Ecuador is experiencing a wave of organized crime violence that is linked to structural problems. It is the product of a complex context divided between the increase in poverty, new drug routes worldwide and the emergence of a local narco-bourgeoisie. Amid all this, a global crisis of neoliberal capitalism, and consequently, the decomposition and rupture of the social pact between classes, peoples and hegemonic blocks.
In this context, the Government of Daniel Noboa has decided to confront the wave of drug crime that is drowning Ecuador through the declaration of internal armed conflict. In other words, war against the poor, forcibly financed by the poor, supported by the middle class, and certain sectors that have been trapped by the Government’s punitive discourse. The premise that violence is solved with more violence shows the imperative need of the elites to discipline society through death, accustoming it to repression for when it acts against the platforms of struggle of the subaltern class.
Global empirical experience shows that more than 40 years of war on drugs have been a failure: the psychotropic industry, the consumer population, money laundering and social fragmentation grew. Colombia, Mexico, and Peru are notable examples of the fiasco of this strategy promoted by the once main consumer of cocaine in the entire world, the United States 1/. The real background of the warlike declaration announced by the Executive does not originate in the context of the spillover of the narcoeconomy in Ecuador, or the unexpected takeover – widely spread – of the TC Televisión channel; which is still, considered possibly a false flag operation 2/. The economic elites, specifically during the Correa, Moreno and Lasso administrations, slowly manufactured – especially after the plurinational rebellions of October 2019 and June 2022 – a plot that seeks to crush the key left-wing opposition actor with the capacity of real social mobilization: the Ecuadorian Indigenous Movement (Zibechi, 2024).
Cocaine, geopolitics and spectacle
Beyond the spectacle of violence that Ecuador has been going through for some time now, motivated according to the story of really-existing power by “copper-looking criminals, inhabitants of evil brothels,” the root of the problem is that cocaine has not stopped being transported through the main ports. The exporting economic elites continue to benefit and the money continues to be laundered. The problem is not only Fito – one of the most relevant local drug traffickers – but the participation – for several decades now – of the bourgeoisie in the drug business (such as the export shipping fleets of the Noboa family, through which bananas and cocaine are sent to Europe, according to press investigations). How can billions of dollars be laundered, if not through the financial system and the real economy – real estate, agro-industrial, mining, commercial? In short, sectors that live in Samborondón or Cumbayá (exclusive elite areas of Guayaquil and Quito) continue to become more powerful, in collusion with local gangs and transnational cartels (Sinaloa, Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación, Albanian mafia, among others).
The Government’s declaration of internal armed conflict has dodged the central problem: the bourgeois drug economy. In practice this translates into a War against the poor, not against drug trafficking. We have not seen the drug-trafficking bourgeoisie of the rich citadels being arrested and mistreated. However, we constantly observe the militarization and humiliation of the popular sectors. In this tragedy, poor and racialized youth have been instrumentalized – in large numbers Afro-Ecuadorian – from the marginal neighborhoods of Guayaquil, Durán, Portoviejo, Santo Domingo, Esmeraldas, Machala, Quevedo, Babahoyo, among other cities; where the differentiation between rich and poor is grotesque.
The dichotomy between bad and good is exacerbated: the former, the terrorists (assumed to be poor, black, cholos, montubios (people from the coastal region), criminals, precarious workers, young men, objectified women, organized people; in short, subalternity); the second, the established powers (which takes advantage of the idea of Ecuador or national unity to mask its interests). For the subaltern people: public humiliation, mistreatment, beatings, torture, humiliation, death (“casualties of war”); all this meticulously transmitted through communication corporations. In contrast, the established power violently attacks one of the parts of the economic chain of drug trafficking, the one that acts in the poor sectors, and makes invisible the other part of the narco-economy, the main one, which serves as the lumpenized bourgeoisie, that runs part of the drug market.
This operation places the criminal/terrorist as a synonym for the subaltern/poor, destroying the concept of human rights in public opinion, since [human rights] defends criminals, in the Bukele version. Are the popular sectors victims of drug trafficking violence? Yes. An issue that places the people in the middle of the crossfire between gangs vs. gangs, and gangs vs. Government/State (where there are also the gangs, see the case of the narco-generals 3/), actors who at the same time act as a narco-bourgeoisie.
