arrival of a transitional government headed by the second vice president of the Chamber of Senators, Jeanine Áñez, ammunition that has not been returned.

For this loan there is a criminal proceeding in Bolivia, while in Ecuador there is a preliminary investigation and a special examination by the Comptroller General of the State underway.

These are some of the findings of the investigation

in which

from Ecuador,

from Colombia,

from Bolivia, the

and nine other media outlets from the region participated.

Ammunition for a week

The then president of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, appeared on the national network on the night of October 1, 2019 to report on the cancellation of the subsidy for extra gasoline and diesel, the most used fuels in the country.

He thought of it as a measure that would save the treasury some 1,400 million dollars a year.

The next morning, the carriers announced a national strike, while the social organizations prepared for the demonstrations.

The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador, Conaie, began protests in the communities that same day and warned that the demonstrators would move to Quito.

The policemen were also getting ready.

The General Directorate of Logistics of the National Police, under the command of General Fernando Correa Gordillo, informed the then Minister of Government, María Paula Romo, that there was tear gas to contain a week of protests, according to what she told this newspaper.

A police report indicates that before the protests, the Police had 5,200 tear gas units, including hand grenades and long and short range cartridges.

The document refers to a large purchase of this material made in February 2019. However, there is no trace of that acquisition on the Public Purchases portal, nor on the transparency pages of the Ministry of Government and the Police.

He requested the information from this portfolio and the newly created Ministry of the Interior, but received no response.

The director of the National Public Procurement Service (Sercop), María Sara Jijón, did not accept an interview either.

The chaos began on October 3.

In the midst of the national carrier strike, attempts to loot commercial premises in Guayaquil were reported.

Faced with this, the Government announced a 60-day state of emergency.

The carriers lifted the strike two days later.

The students, workers, social and indigenous unions took the lead.

The Conaie assumed the leadership of the protests.

On October 5, the Government installed a Unified Command Post (PMU) in the Police General Command to manage the resources that would serve to contain the violence.

The indigenous people arrived in the capital on October 7 amid excesses.

A police detachment and an Army tank were set on fire.

The leaders of the Conaie blamed these events on alleged infiltrators.

A plaque in memory of Édison Mosquera installed in the El Arbolito park, in the north center of Quito, where the demonstrations were concentrated in October 2019. Carlos Granja Medranda / EL UNIVERSO

That day, Édison Mosquera was protesting in the Cumandá sector, in the Historic Center of Quito.

A security camera recorded the moment when the policemen advanced towards the demonstrators and he fell.

Patricia Mosquera saw those images months later.

She saw that his brother got up and picked something up from the floor, she saw that a policeman hit him and that two more joined in the attack, she saw that his brother fell again and that one of the policemen shot him directly.

After the attack, he was taken to a hospital.

That same day, President Moreno moved the seat of government to Guayaquil.

In the afternoon the first death was reported in the protests.

He was a young man who had fallen from a bridge in the capital during a police chase.

On October 8, indigenous demonstrators tried to take over the facilities of the National Assembly palace, which in those days was kept in suspense.

The military evicted them in the midst of the excesses.

Romo would say weeks later that this takeover was part of a plan to overthrow President Moreno and install a Constituent Assembly.

Colombia and Peru came to the aid

After a week of chaos, police resources began to dwindle.

Colombia and Peru came to the aid of the Ecuadorian Government.

Romo said that he telephoned his peers in Colombia and Peru to request tear gas on loan.

The former minister recalls that she spoke with Guillermo Botero Nieto, the then Colombian Minister of Defense and today that country's ambassador to Chile.

She does not keep in his memory which Peruvian authority he dealt with.

The former minister maintains that these loans were made under cooperation agreements within the framework of Ameripol, an organization that brings together 35 police institutions in the region, and that her calls to the ministers were more of a diplomatic gesture, to inform them that the The Ecuadorian commander would contact his counterparts in Colombia and Peru to arrange the loans.

“It is a matter of cooperation between police officers (...).

I do not remember that the president (Lenín Moreno) has made or had to make a call,” Romo said.

A report from the PMU installed in the Ecuadorian Police Headquarters, which months later would reach the National Assembly, detailed the material that the Colombian Police handed over on October 9 and 10: 7,140 37mm caliber cartridges, 2,000 40mm caliber cartridges, 8,000 grenades three-phase hand grenades, 2,000 multi-impact grenades and 10 gas-launching rifles.

