Ecuador Penitentiary System Deadly Gun Riots

"[In the initial fighting, inmates] tried to dynamite a wall to get into Pavilion 2 to carry out a massacre. They also burned mattresses to try to drown [their rivals] in smoke."

"We are fighting against drug trafficking. It is very hard."

Pablo Arosemena, governor, Guayas province, Ecuador 

"The first right that we should guarantee should be the right to life and liberty, which isn't possible if security forces can't act to protect."

"There will be more than 1,000 pardons, but this is part of a process [to eliminate prison overcrowding]."

"For example, installing a freight scanner in the Guayaquil Penitentiary to avoid the entry of arms costs $4 million."

Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso

Soldiers in armoured vehicles are positioned near the perimeter of the Guayaquil prison  Getty Images

 

Ecuador is badly in need of international financial assistance to enable it to meet the challenge it faces in attempting to secure the country and protect the nation from the wild violence of drug gangs. The nation's prisons cannot contain all those arrested for criminal activities connected with the movement of illicit drugs. The governor of the state of Guayas where the latest prison atrocities have killed hundreds in mass prison gunfights between inmates is badly in need of help. Aid, Governor Arosemena, announce, is expected in the form of resources and logistics.

Ecuador houses close to 40,000 prison inmates in its entire penitentiary system with an optimum capacity of 30,000, which means that ten thousand more prisoners than the system is built to accommodate present a problem for prison authorities in their capacity to exert control and maintain order and security. Of the total of those incarcerated, half have not yet even been sentenced. So the justice system has some catching-up to do, as well.

The country's president has stated that Ecuadorian authorities plan to deal with prison overcrowding through granting pardons where applicable, through relocating inmates, and transferring some foreign inmates back to their countries of origin. The outstanding problem the country and the penitentiary system faces aside from overcrowding is he introduction of guns and explosives smuggled into the hands of inmates.

A series of violent, deadly gun battles have taken place between rival gangs incarcerated in the largest prison in Ecuador. In the latest of these, at least 68 inmates have died, and dozens more wounded on Saturday. It took an entire day for authorities to regain control of the Litoral Penitentiary located in the coastal city of Guayaquil. The gun battles began before dawn with shooting lasting eight hours. New clashes took place in the afternoon before order was finally restored.

Fighting among prison gangs is linked to international drug cartels. Social media replayed videos showing bodies of inmates, some had been burned, lying on the ground in demonstrations of ferocious brutality. When night fell it was announced that "the situation is controlled throughout the penitentiary". Some 900 police officers had taken control. Two months earlier fights among gang members led to the deaths of 119 inmates at the prison, where over 8,000 inmates are kept.

Early in the day, according to police commander Gen.Tanya Varela, drones flown over the chaos revealed inmates in three pavilions to be armed with guns and explosives. Weapons and ammunition enter the prison into the hands of prisoners through the medium of vehicles delivering supplies and on occasion by drones. President Lasso in October issued a national state of emergency empowering security forces to fight drug trafficking.

 

 

The Constitutional Court however, refused recently to permit the military access into prisons, refuting the declared state of emergency. Soldiers can only assemble outside the Literal. Of the bloody fighting within Litoral prison when 119 inmates were killed in late September, five of the dead had been beheaded. In simultaneous riots in various prisons last February, 79 inmates were killed. In total for the year, over 300 prisoners died in penitentiary clashes across Ecuador.

"Enough of this. When will they stop the killing? This is a prison not a slaughterhouse, they are human beings", pleaded Francisca Chancay, whose brother has been imprisoned for eight months in Litoral. Those desperate to see an end to the slaughter call for the military to take control of the prisons. 

"Here you sleep with one eye open[ and now, word is spreading inside the prison of attacks on other pavilions in a few days]. They want to break you ... and gain control of the drug-trafficking routes and micro-trafficking [or local drug sales]."

"[At the Litoral Penitentiary], everything is arranged with massacres, extortion. If you don't cooperate you die, they decide who lives, who dies, who gets rich."

Unidentified inmate

An Ambulance leaves the Litoral penitentiary the morning after riots broke out inside the jail in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Saturday, Nov. 13, 2021. (AP Photo/Jose Sanchez)