Ecuador: Police Arrest Dozens who Stormed Hospital

Facts

• Ecuadorian police have arrested 68 men who tried to seize control of a hospital in the town of Yaguachi, Guayas province, on Sunday. They were reportedly intending to protect a member of their gang receiving treatment for gunshot wounds, although the individual eventually succumbed to the injuries.¹
• Also on the weekend, maritime authorities — in coordination with the Colombian Navy — captured a 15-meter-long semi-submersible off the coast of the northern province of Esmeraldas ,which was carrying an estimate of $50M in cocaine. Three Colombian nationals were also arrested.²
• The Andean Community — comprised of Ecuador, Colombia, Bolivia and Peru — launched a new security network against organized crime during an emergency meeting held in Lima on Sunday, as violence is also mounting in the once-peaceful Ecuador.³
• The country has been rocked by a number of attacks — including the killing of a prosecutor and a recent assault on a TV station — since Los Choneros criminal gang leader Adolfo Macías, alias 'Fito,' escaped from prison earlier this month.⁴
• Pres. Daniel Noboa has declared a state of emergency in response, as well as a night curfew. On Jan. 9 he declared an 'internal armed conflict' against organized criminal gangs, mobilizing the Armed Forces to neutralize them. The government claims these moves reduced the daily average of violent deaths in the country from 28 to 6.⁵
• On Monday, the same day that Ecuadorian Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld hosted a US delegation in Quito to discuss cooperation in its war against gangs, the arrest of a wanted Colombian cocaine trafficker — Carlos Arturo Landazuri Cortés, alias 'El Gringo' — was announced.⁶

Sources: ¹BBC News, ²MercoPress, ³Yahoo News, ⁴EFE Noticias, ⁵The Cuenca Dispatch and ⁶CBS.

Narratives

• Pro-establishment narrative, as provided by Foreign Policy. Though past efforts to improve things in Latin America have failed, this latest crackdown on criminal gangs may be more successful as, this time, there's broad public support for state actions and neighboring countries. In this context, cooperation with the US to gather information may prove crucial for this push to be successful, as financial activities that fund organized crime must be tackled.
• Establishment-critical narrative, as provided by teleSUR English. Under the pretext of combating international drug trafficking, Noboa is dangerously treading the same failed path that Colombia did with the US-backed Plan Colombia in 1999. Instead of ceding its own sovereignty to Washington — whose sole interest in South America is to expand its own influence — Ecuador needs to establish truth and justice.

Predictions