Violence in Ecuador: Interior Cities Among World's Most Dangerous in 2025
Babahoyo and Quevedo rank among the ten most violent cities in the world in 2025. Organised crime is shifting from ports towards the interior of the country.
Babahoyo and Quevedo, among the ten most violent cities in the world
Luis—a fictitious name—had 20 minutes to decide whether to escape his captors. Beside him, two other kidnapped people remained motionless, bound hand and foot on the bank of a river, after their bank accounts and cards had been emptied. Two weeks earlier, they had already warned him: not to go out at night, that they had him "marked". That day, work forced him to travel what is called the ecological route, seven kilometres of road between Babahoyo and Quevedo, in the centre-west of Ecuador. Today, both cities rank among the most dangerous in the world, according to elpais.com.
According to the annual ranking by the Citizens' Council for Public Safety and Criminal Justice, a Mexican organisation that compiles the list of the 50 most dangerous cities in the world, in 2025 six Ecuadorian cities appear among the top ten. Babahoyo breaks into second place for the first time, with 166 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants. Machala holds fourth place; Quevedo, fifth; the centre of Manabí province, seventh; and Guayaquil, eighth. Violence has not diminished: it has changed its map.
A decade ago, in the main cities of Los Ríos, El Oro and Manabí, the homicide rate did not exceed 15 per 100,000 inhabitants. Today that figure has tripled or quadrupled. The growth has been abrupt.
Crime as family routine
Luis was born in Quevedo, in the agricultural province of Los Ríos, where he grew up among banana, plantain and coffee plantations. "We want to think that life continues the same, but we no longer have that peaceful life of before," he says months after the kidnapping. In his family, crime became something everyday. His 75-year-old father-in-law was also kidnapped. The family paid the ransom. During the handover, the criminals sent a 12-year-old boy to collect the money while armed men watched from bushes and vehicles with rifles. They released him two days later on a secondary road. Shortly after recovering from the harsh conditions of captivity, the criminals returned to shoot at the house. "It seems there was a poor division and they came back for more," Luis summarises. Part of the family had to separate and move away until the situation calmed down.
In Los Ríos, travelling on certain roads has become a negotiation. Many seek permission from the mafia or pay the "vaccine"—an informal "protection" fee—to travel on public roads.
The stolen tractor and the irony of the official narrative
On 26 February, President Daniel Noboa visited Quevedo to deliver eight tractors to agricultural cooperatives. In a four-minute speech, he assured that his Government has combated crime and that indicators are improving. When the presidential motorcade left the city, one of the tractors was stolen and three farmers were kidnapped on the Jauneche-Mocache road, a highway that residents describe as territory controlled by gangs. The case went viral on social media. A subsequent operation with 300 troops and helicopters recovered the machinery and rescued the farmers. The scene reflected the distance between the official narrative and daily life in Ecuador.
The Global Organised Crime Index gives Ecuador a score of 7.48 on criminality in 2025, almost two points above the regional average of 6.13. The country ceased to be merely a trafficking corridor and became disputed territory.
New arteries of drug trafficking
Drug trafficking is one of the principal drivers of this violence, which has spread towards interior provinces. The ports of Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, for years the main gateways for drugs, are no longer the sole players. Over the past five years, the fragmentation of gangs and state pressure in certain enclaves pushed groups towards new territories, according to an analysis by Renato Rivera, director of the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organised Crime.
Los Ríos and El Oro, with their interconnection through the Sierra and the Amazon, became new arteries of drug trafficking, territories disputed by gangs that not only traffic in drugs but also expand through kidnappings and extortion. Violence became fragmented and reached new regions.
"Violence in Los Ríos is related to the significant commercial flow and what it represents for the trade of formal goods," Rivera explains. "In cities where there is a concentration of commerce, there is also criminal dispute," he argues. In his view, provinces such as Los Ríos and El Oro have become logistics hubs: warehouses, routes, enclaves. Manabí and Esmeraldas, to the north, are exploited for their large number of fishing and artisanal ports, through which drugs are exported with minimal state control.
A society that lowers its voice
In Babahoyo, Verónica—a protected name—takes the pulse of fear from the clothing shop where she works. "People no longer go out at night, they don't go to parties or bars. And if they don't go out, they don't buy," she says. The greatest fear is not only robbery, but chance: sitting next to someone who is a target of a gang and getting caught in a settling of scores. "We have become distrustful of everyone. When I leave my house, I don't even greet people. I don't know if that makes me suspicious," she laments.
On the Ecuadorian coast, confinement has become a form of survival: not looking directly, avoiding revealing identity, lowering one's voice. An entire society that has learned to move in silence.
Source: Google News EC — Guayaquil