A new prisoner escape in Guayaquil worsens the prison crisis in Ecuador

The prison crisis in Ecuador appears to have no end after six inmates escaped Friday night from the Litoral penitentiary, the country’s largest and most populous prison. It is located very close to the regional prison of Guayaquil, from where José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito”, leader of the criminal organization “Los Choneros”, allegedly escaped last weekend.

Only from January 9th this year This crisis results in at least 16 deaths and approximately 178 prison employees detainedof which twenty have already been released, and an arrest warrant for investigative purposes for the escape of ‘Fito’ from the prison director, Nelly Cuzco Ramírez, of whom all traces have been lost.

Around 10pm on Friday (midnight in Argentina) the alarm was raised about the new escape from the so-called Litoral Penitentiary.

In the area two helicopters and several drones followed the tracks of the prisoners who apparently escaped by jumping the wall of the guard tower located at the back of the prison which houses around 5,300 inmates.

After this initial reaction, at 11.34pm the Police reported the capture of two prisoners, while security operations continued this Saturday throughout the city.

How many prisons are there in Guayaquil?

According to the National Service of Comprehensive Attention to Adult Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), Ecuador has a total of 31,321 persons deprived of liberty in its 35 prisons.

Of these, 12,254 inmates are in the prison complex of the coastal province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil, and which is made up of five prisons.

Of those buildings, The Litoral Penitentiary and the Regional Penitentiary are the most populated in all of Ecuadorwith 10,000 prisoners between the two.

Who’s in charge behind bars?

For Diana, a woman who works as a nanny and cook in San Lorenzo, an Ecuadorian city in the province of Esmeraldas, on the border with Colombia, “in prisons the inmates are in charge”, as she explained to EFE.

That’s what he’s been able to discover since his only son, 25, was locked up in Regionals a year ago.

Although he claims to have “never stolen” and to devote himself “to construction work”, he decided to travel all night to Guayaquil to try to see him.

At the entrance to the prison he began to cry when the security officials informed him that “there are no visits”, as “they have been suspended since Tuesday”.

She immediately stated: “I’m hypertensive and what they say on the news makes me feel bad.”

Diana was alluding to the fact that there are Some 178 prison officials have been detained since Tuesday in six prisons (Esmeraldas, Latacunga, Ambato, Azogues, Cuenca and Loja), where simultaneous riots were recorded, with a death toll of three prisoners.

To counter the obvious power that criminals wield in prisons, Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, wants to build two detention centers modeled on those that Mexico and El Salvador use to detain drug traffickers and gang members.

These centers will be located in the Amazonian province of Pastaza and in the coastal province of Santa Elena, will have a capacity of 736 prisoners and will have devices to inhibit cellular and satellite signals, and other elements unprecedented in Ecuadorian prisons where, since 2020, massacres they leave more than 450 prisoners dead.

Although there was “total calm” in Guayaquil’s prisons on Friday morning, with no disturbances or escape attempts, according to what the police and soldiers stationed at the entrance gates told EFE, the situation changed on Friday.

Throughout the day and with a tension that could be felt in the atmosphere, the relatives of the detainees came to “deliver food and medicines only to detainees who are in custody for minor crimes”, explained a police officer in charge of filtering screening.

Carmen has reached that point. “I came to visit my brother who is in prison but they won’t let me in. First I also came to visit my nephew, but a month ago they killed him. They handed over the body to us as if it were a dead dog, without giving us any explanation about what happened.”What happened”, denounced the woman.

Even if it’s obvious the increase in the number of soldiers and policemen guarding the surroundings of prisons of heavily armed Guayaquil, “corruption aggravates the problem”, explained a soldier.

“Gangs run everything”

“It is proven that the gangs manage everything from the inside because during searches carried out in the cells of the gang leaders, luxury items such as PlayStations, mobile phones with internet, whisky, air conditioners and televisions were found.”

In the case of ‘Fito’, who established a system of extortion and torture behind bars, “it seems that he lived almost like in a hotel suite”, commented the agent.

According to local media reports, “Fito” and his friends demanded up to $10 a week from each prisoner.

And last August in the Litoral penitentiary they found a tank with tilapia to be exported. During the search “dogs, ducks and surveillance towers built by the prisoners themselves were also identified, who do what they want in there”, warned another soldier.

Source: EFE