As cartels and crime syndicates flock to Ecuador for cocaine trade profits, its murder rate has soared, with a TV station assault the crescendo of a week of bloodshed
Political upheaval and street protests, gun battles and floods. José Luis Calderón has seen it all during his 23 years as one of Guayaquil’s top television journalists. Never had the Ecuadorean reporter been the story himself.
That changed just after lunch last Tuesday when the 47-year-old reporter heard shouts and the sound of people running in the corridors of TC Televisión, the channel where he works. “At first … we thought it was a fight,” he remembered. But as the yelling intensified, it became clear it was not.
Calderón had been in the newsroom next to the channel’s studio when the pandemonium began. Sensing something was badly wrong, he bolted into the bathroom with two female workmates and called his brother-in-law. “I just told him: ‘I don’t know what’s happening …… but we’re in an emergency situation. Please call 911. I’m trapped. I’m hiding … My colleagues are in pieces.’”
I’m happy to see coverage of this on Lemmy. My wife is Ecuadorian and from Guayaquil, things are very scary for her family right now.
My dad moved to Ecuador 2 years ago partially because of how safe his area was supposed to be. Now he’s stuck in lockdown.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Next door, more than a dozen masked gang members carrying explosives and guns had stormed the channel’s studio as its cameras rolled, broadcasting the attack to the nation – and soon the world.
Ecuador was always considered a land of tranquility,” Lt Marcelo Gutiérrez, a spokesperson for the country’s navy, said on Thursday as thousands of troops were deployed to restore order after the seemingly coordinated wave of attacks.
“European drug use is the fundamental pillar of violence in Ecuador,” said organized crime expert Chris Dalby, explaining how Guayaquil’s Pacific coast port was the main point of export for cocaine from neighbouring Colombia and Peru, the world’s biggest producers.
Ecuador’s rapidly intensifying crisis caught the world’s attention last August when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on the campaign trail after pledging to crack down on corruption and drug trafficking.
In a plaza filled with seesaws, climbing frames and swings, two half-naked men lay face down on the curb at the feet of a cluster of air force troopers with rifles.
Police sealed off the area with yellow crime scene tape, body collectors arrived, and within minutes of the murder the salon’s owners were sweeping the victim’s blood and hair into the gutter and hosing down its scarlet-stained porch.
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