The material was made in the United States, from the Combined Systems and Safariland brands, according to another document from the Ministry of the Government to which

had access .

The Colombian National Police confirmed to this team the loan from its counterpart in Ecuador, explaining that it did so by virtue of a security cooperation memorandum of understanding that has existed between the two countries since December 2018. In its response, the Colombian Police explained that the conditions for the loan included that his Ecuadorian counterpart put in place "measures that allow traceability of the elements" and that, under no circumstances, could he "assign or transfer or give a different destination" to those teams.

His chart of the loaned material is almost identical to the one recorded in the Ecuadorian documents, except that he describes them all as United States-brand

(with the exception of the ten gas-launching rifles, whose manufacturer Ecuador did not identify and which in Colombia were described as being made by the Brazilian company

).

And it established a maximum return period of December 31, 2020.

The Colombian Government reported that it was a unique aid.

"There has been no other loan of non-lethal weapons, nor of consumer items, to other police or military bodies of any Latin American country in the years 2018 to 2022," General Henry Sanabria Cely, administrative director, said in his response. and financier of the Colombian Police.

In contrast, the PMU report in Ecuador does not mention anything about the material delivered by Peru.

A source who worked with former minister Romo during the protests told

that this material was donated, not loaned.

She couldn't remember if it was about to expire or already expired.

Romo expressed ignorance of the matter.

"I'm almost sure it was a donation.

I don't know if there was a part that was a donation and a part that was a loan.

I would have to check the documents (...) I don't know the details, worse still the motivation to donate, but if Peru had more material or had already contracted a replacement, perhaps it was an option for Peru to donate, "said Romo.

After the interview, the former minister gave details of the material that Peru lent: 1,000 tear gas grenades, 5,000 37mm caliber tear gas cartridges and 6,000 rubber pellet cartridges.

The IDL-Reporteros portal, from Peru, confirmed for this investigation the delivery of non-lethal ammunition to Ecuador.

Former President Martín Vizcarra told that outlet that “there was a direct agreement between the general directorates of the Police between Peru and Ecuador.

This was the only interinstitutional loan.

The idea was that it be returned immediately as soon as the material that that country bought arrived.”

This coincides with the report of the Ecuadorian PMU, which indicates that on October 9 the Ministry of Government acquired non-lethal 12 mm ammunition: 1,800 rubber pellets, 375 bean bags and 375 tear gas ammunition.

Nevertheless,

The PMU report is signed by General Patricio Carrillo Rosero, current Minister of the Interior, who at that time served as General Director of Operations, and eleven other officers.

requested an interview for this report, but received no response.

The violence escalated

While the Police replenished their supplies, the violence escalated in Quito.

On the night of October 9, the indigenous leader of Cotopaxi Inocencio Tucumbi died.

His son Gustavo, 34, maintains that there were witnesses when the police cornered Inocencio and other protesters and he was hit in the forehead with a tear gas canister.

Hundreds of protesters in Ecuador, led by the president of Conaie, Jaime Vargas, kidnapped police officers and journalists in the October 2019 protests. Carlos Granja / EL UNIVERSO

The official version assures, instead, that Inocencio fell from a wall, something that Romo maintains until now.

One of her reasons is the result of an autopsy which, according to her, concluded that the head injury was due to precipitation.

“My father did not fall.

The mark of the bomb in the photos is clear on the forehead, that impact was not from a fall”, reiterates Gustavo.

However, the judicial investigations have not proved either party right, since the cause of death is still uncertain.

The coffin was veiled the next day in the Agora of the House of Culture, in the north center of Quito, where the protesters were gathering.

In that act, hundreds of indigenous people under the leadership of Jaime Vargas, president of Conaie, detained ten police officers and several journalists who were carrying out their coverage.

One of these, Freddy Paredes, from the Teleamazonas network, was hit in the head with a stone by a demonstrator when he was walking down the street, after having managed to negotiate his release.

The journalist fell to the floor unconscious.

As a result of the aggression, he had to undergo surgery on his clavicle.

The aggressor, Juan Manuel Guacho, who was a temporary employee of the National Electoral Council, was sentenced to four and a half months in prison and to pay a $2,000 reparation, which he never paid, Paredes said.