In this scenario, there is a double triumph of established power. On the one hand, it disciplines society through fear and the official unipolar narrative regarding the situation in the country. The State legitimizes itself as the political actor, justifies the anti-people reform package, finding echo in the subaltern sectors, and normalizes among the population the use of violence against so-called terrorism. Any other position outside this is considered an ally of drug trafficking, which in turn facilitates the implementation of the neoliberal package because it does not find opposition in the terrified society or if it does, it eliminates it through the violence of war. And, on the other hand, the US and Israeli Zionist military presence in Ecuador is made viable through the export of their military technology. This was an objective of previous governments –justifying themselves in the uprisings of 2019 and 2022–, which sought to impose an anti-communist version in the stabilization strategy. This turns out to be the most important underlying geopolitical and geostrategic issue: the United States wants to gain positions in the southern hemisphere in the midst of its dispute against the Beijing-Moscow-Tehran axis.
There are other more specific aspects to understand the chaotic map of the drug trafficking business in Ecuador:
1) Peace in Colombia disordered the Northern border, by weakening a key player of ideological administration of the dispute (former FARC-EP, now weak atomized dissidents) and the growth of multiple narco-paramilitary gangs.
2) The murder in December 2020 of alias Rasquiña (leader of Los Choneros) that fragmented the gang map into multiple groups (Tiguerones, Chonekillers, Los Fatales, Águilas, etc.) that then fought for the territory against other groups of a different origin like Los Lobos.
3) The arrival of Mexican cartels to expand the cocaine export market to Europe, given that it is more convenient to transport it from dollarized Ecuador than from Peru or Colombia 4/; in addition to the transmission of know-how of the drug trafficking business, the pedagogy of terror and training such as the hitmen schools of the Albanian Mafia.
4) The desperate poverty that fundamentally afflicts the neighborhoods of the Ecuadorian coast (where traditionally the development of capitalism has been brutal) that, above all, forces youth to enlist in drug gangs that offer them, comparatively, at least a minimum wage and some life (even if it is momentary) 5/.
Narcobourgeoisie
As in any other field of the capitalist economy, economic groups invest in certain branches of production and profitable markets (regardless of whether they are licit or amoral/immoral), diversifying performance and, in this case, laundering billions of dollars from criminal activities. Drug trafficking has penetrated the economy of a dollarized country, a situation that is particularly exemplified in mining. The data on the intensive presence of mining in areas of the southern subtropics of the country warn of the level of penetration of one of the local gangs -Los Lobos- allied to a transnational cartel: the Jalisco New Generation Cartel. They directly control 20 mining concessions, while in another 30 they exercise their power through the collection of vaccines (extortion of fees) from those that hold the concession. In this area of the country alone, Los Lobos are linked to at least 40 local mining mafias, which represents USD 3.6 million per month (Ojo Público, 2024). Meanwhile, Los Choneros launder their resources through real estate management and public works, and the Albanian Mafia, in the national financial system (cooperatives and banks).
As occurs in other countries in the region, such as Mexico, the governments’ declaration of war against drug trafficking represents partiality in the conflict with one of the drug trafficking cartels. That is, a pacification alliance that employs the dominant narco-criminal actor or actors, with the aim of limiting or eliminating other cartels, whose relationship with the established power is less relevant. In other words: conflicts over the drug trafficking business have local, regional and global inter-bourgeois characteristics. This is a dispute between drug companies and entrepreneurs who have a greater or lesser relationship with the government and the State 6/. Why does the persecution of Los Choneros and the Albanian Mafia not have the same intensity as against Los Lobos and Los Tigüerones? Have governments been permissive with drug criminal gangs? These questions are not only fundamental questions, but testable hypotheses 7/. Look at the murder of Rubén Chérres, a close friend of Danilo Carrera, brother-in-law of Guillermo Lasso, linked to drug trafficking, corruption, influence peddling and a key player in the impeachment trial against the former president (France24, 2023).
At least in the last five governments, there has been a noted entry of the drug business in Ecuador (some reports suggest that the possible entry of the Sinaloa cartel occurred during the government of Lucio Gutiérrez). In addition to this, lumpenization is more strongly associated with the degradation of neoliberal capitalism, increasing in recent years, which materialized a systematic dismantling of the State, budget cuts and loss of acquired rights. Furthermore, as is characteristic of Ecuador, the dominant elite, in the absence of a common class project, focused on disputes that undermined the social safety net and as a consequence, poverty grew. This created a breeding ground that stimulates phenomena associated with the drug trafficking economy. However, based on the adaptive capacity of capital (Marx) or the need for capitalism to codify deterritorialized flows (Deleuze), the drug trafficking business was progressively constructed to the needs of Ecuadorian capitalism from the point of view of economic accumulation, the domination of the State, and the manufacturing of consent of the population regarding the expanded repressive strategy.
