The Ecuadorian coastal province El Oro has emerged as a new hotspot for violence, as splintering criminal groups compete for control of the region’s lucrative criminal economies.
On January 12, assassins killed Eber Ponce, the mayor of Arenillas, a municipality in the south of the province near Ecuador’s border with Peru. The politician was driving his van with his 6-year-old son, just hours after they participated in a cycling event.
Ponce’s death is part of a wave of violent attacks on officials in the province since the beginning of 2024, including the April assassination of Jorge Maldonado, the mayor of the nearby municipality of Portovelo, and the attempted murder of the newly appointed director of a prison in Machala, El Oro’s capital and key port hub, in December.
The extreme violence in the province has also taken a heavy toll on citizens. In December 2024 alone, assassins killed three at a car shop in Machala; while in El Guabo, a municipality just outside of Machala, 10 were murdered in another massacre. Homicide statistics from the Ministry of the Interior revealed 591 homicides in 2024 (about 82 per 100,000 inhabitants), surpassing 2023’s record of 561 homicides.
The sheer brutality of the violence has also escalated. Reported incidents in 2024 included attacks with explosives, dismemberments, decapitations, and burnt corpses.
Authorities have attributed much of the violence in El Oro to battles between factions of the Lobos, Ecuador’s largest criminal group, which originated in the prison system. By 2024, the Lobos were active in 16 of Ecuador’s 24 provinces and were expanding into the territory of their former allies and current primary enemy, the Choneros.
However, in El Oro, the Lobos’ structure has violently disintegrated, as subgroups fight for control of the province’s criminal markets. This competition has led to the formation of splinter groups, such as LobosSaoBox, which attack former allies with extreme brutality. This subgroup is exacerbated by a power vacuum left by the arrest of regional Lobos’ leader, Vicente Ángulo Sosa, alias “Comandante Vicente,” in May 2024. A judge ordered his release in December, citing medical reasons, but it is unclear whether he can reunite the factions under one banner.
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The rising violence in El Oro reflects the weakened state of both national and regional criminal leadership caused by arrests and military crackdowns in the streets and prisons.
The problems start at the top. The Lobos’ national leader, Wilmer Chavarría Barré, alias “Pipo,” fled the country and is believed to lead the organization from Europe, relying on regional leaders to unite the group. At the same time, Ecuador’s military operations have disrupted communication between the prisons — previously used as gang control centers — and street-level mafias.
The Lobos’ decentralized structure, which already lacks cohesive leadership, has made the group more susceptible to splintering, Renato Rivera-Rhon, director of the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory (Observatorio Ecuatoriano de Crimen Organizado – OECO), told InSight Crime.
“Having this distribution of command can generate fragmentation when there are disagreements within the organization or when there is an increase in finances,” he said.
In addition to decentralized leadership, the presence of lucrative criminal economies in El Oro incentivizes breakaway factions. Along with the neighboring province of Azuay, El Oro is a key hub for gold mining, an industry that in 2022 was worth up to $1 billion annually, according to statements by government officials.
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María Eulalia Silva, the president of Ecuador’s Chamber of Mining (Cámara de Minería de Ecuador), explained that proceeds from illegal gold mining are often reinvested into the same criminal economy, creating a vicious cycle.
“There are even areas in Ecuador where there are gold economies. You go and buy an excavator, and you don’t pay in cash. You pay in gold because it is becoming abundant,” she told InSight Crime.
As the name indicates, El Oro’s abundant and accessible gold reserves have also attracted predatory splinter groups. And the province’s coastline has become a crucial battleground for another lucrative criminal economy: cocaine trafficking. In Machala, gang conflict revolves around territorial disputes near the port of Puerto Bolívar. In 2024, criminal groups carried out several attacks using explosives in neighborhoods surrounding the port. One attack destroyed a dock allegedly controlled by the Lobos’ leadership, according to Ecuavisa. The attack was reportedly in retaliation for the Lobos’ assaults on boats operated by LobosSaoBox, the news outlet added.
Cocaine seizures in El Oro provide a stark indicator of the increasing drug flow. By August 2024, over 10 tons of cocaine had been seized in the province – a record-breaking figure, according to data Ecuador’s National Police provided to InSight Crime.
Featured Image: Ecuadorian armed forces stand outside the site of an explosives attack in Machala, El Oro, in August 2024. Credit: Diario Crónica