The niche of the indigenous leader Inocencio Tucumbi, in the Pujulí cemetery, in Cotopaxi. Álfredo Cárdenas / EL UNIVERSO

The death of Inocencio Tucumbi did not stop the violence.

On October 11, Francisco Tapia Vega (26 years old) went to the protests to provide food to the demonstrators.

He was about five blocks from the Ágora, on Sodiro and Gran Colombia streets, when he was hit in the face with pellets.

He lost the sight of his right eye, because one of those ammunition is still lodged there and he does not have the resources to pay for the operation.

No judicial investigation has been opened in this case, so it is unknown where the pellets came from.

Francisco, however, says he is certain that it was the Police.

Neither he nor his relatives filed the complaint for ignorance.

They say that when they found out that they had to carry out this procedure, the deadline had already passed.

On October 12 the violence was uncontainable.

In the midst of the demonstrations, hooded men set fire to the building of the Comptroller General of the State and the facilities of the Teleamazonas channel.

On the afternoon of that day, President Moreno decreed a curfew and the militarization of Quito.

Hours later, he announced that he would review Decree 833, which eliminated the subsidy for extra gasoline and diesel.

This gave way to dialogue with Conaie.

After a truce, the Government and indigenous leaders met on the night of October 13, mediated by the United Nations Organization (UN) and the Ecuadorian Episcopal Conference.

They agreed to create a commission that would prepare a new decree to replace 833.

Control with expired pumps

It was 11 days of chaos.

Weeks later, in an interview with the digital media La Posta, the Minister of Government, María Paula Romo, counted more days of crisis, 20 in total taking into account previous demonstrations.

In that dialogue, Romo acknowledged that the Police had used expired tear gas to repel the protests, as had already been reported on social networks.

“We also used the pumps that were expired (...).

We were in the middle of an emergency and we had to use what we had on hand.

By the way, expired pumps are no more harmful.

Expired pumps are less effective… They make you cry less”, she justified.

These statements would cost him censorship and dismissal a year later, as a result of a political trial processed in the National Assembly.

The use of expired tear gas was one of the three grounds for resolution.

In the impeachment trial it was not possible to establish the brand of the expired bombs or their origin.

It is not known if they came from Colombia, Peru or if they were bought directly by the Ecuadorian government.

It was also unclear whether the use of expired pumps can cause health damage.

The Police unloaded nearly 39,000 non-lethal ammunition, including tear gas and pellets, to contain the protests of October 2019. Carlos Granja / EL UNVIERSO.

The questioning assembly members presented an article published by the scientific news agency of the National University of San Martín, in Argentina, which assures that expired gas becomes potentially deadly toxic.

In discharging him, Romo presented a report from the Ecuadorian manufacturer Santa Bárbara, a public company that follows the guidelines of the Ministry of Defense, which states that "the use of expired tear gas bombs does not cause damage to health."

The same document suggested that to verify the safe use of expired bombs it was necessary to carry out a chemical analysis, which was not carried out.

According to Anna Feigenbaum, a professor at the University of Bournemouth (in the United Kingdom), who has researched this industry for years, the use of tear gas canisters after their expiration date could endanger the police themselves, since the mechanism to activate the artifact may fail causing an explosion.

(Link to the note of Cocuyo Effect).

The bombs went to Bolivia (while Colombia asked for its own)

In the same interview in which Romo acknowledged that expired bombs were used, he referred to the political crisis that Bolivia was going through, since days before Evo Morales had resigned from power.

Four days after those statements, on November 16, 2019, Romo sent a letter to the then Bolivian Minister of Defense, Luis Fernando López Julio, indicating his acceptance of lending him riot gear to repel the protests in his country.

Romo said that he received the call from the Bolivian government and ordered the police commander to proceed with the loan of the material.

A report from the Bolivian Defense Attaché Office in Ecuador indicates that a Bolivian Air Force plane landed in Quito that same November 16 to remove grenades and non-lethal projectiles.

The person who delivered the material, the document details, was the then Director of Logistics of the Ecuadorian Police, General Fernando Correa Gordillo.

Official documents show that ammunition manufactured by the Ecuadorian Santa Bárbara EP and the Brazilian Condor were shipped: 5,000 GL-302 hand grenades, 2,398 long-range 37 mm caliber projectiles, 560 short-range 37 mm caliber projectiles and 500 sound grenades and flash for exteriors

(See history of Bolivia).

