Warring factions of the Tiguerones criminal group carried out one of Ecuador’s worst-ever massacres, as the government continues to struggle to deter lethal criminal battles.
A March 6 gang attack left at least 22 people dead in Ecuador’s port city and drug trafficking hub, Guayaquil, local media reported. The violence rocked the Socio Vivienda and La Barraca neighborhoods of Nueva Prosperina, a district in the city’s northwest that has become a base of operations and a conflict zone for criminal groups.
Videos taken by Socio Vivienda residents looking on from a distance show apparent gang members chasing each other through the streets, as the clap of high-powered rifle fire rings out.
“Nueva Prosperina is a battlefield, leaving the neighborhood’s residents defenseless and living in fear,” Mayor of Guayaquil Aquiles Álvarez said on X following the attacks.
Police told local media that the killings were the result of an ongoing conflict between two criminal groups: the Fénix and the Igualitos. Both are factions of the Tiguerones, one of the country’s largest criminal groups with a strong presence in Guayaquil and the northern province of Esmeraldas, both crucial drug trafficking corridors. The murder of a Fénix leader two days prior motivated the attacks, Primicias reported.
The conflict between Tiguerones factions stems from an internal split following the October 2024 capture of its top leader, William Joffre Alcívar Bautista, alias “Willy,” in Spain. Willy, who grew up in Socio Vivienda, had reportedly sown the seeds of the Tiguerones’ fracture in Guayaquil before his capture, encouraging a purge of snitches and renegades within the group, local media reported, citing police sources.
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Ecuadorian authorities accused the leader of orchestrating an attack on a live news broadcast in January 2024 that made international headlines and helped spark the government’s heavy-handed military crackdown on organized crime.
In the days following the Nueva Prosperina attacks, security forces responded with raids that arrested at least 23 Tiguerones members. President Daniel Noboa, who faces reelection in April, promised a further show of strength in the district while guaranteeing amnesty for forces involved in the raids.
“All police and military personnel who have acted and who are going to be deployed in Nueva Prosperina have already been granted a presidential pardon,” Noboa said on X on March 7. “Defend the country, and I will defend you.”
InSight Crime Analysis
The Nueva Prosperina killings underscore how the government’s tough-on-crime response has ranged from minimally effective at best to spurring more violence at worst.
In the lead up to the 2025 presidential elections, Noboa has repeatedly highlighted his government’s efforts to tackle the country’s security issues. The president has granted unprecedented authority to the military to combat organized crime, declaring near-continuous states of emergency in organized crime hubs like Guayaquil, which enforce curfews and authorize warrantless raids. Amid the measures, in 2024, homicides dropped 13%, and security forces seized historic quantities of drugs. Increased security force activity has led to the capture, exile, or death of many of the country’s top gang leaders.
However, human rights organizations and InSight Crime have documented numerous cases of abuses perpetrated by security forces during the crackdown. Reports of forced disappearance, extrajudicial killing, and torture by officials jumped to 237 in 2024, up from 70 in each of the previous two years, according to data provided to InSight Crime by Ecuador’s Attorney General’s Office.
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The crackdown has also failed to prevent criminal groups’ violent outbursts. In November 2024, 17 incarcerated people were killed in a massacre in Guayaquil’s Litoral Penitentiary, the first such event since a surge of prison massacres between 2021 and 2023 that claimed over 400 lives. The Nueva Prosperina massacre appears to be the largest gang-related massacre outside of prison walls in Ecuador’s history.
Homicides stemming from gang conflicts have spiked in the build up to the election, with violence in January 2025 eclipsing historic totals for the first month of the year. The quick turnover of gang leaders as a result of the crackdown is a primary driver of this violence.
“Each time an important head falls, the organization splits and a new struggle for leadership arises,” said Pablo Dávila, police commander for the Guayaquil metropolitan area, after the raids in Nueva Prosperina.
Featured image: Ecuador’s military patrols Socio Vivienda during an operation in 2022. Credit: El Universo