The levels of violence are boiling in Ecuador

View of the area affected by the attack that last Sunday left five dead in Guayaquil. Mauricio Torres (EFE)

Nobody wants to talk and nobody feels safe in Guayaquil.

The level of violence in Ecuador has escalated to a boiling point after this weekend's attack, which left five dead, two wounded still in critical condition and a country aware that times of tranquility are over.

The attack with explosives, at dawn and in a neighborhood of the Guayaquil suburb, conveys to the State the message that the action of drug trafficking has raised the tone and is willing to claim civilian victims.

Until now, the official narrative spoke of turf battles between organized crime gangs.

The Minister of the Interior, Patricio Carrillo, already diagnoses it as a "wave of irrational violence" and admits that the attack could be a retaliation against the State for the drug seizures of the weekend: 250 kilos of cocaine in a single operation to the outskirts of Guayaquil.

The other theory of the investigation is that it was an attack directed at a resident of the neighborhood of El Cristo del Consuelo, a low-income area that has always been neglected, known as

His neighbors, on the other hand, defend him: the only thing the 42-year-old man, who was slightly injured, did was run a clandestine nightclub where, precisely, there was a party on Saturday when the explosives exploded at two in the morning.

"They are amateurs who have learned from chemistry and who use homemade elements such as acetone and others," the person in charge of the country's security policy detailed on Monday.

“It's not the traditional stuff like dynamite, pentolite or C4;

It is a mechanism that can be purchased commercially anywhere and they are building it, ”he acknowledged alarmed, after visiting the neighborhood marked by a scar of destroyed facades and non-existent roofs in nine houses that were already humble before the explosion.

The great focus of violence in Ecuador is concentrated in Guayaquil, which is in turn the city through whose ports the most drugs leave the country.

The UN has placed Ecuador in third place with the most seizures in its latest report - the 2022 World Drug Report - and now also considers the country a key point in the illegal distribution route.

The port of Guayaquil, in fact, is also the third exit point for drugs, camouflaged in contaminated merchandise containers, destined for the United States and Europe.

In the photos of the seizures, the bundles placed on the ground by the police for display cover more surface area.

The coastal city also holds the record in two other figures that outline the level at which criminal gangs have penetrated the routine of Guayaquil residents: of the more than 2,500 murders registered this year, a third (866) occurred in Guayaquil and in neighboring towns.

It is also the hottest point in the country where half of the attacks with explosives have been committed.

Of 145 throughout the national territory, the Ecuadorian economic capital registered 72. But none of the magnitude of this Saturday's attack, which left a gap of one and a half meters with a depth of almost 40 centimeters.

The escalation of violence had been leaving warning messages in recent months, with the appearance of two bodies hanging on a bridge in Durán, a satellite city of Guayaquil, and with the placement of car bombs in residential or commercial areas.

And this Monday, in the midst of a state of emergency, three other people were killed in a crossfire, aggravating the feeling of insecurity that has silenced those who live near small traffickers and members of criminal gangs.

Nobody wants to denounce, as the Minister of the Interior has recognized after the attack, despite the fact that there is a reward of 10,000 dollars for giving information about what happened.

But the fear has also spread outside the environment of these gangs.

The owners of small businesses now have to pay the mafias monthly "extortion shots" to be able to function without fear of attack, and Guayaquil residents have learned to modify their routines so as not to expose themselves to more risk than necessary.

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