The night curfew decreed by the president of Ecuador, in four provinces of the country began this Sunday with the deployment of more than 75,000 soldiers and police to intensify the “war” declared by the president against criminal gangs.
The measure will be in force between 11:00 p.m. local time (seven hours more in Madrid) and 5:00 a.m. until March 30, in the provinces of Guayas, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas, Los Ríos and El Oro (border with Peru), four territories of a total of twenty-four provinces that make up Ecuador located in the coastal area, where criminal activities are concentrated.
During the curfew, which includes Guayaquil, the most populated city in Ecuador, only police, military and emergency health personnel will be able to circulate, under warning from the Government to arrest any other person circulating during those hours, including journalists, who are prevented from following the activities of state forces.
New phase
The curfew is part of a “new phase” of the “war” that the Noboa Government has been maintaining for more than two years against organized crime, causing an unprecedented wave of violence in the country, located at the head of Latin America in homicide rates.
The Minister of the Interior, , pointed out that they will have international support during the fifteen days, as has already happened in other operations, such as the one carried out last week together with the United States when they bombed an alleged Border Commandos, one of the dissident groups of the ex-guerrilla of the .
Reimberg asked Ecuadorians to be “calm” and “calm” in the face of “anything” they may hear. “We are going to go directly against criminal groups,” said the minister about this measure, which had already been announced two weeks ago.
“I know that there is a part of Ecuadorians who are worried that certain groups or criminals may have changed provinces. We have everything mapped, we are managing all the information, so we are going to hit all these groups in these fifteen days,” he stressed. He commented that in a second phase they could establish a curfew in other provinces.
“Internal armed conflict”
Ecuador has been living since 2024 under a state that Noboa declared to intensify the fight against criminal gangs, which he began to call “terrorists” and who are mainly dedicated to illegal mining and extortion of large sectors of the population, from whom they charge quotas under death threats.
Despite having been in this fight against organized crime for more than two years, with successive states of exception that have been marred by complaints of rights violations such as forced disappearances, the country closed 2025 with a record of homicides, counting around 9,300, according to figures from the Ministry of the Interior.