In this whirlpool, the Government takes advantage of the opportunity to legitimize itself with the prospect of its re-election in 2025, either through victimization (“drug violence is a legacy of past governments”), or by carrying out false flag coups (possibly the simulation of TC Televisión) or the deepening of violence (use of rival groups, terrorism as a political resource, etc.). The following possible scenarios are opened:
1) The idea has been placed in Ecuadorian society that the problem is the absence of the State and that this must be resolved by building an apparatus focused on internal militarization and repression: violence as a way out of the crisis.
2) Reforms to the Comprehensive Penal Code to toughen penalties for terrorism, strengthening Bukele-style repression and legitimizing the state of exception; devices that in due time will not discriminate between a social fighter and a lumpen.
3) Packages of reforms and anti-popular actions are mobilized from the Assembly and the Executive: labor deregulation, VAT increase, FTA with China, elimination of subsidies, etc.
4) Legitimization of the agreements assumed by the Government of Guillermo Lasso for the presence of US military personnel and contractors in Ecuador, which cause the loss of sovereignty that has as a backdrop Plan Ecuador – Creole version of Plan Colombia –, one more link in the project of militarization of society.
5) Free rein to large-scale mining, reprimarization and liberalization of the economy as a mechanism for generating profits for the local bourgeoisies, based on the needs of capitalism in the central countries.
6) Cosmetic changes in the investigation processes of the structure of security forces permeated by drug trafficking, judicial function, customs, etc.
7) Absence of significant arrests of bourgeois leaders of the drug trafficking business and local criminal gangs; at most, only certain discretionary detentions as a smokescreen.
8) Discretionary use of certain drug trafficking cases, which do not involve the hegemonic factions of the Government and the Police such as Metastasis and Norero, leaving out cases such as the Albanian Mafia and Chérrez.
9) Staging of the alleged Correismo/anti-Correismo diatribe and the criminalization of the leadership of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) as a mechanism for creating false positives.
Possible answers from below
It is natural that the state of things is presented as chaos for popular organizations. There are some final guiding elements to consider. The first, the escalation of drug trafficking has not been generated by the popular sectors: those responsible are linked or part of the drug bourgeoisie. The debt that the left has lies in not having noticed this scenario and not organizing the poor sectors most susceptible to being recruited by the gangs (neighborhoods) in an organizational proposal that confronts the transformations of the capitalist economy, which include drug trafficking. The second, the need to insist on unity processes from below, with the desire to accumulate forces and face a comprehensive offensive project from those above, distancing oneself from the story of national unity as it is an envelope that, ultimately, contains pus.
Other specific aspects emerge:
- Opposition to the drug trafficking business built by economic groups and coordinated with transnational cartels and local criminal gangs, in collusion with governments.
- Defense of the territories of nationalities and peoples, and where there is a presence of organized social fabric through community, Indigenous and popular guards.
- Rejection of the construction of prisons in territories with the presence of social organizational structures, such as the provinces of Pastaza and Santa Elena.
- Demand that the State make a change in its anti-drug strategy. The concentration of coercive devices encourages corruption in public and private institutions, makes invisible the precarious social conditions of the majority of the affected population, and increases unresolved violence.
- Confront the strategy of labor deregulation and anti-people reforms that the government intends to impose in this context under the slogan of financing the war. Those who caused the overflow of drug trafficking were the rich, they are the culprits and those who must assume the consequences.
- Denounce racist practices and the criminalization of poverty, which humiliate the popular sectors and attempt to hide the conditions of misery in which the majority of the Ecuadorian people live.
In short, drug trafficking in Ecuador leads to an aggressive manifestation of neoliberal capitalism, a point of no return between barbarism and a profound transformation of the country. It brings the narco-bourgeoisie and a subaltern sector face to face, whose strongest manifestation on the streets is the Indigenous Movement. The statements of the President of the Republic, avoiding the obvious instrumentalization of the scenario to accentuate anti-popular measures, clearly illustrate that the objective is not drug traffickers, but those from below.
