The seizure of almost 22 tons of cocaine and the capture of a top Colombian drug trafficker have given the new Ecuadorian president a major boost in his war on organized crime. But these successes have also revealed how difficult it will be to overpower the country’s sophisticated gangs.
Ecuadorian authorities seized nearly 22 tons of cocaine on a farm in the province of Los Ríos on January 22. The haul, valued at $1.1 billion by military officials, is among the largest single cocaine seizures ever, anywhere in the world.
“This represents a strong weakening of the operational, logistical, and financial capacity of drug trafficking worldwide,” the Ecuadorian army said in a post on X, formerly Twitter.
Authorities questioned by InSight Crime believe the cocaine belonged to the Fatales gang, a faction of the Choneros, one of Ecuador’s most prominent criminal groups.
The mega-seizure, which has dominated headlines, was the biggest in a succession of confiscated shipments since Ecuador declared war on the country’s gangs on January 9. An additional 14 tons of drugs were seized between January 9 and 22, bringing the total haul to 36 tons. In 2023, the country seized 197 tons of drugs, according to official police seizure data passed to InSight Crime.
Since declaring war, President Daniel Noboa has militarized the fight against organized crime. The militarization has seen troops pour onto the streets and into prisons with the mission to contain criminal violence, hunt down gang members, and seize the cocaine that has funded their leap in strength, sophistication, and brutality.
“We are using our defense resources to directly target narco-terrorist groups,” a Ministry of Defense official speaking in a personal capacity told InSight Crime.
Meanwhile, in another apparent win for Ecuador’s new security force offensive, police arrested a high-profile Colombian guerrilla and drug trafficker, Carlos Arturo Landázuri Cortés, alias “Gringo,” on January 21.
Gringo is the alleged leader of the Oliver Sinisterra Front of the ex-FARC mafia, which has historically been involved in cocaine trafficking in southwestern Colombia and northern Ecuador, utilizing connections with the Lobos, Ecuador’s predominant criminal group.
Intelligence sharing seems to be at the heart of these successes. The seizure in Los Ríos comes after six months of surveillance by Ecuador’s military, while Colombian police attributed Gringo’s arrest to coordination and information sharing with Ecuadorian authorities.
This type of intelligence sharing is a game changer, experts and officials told InSight Crime.
“Strong intelligence sharing would open doors of cooperation with information from the US Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) through the Southern or Eastern Command for Ecuador’s military forces,” Fredy Rivera Velez, a security and strategic studies professor in Ecuador, told InSight Crime. “But the Americans and Colombians are distrustful of Ecuador’s police, with suspicions that there are still commanders working for the country’s criminal structures.”
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President Noboa has touted these recent successes as proof that his hard-line security approach is working, but experts caution that the gangs will not be so easily defeated.
“We are dealing strong blows to these narco-terrorist groups,” Noboa told domestic television station Teleamazonas. “We must continue fighting.”
This deployment of the military, supporting the beleaguered and outgunned police, has had an immediate impact on the security situation.
“The war on gangs has drawn attention to the gangs,” Lorena Yael Piedra, a former intelligence official and President of the Ecuadorian Association of International Studies, told InSight Crime. “This is making it increasingly difficult for them to receive money from the members of large transnational drug trafficking structures who pay once the shipment reaches its destination.”
SEE ALSO: Assessing the Early Days of Ecuador’s War on Gangs
But the quantity and geographic diversity of the seizures have also revealed just how much cocaine is flowing through the country, as well as the variety of routes available to traffickers.
Ecuador is likely to remain an important transit nation for international cocaine shipments coming from neighboring Colombia and Peru.
Despite increases in cocaine production, global demand and prices remain stable. Meanwhile, Ecuador’s developed port infrastructure and long coastline give traffickers various dispatch points for cocaine consignments. In addition to the provinces that have seen large seizures since January 9, traffickers have been using the Galápagos Islands as a way station for drugs.
“I believe that gangs’ penetration of Ecuador is going to deepen, and more drugs will come through Ecuador. Why? Because it’s easy,” Rivera Velez said when asked about the longer-term prospects.
While showing initial results, militarization does nothing to address the underlying factors that turned Ecuador into a cocaine superhighway, facilitated by high levels of corruption and weak institutions.
“Right now, we are seeing the short-term effects of [militarization] and we have to ask ourselves, ‘and then what?’ What happens after we end the state of emergency?” Rivera Velez said.
There is also the issue of funding. Ecuador is struggling to finance its war and does not have the money to sustain the military’s current level of involvement in police work.
The country’s gangs, meanwhile, may be in a position to wait out the economic assault. In recent years, they have diversified their criminal portfolio beyond drug trafficking to include extortion, illegal mining, and human trafficking and smuggling.
“Drug trafficking is an important part of gangs’ income. But be careful. The criminal corporations have diversified, and we are losing sight of that,” Rivera Velez said.
Featured image: Ecuadorian authorities seize 21.5 tons of cocaine in Los Ríos. Credit: AFP