“These two cartels are spreading like cancer around the world,” says Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa, the former director of the International Operations of the Mike Mike Vigil, about the most famous Mexican drug cartels. “The ultimate goal is that one or the other cartel takes over the domination of Ecuador.”
Jalisco New Generation and Sinaloa have spread to more than 40 countries around the world. This is due to the increasing demand for cocaine in the US, Europe and Australia. However, the growing interest is causing problems in the countries from which cocaine comes, as a caliber that the ordinary drug user cannot imagine.
Mexican cartels are no longer only in Mexico. Increasingly, their presence in Ecuador, where they moved for its strategic location between the two largest cocaine producers, Colombia and Peru, is increasingly pronounced. And they also brought murderous tactics from Mexico.
Murders on a daily routine
Ecuador has gradually become one of South America’s most dangerous countries. Up to five of the 12 most proud cities in the world are located in Ecuador. Mexican cartels use smaller local gangs to expand their power. They gradually stronger, and with them and the degree of violence in the ground.
According to data from our world in data, the amount of murders in Ecuador is almost double this year compared to data from Mexico-up to 50 inhabitants per 100,000. This represents a huge increase compared to 2018, when it was only six inhabitants. Thus, although Mexican cartels began to move to Ecuador more than a decade, the situation began to deteriorate only recently.
After Colombia began to work with the United States to suppress drug operations, Ecuador proved to be the ideal country where the Mexicans could be realized. Ecuador has a long unguarded coast and good highways, and the conditions for getting visas are unpretentious.
That is why Mexican Sinaloa joined Telm Castro, Captain of the Ecuadorian Army, which gradually became one of the most successful drug carriers between Columbia and Ecuador. The smugglers used military vehicles and aircraft to transport drugs, and ships disguised as fishing vessels used to refuel smaller boats loaded with materials. Occasionally, they also threw drugs with a GPS locator into the sea, where they were later picked up by smugglers on less striking ships, such as a crew full of fishermen.
Ecuadorian Pablo Escobar
One of the key smuggles in this way became fisherman Édison Washington Prado. An experienced navigator helped build a cartel in the Pacific Ocean “cocaine superdess”. After that, it made it possible to transport such a huge amount of drugs until he earned the nickname Pablo Escobar from Ecuador.
It was he who also made the strategy of associating with smaller gangs common. For his protection he hired the most powerful local gang Choneros. And when Prada was arrested in 2017, Choneros took over his business and expanded their cooperation with Sinaloa throughout the Ecuadorian coast.
Like Escobar’s hippos, scared of Colombia, in Ecuador, the presence of members of the strongest gang began to rise faster. Their close cooperation with the cartel could only mean more and more problems. The members of the other, smaller gangs forced to enter Choneros by force. Those who refused were killed.
The headquarters of Choneros gradually became prisons, where their imprisoned leader Jorge Luis Zambrano could organize his criminal activities and verb new members.
Cartel against cartel, gang against gang
However, he wanted to find his place in Ecuador’s biggest competitor Sinaloy, Jalisco cartel. But he needed help to do so. He therefore focused on the rivals of Choneros. With them he had a common goal, and completely exclude Choneros from the game. Zambrano soon became the victim of the Colombian rental killer, who was supposed to act on behalf of Jalisco.
Without his presence, space opened. Smaller gangs – wolves, Tiguerones and Chone Killers, which have so far led Choneros – have merged and created a new gang standing behind a junior called New Generation.
“They knew that Choneros were working for Sinal, so they quickly tried to create a new structure after the department,” told WSJ Miguel Pazmiño, former head of the Ecuadorian Army Intelligence Service.
Mexican strategies also in Ecuador
Ecuador, which was until recently a relatively safe place, quickly changed to Mexico 2. It started in prisons, but as always the violence has moved to the streets. The victims of the murders were gradually became judges, prosecutors or police, but also ordinary people.
The Mexicans started to pay to their Ecuadorian colleagues other than money. They began to move not only money and drugs into the ground, but now weapons. For example, in 2023, the Ecuadorian Navy captured 122 rifles on a ship approaching the Galapago Islands, including M4 offensive rifles.
And the more weapons had the gangsters at hand, the more often the conflicts were armed. Most of the damage was caused by attacks when one party opposed the other. At that time, members of the families of men who are involved in criminal activities are also victims.
The case is known when at the funeral of the man they killed themselves was shot by members of the gang of participants of the ceremony and his family. Until recently, such practices in Ecuador were something unimaginable. However, the presence of Mexican cartels changed.
The fight with crime is still unsuccessful
However, the Ecuadorian President Noboa certainly did not help the situation. He is a close ally of US President Donald Trump. He was re -elected earlier this year, after promised to end up with violence in the streets. With this promise in mind, he decided to fight the wolves and other gangs to send soldiers.
Recently, it has passed laws that allow the security forces to be used in the fight against the crime of deadly strength, and the raid without a warrant is also approved. “We’ll take our country back,” he wrote on X in June.
However, this effort has so far been disastrous. It is the larger powers for the security forces that open space for abuse of their strength. According to WSJ, the military patrol in Guayaquile detained four boys who returned home from football in December. They were only 11 to 15 years old. Their bodies were discovered near the military base on Christmas Eve. All four bodies were so burned that it took another week to confirm their identity by DNA tests.
“The only thing I wanted when I heard the message was to hit me,” Katta Bustos said. Her sons, 15-year-old Ismael Arroyo and 14-year-old Josué Arroyo, were among the boys killed. Noboa said all 16 patrol men would be brought to justice.
However, the situation in Ecuador does not improve even after the call of soldiers. People are massively leaving the homes in which they grew up – it is too dangerous to stay. The raid, whether military or those gang members, are on the order of the order, and only the holes of bullets and dead bodies remain in the streets at the end of the streets. For the time being, it is questionable how Ecuador wants, but this time successfully, to suppress the Mexican influence and related violence.
