Drug trafficking in rural Ecuador: disappearances and murders in Guayas, Los Ríos and Manabí
Organised crime is advancing into agricultural communities in Guayas, Los Ríos and Manabí while the State concentrates operations in cities. Eight young people were murdered in Milagro.
The Ecuadorian countryside, a forgotten scene of drug trafficking
The dispute between criminal gangs for control of rural areas in Guayas, Los Ríos and Manabí is spreading without State operations reaching them with the same intensity as large cities, according to extra.ec. Disappearances, murders and territories converted into routes or warehouses for drug trafficking now define the reality of communities that historically lived from agriculture.
Cases registered in Vinces and Valencia, and the recent disappearance and murder of eight young people in Milagro, illustrate the magnitude of a crisis that can no longer be ignored. Behind these events are identified disputes between criminal gangs seeking to dominate strategic drug trafficking corridors.
In the midst of that violence, rural populations are trapped. Organised crime recruits some of the local youth, while residents observe how their surroundings change without the State offering a proportional response.
States of exception and curfews decreed in the country have tended to concentrate in urban centres, leaving the countryside with scant surveillance and insufficient resources to confront increasingly consolidated criminal organisations.
Extra.ec notes that reinforcing urban control alone is not enough to contain the advance of drug trafficking in rural territories. The presence of the State in these areas and adequate security conditions for their inhabitants represent, according to the outlet, an outstanding debt in the country's security policy.
Source: Google News EC — Crime