Thick beard, corpulent, pronounced belly, menacing gaze, imperious gestures. This is the portrait of 45-year-old José Adolfo Macias, also known as Fito, the leader of the Choneros (a formidable mafia gang with an army of 8,000 men): the criminal whose escape from the Guayaquil prison has plunged Ecuador into an asymmetric war between the State and drug trafficking.
Facing him is Daniel Noboa, the youngest elected president on the planet (only 36 years old), in office for just two months. After the armed assault by the gangs that has thrown the country into chaos, he declared a state of emergency and later a state of war, involving the army in defense of institutions and the democratic stability of the country.
It’s the first time that South American drug cartels, accustomed to planting colluding and corrupt politicians at the highest levels of government to protect their interests, directly challenge a state to control the reins of power themselves. “You wanted war,” is the battle cry shouted on TV by the rebels, “and war you’ll have.”
Ecuador (18 million inhabitants) watches in shock and terror as a terrifying eruption of violence unfolds. A bloodbath in which all 22 groups of major local criminality, with cross-cutting alliances and international contacts, participate with their own irreconcilable internal interests and conflicts. This conflict has forced the governments of Colombia and Peru to patrol the borders, and the United States to offer assistance to the Quito government.
The State television center in Guayaquil is occupied, and killings with beheadings and mutilated bodies occur everywhere. Universities, schools, hospitals, and government offices are under siege. The civilian population is mostly barricaded at home during the day and legally restricted by curfew at night. A suspension of freedoms unthinkable until two years ago in a country considered an oasis amid the convulsions of the South American continent.
The turning point that plunged Ecuador into this nightmare dates back to February 23, 2021, when in the Litoral prison in Guayaquil, where the leaders of the main gangs were imprisoned, the Colchones clashed with the Lobos (the second-largest and most dangerous gang in the country). A simple brawl led to a massacre with 75 deaths.
This signaled a geographic shift in drug trafficking flows. Mexican distribution centers, tired of paying transit tolls to the major producer cartels in Colombia and Peru, decided to find less costly channels to deliver supplies to Europe. They abandoned the routes of the Caribbean and the Atlantic, choosing the Pacific as an alternative. They also chose Guayaquil (three million inhabitants) as the new hub, the largest port in Ecuador and a passing tourist destination for cruise ships heading to the Galapagos. Turning the city into a crime hub, with all 22 gangs (once dedicated to robberies, extortion, managing illegal gambling, and prostitution) involved in drug trafficking. They were externally directed by cartels: Sinaloa allied with the Colchones, Jalisco Nueva Generacion with the Lobos. The presence of the Albanian mafia ensuring the arrival of drugs in European terminals is also significant. With the simultaneous influx of top-tier criminals, Guayaquil became the most violent city on the planet in a few months.
The gangs had already attempted to influence the presidential election last summer by brutally killing the left-wing candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who had declared war on the cartels after a rally; an execution ordered by either the Colchones or the Lobos (it is still unclear). The commitment to clean up the situation was immediately taken up by the right-wing candidate Noboa (actually a left-wing liberal with economics studies at Harvard, son of the most important family of banana entrepreneurs). With the Phoenix plan, he aimed to separate common criminals from the heads of drug trafficking in prisons, confining the latter to maximum-security facilities.
The spark for the war was ignited by the threatened transfer of Fito (sentenced to 34 years in prison) from the prison near Guayaquil, where with the complicity of the agents, he lived a lavish life. Fito had already experienced the hardships of tough prison life at the beginning of his detention. But after assuming the leadership of the Colchones, following the assassination of the historical leader Jorge Luis Zambrano, he managed, thanks to the intervention of magistrates in his service, to be transferred to a much softer prison where the courtyard was adorned with murals in his honor, and he threw parties with fireworks. He even recorded a narcocorrido (a genre of popular music that glorifies drug trafficking heroes) with a song dedicated to him (“El corrido del Leon”), performed in collaboration with mariachis by his daughter, a singer and law graduate who enters show business under the stage name “Regina Michelle.”
Even in prison, Fito managed to graduate in law, leaving behind his youthful past as a taxi driver and later as a henchman of the underworld. Despite his menacing appearance, he established himself as a South American version of Robin Hood, sensitive to the struggles of the most disadvantaged classes. A multi-dimensional leader: cunning and ruthless, of course, but also charismatic and intellectually substantial. And with significant means to weave the web of corruption, distributing money and gifts to all sides. Escaping wasn’t difficult for him (he had already succeeded in 2013, remaining at large for many months). The exponential growth of rival Lobos, allied with seven other groups, also played a role, as they were taking away the hegemony in controlling drug trafficking. In response, almost simultaneously, Fabricio Colon Pico, leader of the Lobos, also escaped from another prison because the stakes were too high to leave room for the rival.
Plunging Ecuador into hell.
