How Ecuador Became One of the World’s Most Violent Countries | WSJ

– [Reporter] Ecuador is
at war with drug gangs. The South American country
declared what it called an internal armed conflict after gunmen took over a TV studio and
launched a series of attacks. (car bangs)
(people screams) Fighting intensified
after a top gang leader escaped from prison on Sunday, prompting a 60-day state of emergency. Here's what's caused
Ecuador's wave of violence and what's at stake for
the region and the US as gangs fight for control of lucrative cocaine trafficking routes.

– Ecuador has been going
to a surge of violence over the last three or four years. It's gone from one of the
safest country in Latin America to one of the most violent, and that's due to the drug trade. On Sunday, what happened is
that a lot of the drug gangs, their leaders are located in the prisons. And one of the leaders of
one of the biggest gangs in Ecuador escaped from prison on Sunday.

That prompted a response
from the new president, Daniel Noboa, who issued
a state of emergency and sent in law enforcement to try to take control of the prisons. A day after that happened, on Tuesday, another gang members took over
a TV station in Guayaquil, the country's biggest city. Then across the country, really, there was different
incidents that occurred, kinda car bombs. Police were kidnapped. It seemed like a very coordinated response to the government to
try to send a message.

President Daniel Noboa, who's only been in office since November, he declared an internal
armed conflict in Ecuador. So what that practically
means is that the military will now have a greater role
in trying to improve security. So basically, the gangs
become military targets. The soldiers are able to
try to neutralize them. The root of this wave of violence is an increasing drug trade. Drugs flowing in from Columbia, mainly, that are going up to Europe
and the United States. They are now moving into Ecuador. A lot of the cocaine
production in Columbia is on the border with Ecuador. The security experts say
that it's actually easier for Columbian gangs to
move the drugs into Ecuador rather than straight outta Columbia. Ecuador has really good roads, has really good infrastructure, has little security at the ports. Ecuador also is a dollarized economy. So that makes it easier for drug gangs to launder their money into the country. And that has attracted a lot of attention from international
cartels, Mexican cartels, Albanian cartels, for example, and it has provided a lot more resources for the local gangs who
are now controlling this.

At the same time, a really
key factor in this violence has been the government's
inability to control what happens inside the prisons. The prisons have become the headquarters and the de facto
headquarters for the gangs where they operate with
immunity from inside. Security experts will say
that what needs to be done, the first thing needs to be done, is that the government
needs to take back control of the prisons. Without that, it's very
difficult to weaken the gangs and to reduce the violence.

Longer term, I mean, it's an issue of how to deal with the
international drug trade. And then also the US, Europe, Columbia, Mexico, several American
countries right now are struggling with increase to crime. Ecuador is, I think, the most startling example of that by far..

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