Walled houses, fenced passages with metal doors and parks completely fenced. Soanda, a parish south of Quito, capital of Ecuador, has transformed its open places into fortifications. José Calderón, neighborhood leader, opens the door to enter a narrow street that leads to an apple of houses. No one enters if he doesn’t live there. Like its street, there are another hundreds who have protected from danger with barriers. It is their way of facing the one that devastates them. The neighbors look with astonishment as every month there is an armed confrontation. The tests are there: murders, shootings and busy businesses.
The in areas like Soanda. Only in 2024 the parish registered nine violent deaths, according to police data. And until May 13 of this year there are already ten. Soanda is from contrasts. With a population of 150,000 inhabitants – one of the densest of the Quito -, the rise of trade and the increase in crimes coexist. A couple of blocks away from José Calderón’s house is Jota Street, one of the most conflicting. There is a business with another. Clothing stores, markets, restaurants and bars work practically all day, without rest. It is Saturday afternoon and passers -by enter and leave the premises, they seek what to buy or eat in the carts installed on the sidewalks. All seem forced to live with violence.
Police Gabriel Rosero, head of operations of the Eloy Alfaro district – which includes parishes such as Soanda – says that the murders of recent months are premeditated. It is a dispute between criminal gangs. It is already common to hear that a shooting or a slaughter was for an “adjustment of accounts”, euphemism that conceals the dispute by José Calderón knows. It is enough to walk a few meters from home to meet the proof of the escalation of violence: what was a bakery, today is an abandoned house with the shattered glass and the walls perforated to bullets. The place was uninhabited after the attack. Those who pass by just look at him.
“In Soanda, these crimes appear since last year. We had barbaric tranquility, there was nothing happened here,” Calderón says. “But there is enough trade and the groups want to seize our sector,” he adds. The most recent attack occurred on May 9, when two men were shot dead in the street. Cristina’s son – who prefers not to reveal his last name for security – was a witness of the crime. “Luckily or death, my son was spent at that time. I can no longer send my son to walk four blocks at night,” says the mother.
Violence in Ecuador has grown up in recent years, and 2025 does not show signals of improvement. Ecuador registered 3,094 intentional homicides from January to April of this year, an increase of 58% compared to 1,951 of the same period last year. Even against 2023 – the most bloody year in the recent history of the country – that closed that same four -month period with 2,301 cases, current figures point out that 2025 could become the most violent year.
The, which seemed like a problem in border provinces or coastal cities such as Guayaquil, Machala or Durán, now begins to settle in areas of Quito. Between January 1 and May 13, 2025, 94 homicides have been reported in the Metropolitan District of Quito, an increase of 32.4% compared to the 71 cases recorded in the same period of 2024.
The intensification of violence in sectors such as Soanda responds, in part, that organized crime groups have focused their efforts on the collection of local gangs, says Pedro Manosalvas, security expert. “The expansion of these bands and gangs has resulted in a war of territories for microtrafficking control,” he explains.
Carolina Andrade, a member of the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC) agrees that the increase in violence is due to the fact that Quito is seen by organized crime groups as a consumer market. “When these violent events occur, it is because these groups that manage the distribution and supply networks for domestic consumption come into tension,” says Andrade. “What they want to seize a parish,” says José Calderón. He immediately replies: “It is because it is good, it has where to sell, who to sell and what is more, the control is minimal.”
The consumption and sale of drugs in the sector is not a novelty. Cristina, one of the residents of the neighborhood, says that even school students are manipulated to sell drugs. “Many have had to get children out of institutions. Children are already threatened and potatoes, vaccinated,” he says. With this, José Calderón agrees, who remembers that a few months ago, a woman invited some young people in the neighborhood to eat and “you said you want to make money, thus, easy, I give you some packages, you sell.” Calderón tells that the minors alerted him about what happened: “With a group of neighbors we approached her and said: ‘If he is going to do that here, he will go wrong. It is better to leave.’ Fifteen days later, he left the sector.”
Manosalvas also points out that it has opened it the way for criminal groups to operate without reprisals: “Impunity allows them to act with greater recklessness in front of the population and the authorities. In addition, it favors the proliferation of other related crimes such as extortion, kidnapping, arms and people traffic,” he explains. Andrade adds another problem: the high rotation of the police and lack of resources. “Everything is concentrated in the cities of the coast, how the situation is there. That affects because the resources to support work in other cantons are reduced.”
The neighbors have tried to talk to the authorities, but have not found an answer. And the times they have managed to have work tables with the police, “the bosses do not last two months. We plan a work agenda and a month change them, again it is time to zero,” complains José Calderón.
For now, Soanda residents cling to the few peace spaces that they still retain, such as the Ecuavoley court – a local volleyball variant – in the ecological park. There they meet every weekend and play until the night. It is one of the few corners that has not yet been surrounded by bars, such as the other parks and apples of the citadel. But none of the residents can assure with certainty how much more time it will remain.
