Daniel Noboa states that during Rafael Correa’s government, drug trafficking groups began to establish themselves in Ecuador

The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, assured this on Friday “Ecuador has not lost the war” against criminal gangs but “he’s fighting.” But he stressed that this “total lack of control” of violence is not new, but has been going on for a long time, perhaps since the time of Rafael Correa’s government.

In an interview with the Colombian broadcaster W Radio and other Colombian media, the president explained: “This is a war, an internal armed conflict in which we fight against 22 groups, some smaller and some larger, numbering dozens of thousands of armed men, in which they are financed by drug trafficking, illegal mining and at the same time generate terror.

Noboa, who took office just two months ago, in the midst of an unprecedented security crisis, with increasingly bloody actions by groups linked to drug trafficking, also referred to the the rise of Ecuador as a port for cocaine and illicit drugs.

He said that Guayaquil is the third largest port in Latin America and that because the economy isdollarized and has a good road network, “it becomes the perfect center for a logistical springboard for illicit substances.”

“The drugs that come out of the containers go mainly to Europe, but the Ecuadorian maritime space and the Galapagos Islands are used to transit towards Mexico and the United States”, explained the president, who recalled that the Galapagos tourist islands for “five or six years” have becomen “a port of transit, fuel and drugs.”

For this reason, he underlined that controls are being intensified, strengthening surveillance on the national oil company Petroecuador, so that the fuel does not end up being used for drug trafficking, and also strengthening the maritime surveillance system, with the help of the United States .

In one of the few interviews given since the violence in Ecuador worsened and the existence of an internal armed conflict was decreed, Noba underlined that the situation has worsened in the last six years and in the last year and a half it is a ” total lack of control.”

He added that only in the year 2023 were there any more than 7,600 victims of violent deaths in the country. And that in recent years these groups have had control of prisons, from where criminal acts and drug trafficking are planned, as cited by the Ecuavisa.com website.

Near the end of the interview, he answered a question about the role of former President Correa (2007-2027). But he declined direct responsibility for the escalation of violence and instead stated: “I believe that during his (Correa) government these very powerful narco-terrorist groups began to establish themselves, and were strengthened in subsequent governments”, according to the newspaper First fruits.

Noboa recalled that during the Correa government and after the approval of the 2008 Constitution, the American base in Manta was withdrawn. “The Constitution prohibits the establishment of international bases, but this does not mean that there cannot be international cooperation and surveillance.”

Prison crisis and escape of “Fito”

The president said they had already “neutralized all the prisons in the country” and recovered “170 hostages safe and sound.”

“We are reorganizing these centers of deprivation of liberty where some of these leaders have planned crimes (…) and we are moving them out of their comfort zone and dismantling these networks of crime and terrorism,” he stressed.

Noboa assured that they fight against all these gangs and their leaders, which in some cases are more than 10 for each, and not only against José Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito”, the leader of the largest gang, “Los Choneros” . who escaped from prison earlier this month.

In this sense, the Ecuadorian president wanted to underline that “Fito” “is not Pablo Escobar”, but one more leader, and who are looking for him “from all sides at an international level”.

This same Friday, the family of this escaped criminal, who was in Córdoba (Argentina), arrived deported to Guayaquil, but the fate of “Fito” remains uncertain.

Given the rumors that he may have fled the country to Peru, Bolivia or Colombia, Noboa did not rule out that he is in Colombia and assured that he had asked his counterpart Gustavo Petro “to carry out an intense search in the country and that we have cooperation between the two countries and intelligence between the army and the police.”