Andrés Tapia Arias is Amazonian Kichwa from the Pastaza Province and is part of CONAIE.
Andrés Madrid Tamayo is a professor at the Central University of Ecuador. Both are co-authors with Leónidas Iaza, of the book “Outburst in the October Rebellion in Ecuador.”
This article was first published in Spanish at Revista Crisis.
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Notes
1/ According to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime, the United States is the third largest consumer of cocaine in the world, behind Australia and the United Kingdom (UNODC, 2023).
2/ Based on different analyzes of the operational procedure and the subsequent murder of the prosecutor César Suarez in charge of investigating the ‘armed assault’ on the TC Televisión channel, some concluded that it was an operation mounted or tolerated by the security apparatus with the purpose of holding the terrorism and justify the declaration of internal armed conflict.
3/ The same United States ambassador to Ecuador, Michael Fitzpatrick, denounced the existence of narco generals of the Ecuadorian National Police and Armed Forces. “We are very concerned about the penetration of drug trafficking in Ecuador and in law enforcement (…) This week there is the case of the narco generals and we have already withdrawn visas” (CNN, 2021).
4/ The emergence of the market for synthetic drugs such as Fentanyl reconfigured the geography of drugs, becoming one of the triggers for the escalation of violence in Ecuador. The Colombian Government affirms that the growth in the consumption of this drug in the United States decreased the demand for cocaine, strengthening other coca markets in Europe, Asia and Oceania. The Amazon Basin was added to the traditional route of the Pacific Coast towards the Atlantic and the South Pacific. Added to this is the change from the epicenter of cocaine production historically located on the Colombian Pacific Coast to the eastern border with Ecuador – province of Sucumbíos –, currently converted into the main center of cocaine production in the world.
5/ In 2022 Los Choneros had approximately 20,000 members among their ranks and Los Lobos 8,000 (El Universo, 2022).
6/ By way of illustration, it should be said that Genaro García Luna, the Secretary of Security and ideologist of the war on drugs during the Felipe Calderón Government in Mexico, worked directly for the Sinaloa Cartel. Furthermore, this strategy has functioned as a business mechanism, if not as a form of continuity of the counterinsurgency policy, which, applied to the Ecuadorian case of Ecuador, would translate as radicalization of the governmental principle of criminalization of social struggle.
7/ The staging of the prison massacres of 2021, 2022 and 2023, the penetration of drug trafficking in the SNAI, ports, customs, borders, the politicization of drug trafficking (according to Moreno and Lasso, the strikes of 2019 and 2022 were financed by groups linked to drug trafficking) as a demobilization strategy.
References
CNN (2021, consultado el 22 de enero de 2024). EE.UU. asegura que ha retirado visas a “generales” vinculados al narcotráfico y Ecuador pide información. https://cnnespanol.cnn.com/2021/12/13/eeuu-narcotrafico-ecuador-orix/
El Universo. (2022, consultado el 23 de enero de 2024). Son al menos 26 narcobandas las que pelean en Ecuador por la venta y distribución de cocaína al mundo. https://www.eluniverso.com/noticias/seguridad/son-al-menos-26-narcobandas-las-que-pelean-en-ecuador-por-la-venta-y-distribucion-de-cocaina-al-mundo-nota/
France24. (2023, consultado el 21 de enero de 2024). Ecuador: asesinan a Rubén Cherres, personaje clave del caso que llevó a Lasso a juicio político. https://www.france24.com/es/am%C3%A9rica-latina/20230402-ecuador-asesinan-a-rub%C3%A9n-cherres-personaje-clave-del-caso-que-llev%C3%B3-a-lasso-a-juicio-pol%C3%ADtico
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Primicias. (2022, consultado el 23 de enero de 2024). Los Choneros y Lobos empiezan a convertirse en carteles de narcotráfico.https://www.primicias.ec/noticias/en-exclusiva/grandes-bandas-nuevos-carteles-ecuador-narcotrafico/
UNDOC. (2023, consultado el 21 de enero de 2024). Global Report on Cocaine 2023. Local dynamics, global challenges. https://www.unodc.org/documents/data-and-analysis/cocaine/Global_cocaine_report_2023.pdf
Zibechi, Raúl (2024, DesInformémonos 16 de enero 2024). Ecuador: una Guerra contra el movimiento indígena. https://desinformemonos.org/ecuador-una-guerra-contra-el-movimiento-indigena/
