“Give in to evil, never! Fight tirelessly, always! Long live Ecuador!”, Daniel Noboa harangued in one of the microvideos with which he encourages the actions of the Armed Forces, empowered as never before for the “armed conflict.” internal”. A mission that they have undertaken under the applause of the people, who cheer the soldiers in the streets and give them food, from the hamburgers of the large American chains to the traditional bolones, a type of banana meatballs stuffed with cheese.
Citizens and businessmen have come together to supply their troops, as if it were the border conflict against Peru 29 years ago. Thousands of personal hygiene kits are already at the expense of private companies, including the powerful shrimp farmers.
With a martial appearance, reminiscent of the Ukrainian Volodimir Zelenski, the Ecuadorian president has toughened his speech to direct the conflict against the powerful drug traffickers with an iron fist.
The total war against drug trafficking continued today in a country that began to regain its lost momentum. The streets of the center of Guayaquil thus recovered part of their life, and their usual noise, after the victories achieved by the so-called Security Block, military and police deployed in the country. A name that evokes another historic fight in neighboring Colombia: the Pablo Escobar Search Block.
Many victories against an enemy that is by no means defeated. The curfew on the streets of the country was largely respected, although in Francisco de Orellana, in the Amazon, the “terrorists” threw an explosive inside a nightclub called El Coca and caused the death of three of the people. present and injured a dozen.
“The fight to restore order is long, but it has begun,” said Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo, a well-known tiktoker until he joined the government ranks.
In their appearances, the commanders of the Armed Forces, protagonists in other times of coups d’état and political conspiracies, have stressed that the new “terrorists” of the gangs are designated as military objectives. “The present and the future of our country is at stake and no act of terror will make us give up,” certified Admiral Jaime Vela, head of the Joint Command of the Armed Forces. The videos with the harangues to the soldiers guarding the Presidential Palace went viral through WhatsApp, which measures the emotional state of Ecuadorians.
In his message to the country, Vela announced the capture of 329 “terrorists” and confirmed that five of them were killed. Among the seizures he highlighted 24 explosives, 61 weapons, 195 vehicles and 230 kilos of drugs, figures that increase by the hour after each operation deployed.
Where the Security Bloc has failed to prevail is within conventional prisons, where 178 officials remain hostage in seven different prisons. The detention centers have become general command offices under the control of drug traffickers and from where their terror actions abroad are prepared.
Admiral Vela denied the murder of one of these agents, as it went viral on social networks through a video distributed by the kidnappers. The military chief confirmed that Tuesday’s presidential decree allows soldiers and police to use lethal weapons in their confrontations against the aforementioned gangs, led by Los Lobos and Los Choneros.
Precisely one of the leaders of Los Lobos, the famous Captain Pico, escaped from the Riobamba prison after an attack even with explosives against the Police, demanded guarantees to surrender through a video on social networks. Noboa’s response was forceful: “Terrorists must be treated as terrorists, the country is tired of criminals imposing their conditions.”
The escape of the head of Los Lobos, implicated in the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, preceded the declaration of internal armed conflict, which was corrected 24 hours later by the imposition of the state of emergency.
“The penitentiary system has been controlled by mafias for decades,” the president said after launching his high-security prison project, “urgent sanitation of the penitentiary system” for “bukelelovers,” as he himself defined the followers of the controversial Salvadoran president. . Noboa intends to build two mega-prisons in the Amazon and on the coast in record time to separate drug lords from their hitmen and soldiers, who protect them in the current prisons and on the streets. For these leaders, a “super maximum security” area has been devised, with 32 personal cells.
The new detention centers will also have telephone and satellite signal inhibition, cutting-edge technology, triple perimeter security, “faceless” guards and armored construction. “It is one more step to be able to control terrorism and organized crime, for which tougher laws, honest judges and the possibility of extraditing the most dangerous are needed,” concluded the president, who has presented a battery of charges to the Constitutional Court. of questions for the political consultation that he intends to carry out in a few weeks.
Both Noboa and the National Assembly today have high popularity rates, the complete opposite of the time of conservative Guillermo Lasso, who failed to approve another battery of laws in a referendum, including extradition.
“It is not blowing and making bottles,” Bukele warned from El Salvador, who believes he has the antidote in the fight against the mafias.
“We are facing a complementary model to Bukele’s, they are innovating what the Salvadoran president did in the management of criminal gangs, adapting to new times, but we do not know how it will end. There is always room for human rights violations, with also for the applause from a desperate society seeking peace,” Rocío San Miguel, an expert on security and armed forces issues, explained to EL MUNDO.
“There is a key element when declaring an armed conflict, which is the authorization for the use of lethal force. The amnesty by Parliament (for those in uniform in actions against terrorism) is a fundamental detail, authorized by the additional protocol to the Geneva Conventions, but it is very dangerous,” added San Miguel.
“Without public force there is no republic,” confirmed the legislative president, the Christian Socialist Henry Kronfle, aligned with the government theses. In the resolution proposed by Parliament, the congressmen almost unanimously supported the battle waged against drug trafficking: 135 of the 136 that make up the National Assembly voted in favor. In 2025, Ecuadorians will not only vote again to elect a president, they will also do so to set up a new Parliament.
“A war costs and costs money,” the president took the opportunity to respond, who has already announced that he will present new reforms to legislators to continue the battle against drug trafficking.