An emergency meeting devoted to Ecuador, undermined like never before by violence linked to drug trafficking, began on Sunday in Lima, Peru, bringing together very concerned neighboring countries, members of the Andean Community.
These countries - Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Ecuador - intend to define joint actions against the proliferation and expansion of gangs engaged in drug trafficking and racketeering, and whose international ramifications have put border areas on alert. .
“
This reality requires us to act in a coordinated manner
,” underlined the head of the Peruvian government Alberto Otarola.
“
There is no safe country if its neighbor suffers from the senseless assault of these groups.
This problem must be tackled forcefully
,” he added.
The meeting was convened by the Bolivian rotating presidency.
Peru and Colombia have already strengthened their border controls, fearing the penetration of criminals fleeing the repression which is increasing in Ecuador.
Five years of violence and poverty
Considered a relatively safe country, Ecuador has been sinking into violence for five years, against a backdrop of economic slowdown and impoverishment following the Covid-19 pandemic: the homicide rate has increased from 6 to 46 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023. Located between Colombia and Peru, the largest producers of cocaine in the world, Ecuador has remained for years sheltered from the violence linked to drug trafficking.
But from a simple transit country, it has become an operations and logistics center for shipping cocaine to Europe.
And around twenty gangs literally rule the law, particularly from prisons.
A step in the terror was reached on January 9 with the live assault on public television TC by heavily armed, hooded men, who briefly took journalists and employees of the channel hostage before the police failed to free them, arresting 13 attackers.
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Eight days later, the anti-mafia prosecutor Cesar Suarez responsible for investigating this spectacular attack was assassinated, shot dead in broad daylight in the center of Guayaquil.
The young president Daniel Noboa declared a state of emergency and declared the country "
in internal war
" against gangs described as "
terrorists
", deploying more than 20,000 soldiers on the ground.
On Sunday, new violence broke out in Guayas, in the southwest.
Ecuadorian police announced over 68 arrests in the ranks of a gang accused of trying to take over a hospital.
Firearms and drugs were also seized.