Five days after Ecuador sent that shipment to Bolivia, in Colombia, a country that had loaned bombs to the Ecuadorian Police,

Only in his first day of confrontations with the public force, that of November 21, he caused three deaths and 120 injuries.

Two days later, on November 23, the event that marked the Colombian collective imagination of that protest and its repression by the Police would take place.

Dilan Cruz, a 17-year-old student, was hit in the head by a bean bag ammunition, fired by an agent from the Colombian Police riot squad, Esmad.

From videos published on social networks, Cerosetenta reconstructed the moment in which the police officer aimed and shot directly at Cruz, causing the wound that caused his death two days later.

Almost a year later, the Colombian Supreme Court of Justice ordered the security forces to suspend the use of 12mm caliber shotguns, the theoretically non-lethal weapon with which Cruz was killed, to repress civil protests.

Due to these demonstrations, in December 2019, the Colombian Police were desperate to recover the tear gas lent to Ecuador.

The Ecuadorian officers, not having the material, in turn pressured their Bolivian counterparts.

On the 18th of that month, the Bolivian Defense Attaché in Ecuador sent a report to his Defense Minister, Luis Fernando López, conveying the concern of the Ecuadorian Police to recover this material.

In his communication, written three weeks after the protests began in Colombia, Colonel José Luis Frías Cordero asked Áñez's transitional government to repay the loan to Ecuador, since that country "also has a debt of grenades with the Police." Nacional de Colombia, which were loaned during the social conflicts of the month of October”, according to the document obtained by

.

The insistence of the Ecuadorian Police lasted several months.

On May 27, 2020, Patricio Carrillo Rosero, who had been promoted to Commander General, sent a letter to the Bolivian Embassy demanding repayment of the loan.

In June 2021, Correismo assemblyman Fausto Jarrín Terán (who has also been a lawyer for former presidents Rafael Correa and Jorge Glas, sentenced for corruption) denounced Lenín Moreno and María Paula Romo for possible embezzlement, for the delivery of tear gas canisters. to Bolivia.

According to him, the damage to the Ecuadorian State would reach 300,000 dollars.

The investigation of this case is kept under reserve in the Prosecutor's Office.

For Romo, that complaint has no basis.

“Similar loans have been made in other periods, that is, it was not only to Bolivia, it was not only that year.

What constitutes a habitual activity between policemen.

In this particular case, they are trying to give it a political tinge, ”he argued.

Ecuador returned (and also lent) to Colombia

When he commanded the Police, Patricio Carrillo presented Minister Romo in June 2020 with a project to acquire equipment for the Police for 15.8 million dollars.

Of these, 2.4 million dollars would be used to buy tear gas canisters.

The officer pointed out that some 38,600 ammunition of all kinds were used in the October protests and that some 62,500 were left in the yard, of which 73% had expired.

In other words, only 16,740 units were available, "insufficient to control demonstrations," he added.

Carrillo expressed his fear of a new wave of protests due to the restrictive measures that the Government applied to mitigate the covid-19 pandemic.

To meet Carrillo's demand, the Ministry of Government used a digital platform that until now is available on its website, outside the Public Procurement portal, which is used to manage international acquisitions.

However, most of the needs of the Police were not met.

A report from the Ministry of Finance shows that 14.2 million dollars were allocated to the Carrillo project, but only 2.5 million were earned.

It is unknown what that money was used for.

The Sercop did not clarify if it knows about the use of this platform.

Romo indicated that during his management, two large contracts were made through this digital platform, the purpose of which was to acquire products directly from international manufacturers without going through local intermediaries, in order to save money.

He also assured that these purchases were declared confidential for national security reasons.

One of these contracts, Romo pointed out, was signed with the Brazilian company Condor to acquire 103,360 non-lethal ammunition, including tear gas and stun grenades, tear gas cartridges, rubber shot cartridges and conducted energy cartridges.

An arsenal, almost triple what was used to suppress the protests in October 2019. The contract also included the purchase of 200 gas-launching shotguns and 500 conducted energy pistols.

According to Romo, the total cost amounted to 2,787,680 dollars.

The date of the contract is unknown.

