Ecuador’s Wild West shows limits of the ‘Iron Fist’ of Nnovoa

On the southwest coast of Ecuador, drug gangs operate with impunity and terrified residents ask if the “iron fist” security policies of its president are only words.

In a dark military command center near the Peruvian border, eight Ecuadorian marines armed with rifles rifles oxidized are prepared for a patrol.

For their safety, everyone is strongly masked. Name labels and rank badges are eliminated.

They are about to enter the country of the poster, where the State has no monopoly on the use of force.

Like much of Ecuador, which once not consecutive, Puerto Bolívar has become a battlefield for rival posters that fight to bring record amounts of cocaine from Colombia and Peru to Europe, North America and Asia.

Last year, the Marines found around 30 bodies in waters near the port, some beheaded, other mutilated.

A recent bomb aimed at a local gang leader killed two people and leveled several houses.

“There is no security,” said a resident who asked not to be appointed for fear of being killed. “The country has been completely abandoned.”

The Marines move away from the dock in two ships, running through a maze of channels and brown clay estuaries flanked by mangroves, docks and fishing villages.

The majority of your four -hour patrol is not remarkable. They look for some fishing boats and find nothing.

But when they enter Huayala, a estuary stuffed with ramshackled docks and ash block buildings, the unit fits the position, its rifles were won and raised.

Marines nervously scan the mixture of ships and buildings, where hundreds of eyes go back from the shadows.

“It’s not a good idea to stay here for a long time,” trusts one of the Marines. “Someone could shoot.”

Puerto Bolívar is one of the most important bananas export ports in the world and a key seafood trade, strategically vital for Ecuador’s economy.

But today, container cranes seem inactive and deep water springs are mostly empty.

The boom companies are extortion, kidnapping, murder, illegal fishing, money laundering and cocaine traffic.

Most locals are too scared to speak. “They could go as far as killing me or my family,” said an old man, before his wife moved him away.

But a handful of residents are angry enough to speak and risk their lives.

One of them is a local fisherman who agreed to speak with AFP on condition of anonymity.

He reaches a safe meeting point with a facial mask and cap and is determined to tell the world what is happening to his community and his country.

It supports paying a “vaccine” or gang vaccine, a monthly rate, more than 20 percent of its capture in exchange for your safety.

“If we ignore them, sink our boats or steal our engines. Some fishermen have simply disappeared,” he said.

Others happily work for posters because they pay more.

The fisherman described the innumerable ways in which gangs earn money, from gold mining to fuel smuggling to Peru.

Some schemes are simple: banana shipments loaded with cocaine and sent to Europe. Others are complex, which implies the purchase of non -existent fish to wash money.

The names of the gangs and their leaders are well known to all: the wolves (The Wolves), the Box wolves and the choneros.

“Some of them know since they were children running without shoes,” said the fisherman.

Criminal influence is outdoors.

One of the numerous brothels in the area is called “Naples”, in tribute to the famous Colombian drug trafficker Pablo Escobar opulenta is the same name.

The military admit that the classification figures in the poster of the new generation of Jalisco of Mexico are deeply rooted in the area. They visit and do business outdoors.

President Daniel Novoa has responded to Ecuador’s security crisis declaring an emergency state, making high profile arrests and sending the military to the streets and gang -controlled prisons.

But in the premises of Puerto Bolívar, they see the little impact.

Nnovera lost the province for five points to his leftist rival in Sunday’s elections and may not do better in the second round of April.

Evan Ellis, an Latin American security expert and former state department advisor, said Nebloa deployments have “caused (gangs) to” be low “to some extent.”

But “they did not address the fundamental problems of drug flow through the country and the battles associated with control over routes.”

The deployments may also have left the military at the short hand and in a difficult position.

Marine Captain Carlos Carrera admits that “the Armed Forces are not designed to combat organized crime or to directly provide internal security. We can help the police.”

But according to Puerto Bolívar fisherman, the Police did not always monitor: “Prosecutors do not process and judges do not judge.”

An official remembered a woman who approached the Police for helping to escape her gang member.

“There is no one in charge here,” said a resident of Pitahaya, a nearby fishing village.

“We live in fear of losing everything for something small.”