Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa decreed this Thursday a new state of emergency in six provinces and two cities, including the capital, to combat lto increasing violence.
The decree establishes the restriction of the rights of inviolability of home, correspondence and freedom of assembly. In addition, it establishes a curfew in 19 cities in those provinces, from 10 p.m. to 5 a.m., except in Quito.
The president justified the measure in the situation of internal commotion that the country has been experiencing since the beginning of the year after the escape of drug trafficking kingpin Adolfo Macías, alias Fito.
His escape from a prison in Guayaquil unleashed a spiral of violence, such as the detonation of explosive devices in several cities and the takeover of a television channel by armed individuals while it was broadcasting live.
The state of emergency will be in force for 60 days in Guayas, Los Ríos, Manabí, Santa Elena and El Oro —on the coast—, Orellana, in the Amazon; Quito and the canton Camilo Ponce Enríquez.
Ecuador faces insecurity unprecedented that began in 2021 with more than a dozen prison massacres that left half a thousand prisoners dead. The authorities attribute the wave of violence to the operation of organized crime gangs related to drug cartels.
According to the 50-page decree, in the eight localities declared in emergency “the increase in hostilities, the commission of crimes and the intensity of the prolonged presence of organized armed groups stands out,” which is evidenced in 3,945 murders that occurred in those areas between 8 January and September 27.
A report from the Ministry of the Interior cited in the document admits that “criminal groups are acting with an alarming level of organization and lethality, showing a tendency to maximize the number of victims in each violent event.”
The professor at the School of Security and Defense of the Institute of Higher National Studies, Daniel Pontón, assured The Associated Press that it is “evident that (the government) has no other strategy” or a plan to face “a problem that is intact: the acute penetration of drug trafficking and the violence with which it acts, each time with macabre deaths and massacres.”
This is the fourth time that Noboa decrees the measure focused on certain territories.
Pontón anticipated that the new state of exception “will not have any effects” because it is a short-term measure, “with an adaptive tendency of criminal gangs, which move (to other territories) and over time begin to lose efficiency, as has been demonstrated.”
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