Romo added that Ecuador did return the material loaned by Colombia in April 2021 and that, in addition, it collaborated with tear gas bombs days later.

On April 28 of that year, a new round of demonstrations began in Colombia against the tax reform proposed by the government of President Iván Duque.

There were three months of national strike and violent confrontations between police and protesters.

In the first week alone, 24 deaths were reported, more than 800 wounded and 89 missing persons.

A particularly emblematic case occurred on May 5, when university student Lucas Villa, who had been active in the marches, was murdered in Pereira after receiving several gunshot wounds.

A reconstruction carried out by Cerosetenta, in partnership with Baudó and Forensic Architecture, showed that the crime against the student was premeditated, that the shots he received from two civilians on a motorcycle were execution-style, and that his assailants coordinated the attack with accomplices at the scene.

The investigation also revealed that there were police officers near the scene and that, however, they responded to the call for help from other protesters long after what happened.

In those days of unrest, non-lethal material arrived in Colombia from Ecuador.

The Colombian Police confirmed to

that Ecuador had indeed finished returning the material it had lent, but only until May 1, 2021 - that is, three days after the national strike began in Colombia and four months after the deadline. maximum for return-.

That day, all the borrowed material arrived in Bogotá, except for 10 grenade launcher rifles that had been delivered previously, on November 21, 2019, within the agreed period.

According to General Sanabria Cely, Ecuador made the return "with the same technical specifications and in the same amounts as said loan."

That is, 7,140 37-millimeter caliber cartridges, 2,000 40-millimeter caliber cartridges, 8,000 three-phase hand grenades, 2,000 multi-impact grenades and the aforementioned 10 gas launcher rifles.

However, according to the Colombian Police, Ecuador handed over non-lethal weapons of a different brand than the one it received: the ammunition loaned was made in the United States, while the returned ones were made by the Brazilian company Condor Tecnologias Não-Letais, including ammunition from the GL203T, GL203L, GL202, GL302 and GM102 models.

At least one of these references is striking: the journalistic alliance The Business of Repression found that several batches of Condor model GL203L grenades were disapproved in Brazil by the São Paulo Military Police in 2020.

In another report in this series, the Brazilian media

established that -after carrying out technical tests on some batches of these ammunition- São Paulo officials determined that they were outside the standards considered safe and adequate by that institution, for which they rescinded a contract with the supplier company.

Likewise, that was -as determined by the Chilean media outlet Interferencia, another project partner- the same model of ammunition carried by the police officer accused of seriously injuring today's senator Fabiola Campillai during the 2019 protests in Santiago de Chile.

Campillai today is an emblematic victim of the disproportionate use of force in the police response to the protests.

(The court has not yet ruled on the case and the defense has disputed the brand of ammunition used by the accused police officer on the day of the events).

Both episodes took place between six months and a year and a half before Ecuador sent material of the same model to Colombia.

As indicated by former minister María Paula Romo to

, on May 10, 2021 -that is, nine days after the return of the ammunition- the Ecuadorian Police made a new loan to its counterpart in Colombia of 35,000 non-lethal ammunition, including 5,500 tear gas grenades, 9,500 long-range tear gas projectiles, 12,500 short-range projectiles and 7,500 multi-charge propellant cartridges.

The Colombian Police did not respond to this second loan.

After almost three years, justice in Ecuador has not responded to the victims of that October 2019. The anguish felt by the relatives of the dead and the helplessness of those who were left with disabilities persist.

To this is added the opacity about the business of non-lethal ammunition.

There is no transparency.

It is not known what balances there are between the countries that have borrowed this material to get out of the trouble of their political crises.

The totality of the purchases that the Ecuadorian public force has made in recent years is not known.

It is not known if he will have enough material to control the demonstrations announced for the coming weeks or if he will have to use expired bombs again.

A collaborative cross-border investigation by the Latin American Center for Journalistic Investigation, El Clip in conjunction with Animal Politico from Mexico, Cerosetenta from Colombia, El Deber from Bolivia, Cocuyo Effect from Venezuela, El País América, El Universo from Ecuador, Interferencia from Chile, No Fiction from Guatemala, Anfibia Magazine from Argentina, UOL from Brazil and Telemundo News from the United States.

Graphic project Memetic Factory of El Surti in Paraguay

Documentary production JUT Media - Legal review El Veinte

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