Ecuador’s interior minister, Patricio Carrillo, described Sunday’s blast as a “declaration of war on the state” by organized crime in the country’s largest city and has been labeled an act of terrorism. Security forces will be mobilized for a month and will be allowed to carry out house checks. Images from the scene showed the fronts of houses ripped open and blood-stained cars with their windows blown out in the working-class neighborhood of Cristo de Consuelo. Eight houses and two cars were destroyed in the early morning blast, authorities said. The bombing marks a dramatic escalation in violent tactics used by criminal gangs in Ecuador’s largest city, which has seen an exponential rise in killings as rival gangs battle for dominance of cocaine-trafficking routes to Europe and the US. . Wedged between Colombia and Peru, the world’s biggest cocaine producers, Ecuador has seen shocking levels of violence, including decapitated bodies hanging from footbridges and six brutal prison massacres that have killed nearly 400 inmates since February 2021. Since the decree, 11 raids have been carried out in the city and five people have been arrested, Carrillo told reporters on Monday. “What we are most concerned about… is the capacity [the gang] now we have to build evidence in an improvised way,” Carrillo wrote after the blast, referring to the explosives used in the practice. “We are investigating how they reach these capabilities to commit barbaric acts.” The incident is the deadliest so far in a dramatic increase in bombings in the country with 145 so far this year, half of which occurred in Guayaquil, according to government figures. “Criminal gangs have become a government within a government in Ecuador,” Guayaquil Mayor Cynthia Viteri wrote in an open letter posted on Twitter to Lasso, who took office as president last year. “We have witnessed hangings on bridges, planned assassinations on motorcycles, rapes in malls and school buses,” he wrote. “Extortion of innocent shopkeepers and deaths of more than a dozen child victims by stray bullets”. “A president is the protector of his people, but so far we have not seen a single safe step to fight crime,” the letter continued. “Who is in charge here, organized crime or an enslaved government?” On Twitter, Lasso responded that the enemy is “narco-terrorism … not the government,” adding that “in countries that have lived through these painful experiences, the authorities act in unity, not division.” However, it has faced growing criticism as the escalating violence shows no sign of abating. Guayaquil was one of the 50 most violent cities in the world in 2021, according to Insight Crime, a thinktank. It is the first time that an Ecuadorian city appears on the list.
