Shocking – Uncover Crime Story

Ecuador's government sees the results of its gangs as a victory, but the ongoing violence in the city of Durán shows the uneven impact of the policy.

In recent weeks, there have been massacres, gang clashes and attacks against public officials in Durán, which lies just across the Guayas River from Ecuador's largest city and port, Guayaquil, one of the cities worst hit by drug-related violence.

In the latest disturbance, a bomb exploded on June 9 outside the offices of a graphic printing company owned by the family of Duran Mayor Luis Chonillo. Police found pamphlets at the site threatening Chonillo, local media reported.

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The bomb came two weeks after criminals carried out multiple attacks on Duran's municipal council on May 27. Two car bombs were planted outside public buildings, but one exploded. Gunmen also fired at the offices of Duran's transport authority. No one was injured in the attacks, the government announcedand the exact reasons remain unclear.

“It is urgent to strengthen the intervention of the state in the hottest areas of the city,” said Chonillo said in a post on the X immediately following the attacks. “If Durán is besieged by warring forces, a strong response by security forces is necessary.

A few weeks earlier, on May 13, assassins murdered the president of a bus cooperative. The next day, gunmen attacked birthday party, six dead and six injured. In response, Ecuadorian forces launched attacks in 20 different areas of Durán on May 17.

Since January, President Daniel Noboa has taken a hard line against violent street gangs and drug-trafficking groups in Ecuador, putting the South American country's military on the front lines of the war against organized crime.

The popular measure has led to a 16% drop in homicides this year in Ecuador compared to the same period in 2023, Interior Ministry officials said announced at a press conference on June 3.

“In five months, we managed to bring peace to Ecuador, something that had never been achieved before,” Noboa said. said May 22 in a video posted on his social media accounts.

But the violence in Durán has persisted despite the government's military actions against the country's gangs.

Homicides in 2023 hit a record high in Durán, with 388 in the second half of the year. Those numbers appear to have dropped slightly in 2024, with 209 murders between January 1 and May 31, according to police statistics obtained by InSight Crime. But even under the state of emergency, which allowed the army to enter Durán in search of criminals, the municipality is still seeing rates of violence that were unprecedented before 2023.

Security experts have attributed much of the violence in Duran to an ongoing feud between the Chone Killers and the Latin Kings, gangs that dominate the city's streets for drug trafficking and extortion. Durán's location also makes it a strategic staging area for cocaine bound for the ports of Guayaquil for export to consumer markets in North America and Europe.

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A confluence of factors, including gang fragmentation and corruption, have hampered the effectiveness of Noboa's heavy-handed security policy in Duran.

The state of emergency has forced many of Duran's criminal leaders to leave the country and severed relations with leaders of Ecuador's prison system.

This has empowered the city's central crime lords, who now see an opportunity to break into higher leadership positions, an official, who spoke on condition of anonymity for security reasons, told InSight Crime.

“This is the hydra phenomenon. You get rid of one head and three more come up,” the official said.

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Authorities in Panama taken prominent Chone Killers leader from Durán, Julio Alberto Martínez Alcívar, aka “Negro Tulio,” on May 30. This could lead to more violence as other leaders rush to fill the shoes of Tulio the Negro.

The power of Duran's gangs extends beyond the streets and into municipal government, an influence they use to fend off military action. Through corrupt members of the city's transit authority and police, gang members are able to monitor the movements of security forces in Durán and take precautions to avoid arrest, current and former officials told InSight Crime.

But at the root of Duran's security struggle lies the city's lack of public services. Many residents, who lack plumbing, have to pay exorbitant amounts—up to $100 a month, according to some Durán community leaders—just for water trucks to deliver water to their homes. The city lacks a public university and a large trade school has remained abandoned from a pandemic.

This has left many families struggling to make ends meet and young people without opportunities, both of which have been exploited by street gangs.

“Children who don't get enough nutrition and who don't get the attention they need are going to fall into the wrong hands,” Padre Simón Mahish, a religious leader and teacher who works in Durán, told InSight Crime.

Other parts of Ecuador, such as Durán, have seen an increase in violence in 2024 amid Noboa's military operations.

In Manabí, violence has increased significantly as security operations against the Choneros drug gang appear to have fueled the violence. splinter groups. In Los Ríos, the province with the highest homicide rate per capita in 2023, residents continue to suffer as a result of the ongoing battle between Lobos and Choneros over valuable cocaine-trafficking routes.

Featured Image: Aerial view of Durán across the Guayas River in Guayaquil. Credit: Anastasia Austin, InSight Crime.