Ecuador Launches the Region’s Latest Drug War

Welcome back to Foreign Policy’s Latin America Brief.

The highlights this week: Ecuador’s government launches a war on organized crime, Brazil marks the first anniversary of its capital riot, and Mexico City brings back bullfighting.

A Grimly Familiar Declaration

A wave of gang attacks on prisons and civilian infrastructure across Ecuador on Monday and Tuesday confirmed fears that already soaring violence in the country could get far worse. Gang members rioted in prisons, taking guards hostage; outside, attackers detonated explosives on bridges and stormed into a public television broadcast, holding journalists at gunpoint as the camera streamed it live to a terrified nation.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa decreed Ecuador to be in a state of “internal armed conflict.” He designated 22 gangs as terrorist organizations and ordered the military to “neutralize” them. By Thursday, more than 300 people had been arrested, authorities said. Ecuadorians in much of the country continue to fear leaving their homes, and many schools have closed for the rest of the week.

The attacks came in the wake of major anti-corruption raids in December that implicated judges and prison officials with abetting drug gangs. Then, last weekend, a powerful gang boss escaped from prison. The gang in question, Los Choneros, is one of several Ecuadorian groups that has battled for control of drug trafficking routes as Ecuador grew as a cocaine export hub in recent years. Both the jailbreak and the probe suggest collusion between some Ecuadorian state agents and organized crime.

Neighboring countries, as well as the United States, condemned the attacks and pledged to back Ecuador in its push for security. Ecuadorian politicians from across the political spectrum voiced their support for new state actions against gang violence. Noboa now finds himself at a crossroads about what kind of war on crime he will carry out. It’s a dauting task—and one grimly familiar to the region.

Some government crackdowns on crime in Latin America have been followed by even higher levels of violence. That’s the case in Mexico, where then-President Felipe Calderón declared a war on drugs in 2006. A militaristic frontal attack on gangs killed off their leaders but led to the splintering of organized criminal groups; homicide levels soared.

More recently, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele has overseen a campaign of broad arrests and mass trials of anyone suspected of having a link to gangs. Though he has earned widespread public support for the moves, critics say Bukele’s zero-tolerance strategy is anti-democratic and unsustainable. Other approaches tested in Latin America include community policing; intelligence-heavy operations that prioritize inspections and prosecutions; violence prevention programs; negotiations with gangs; stricter arms control; and more.

In previous instances of gang violence in prisons, Ecuador’s past two governments, led by Presidents Lenín Moreno (2017-2021) and Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023), would “declare a state of emergency and deploy the police and army,” investigative journalist Arturo Torres told Foreign Policy. If Noboa takes those actions on a larger scale, he is “repeating a failed formula,” Torres said.

Ecuador’s government in recent years has proved weak at identifying and making public the financial activities that keep organized criminal groups afloat, Torres added. What’s needed, he said, is “complete information that allows for a plan about what to prioritize not only in the short but also the medium and long term.” Writing in Foreign Policy in November 2023 to mark Noboa’s impending inauguration, the Atlantic Council’s Isabel Chiriboga suggested that Washington could support Ecuador’s security efforts by providing intelligence-gathering technologies, including port scanners.

Investigative outlets such as Torres’s Código Vidrio have published data about how organized crime in the country is financed, including through illegal gold mining. Drug gangs carry out financial operations that are often connected to the banking system in an above-the-table—and thus partially traceable—way, Mexican journalist Priscila Hernández Flores said during a virtual forum about Ecuador’s violence on Tuesday. The aforementioned government anti-corruption probe, dubbed Operation Metastasis, is a watershed effort that is beginning to uncover some of these links, suggesting important state capacity for anti-corruption actions that penetrate the gang economy.

But the danger Ecuadorian anti-corruption crusaders face stands as a major obstacle to progress. Torres said it appears that some of this week’s violence may have been a revolt against the investigations into organized crime. A vocal anti-corruption candidate in last year’s presidential election was killed after openly pledging to rein in the country’s top drug gangs.

Cognizant of this danger, Noboa announced Tuesday that senior security ministers and their families would be accompanied by an extra security detail. Some commentators have called for anti-graft investigators and prosecutors to get the same.

Upcoming Events

Sunday, Jan. 14: Guatemala inaugurates Bernardo Arévalo as president.

Monday, Jan. 15: The Colombian government’s cease-fire with FARC-EMC rebels is due to end, if it is not extended.

Thursday, Jan. 25: The U.N. Security Council discusses Haiti.

What We’re Following

The cost of canal problems. In recent months, water shortages linked to climate change have reduced shipping through the Panama Canal. Now, the Panamanian government is considering an engineering project to retrofit the waterway that could cost as much as $2 billion, Bloomberg reported last week. It would involve damming up a river and then drilling a channel through a mountain to fill up the main reservoir that feeds the canal.

The steep financial projection underscores the costs of adapting to global warming, which makes it likely that the canal will continue to experience lower-than-normal water levels in the future. Some 3 percent of global shipping usually passes through the canal, which is Panama’s biggest source of revenue.

While rains in November eased some of the pressure on the canal after a series of dry months, it is still operating under normal capacity, with 24—rather than the usual maximum of around 38—ships allowed to go through per day. The slowdown comes as global shipping routes have also been disrupted by a spate of Houthi attacks in the Red Sea, impeding access to the world’s other major artificial waterway, the Suez Canal.

Women in government. Guatemala’s Bernardo Arévalo will be inaugurated on Sunday after overcoming months of legal challenges to taking office that observers called politically motivated. Arévalo, an anti-corruption advocate, has already announced that his cabinet will be half women, a first for Guatemala.

In Latin America, only Chile has done the same. Arévalo’s picks include Indigenous human rights lawyer Miriam Roquel to lead the Ministry of Work and Social Protection. His economy minister will be Gabriela García-Quinn, who has worked for more than 25 years in international trade and development.

Bullfighter Arturo Saldivar performs during Gran Corrida de Toros at Plaza de Toros Centro Expositor in San Juan del Rio, Mexico, on July 2, 2022.Hector Vivas/Getty Images

Charging back. Bullfighting is due to return to Mexico City after the country’s Supreme Court last month overturned a 2022 ban on the practice. Since training with live bulls ahead of an event is still forbidden, fighters have been practicing with carts adorned with bull heads, though no new fight dates have been set. Animal rights activists, meanwhile, have continued to speak out against bullfighting, which is banned in countries including Argentina, Chile, and Brazil.

Mexican courts reintroduced bullfighting in part due to tradition and in part due to economics. Bullfighters argued that they had the freedom to continue their practice, citing rights to work and practice one’s culture. According to one calculation by an industry group, the activity also generates around $400 million for the Mexican economy per year. Mexico City’s bullfighting ring is considered one of the world’s three most important, together with those in the Spanish cities of Madrid and Seville.

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In Focus: Brazil’s Capital Riot Remembered

Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and other Brazilian political figures attend a ceremony to mark the first anniversary of the riot that rocked the Brazilian capital at the National Congress in Brasília on Jan. 8.Sergio Lima/AFP via Getty Images

On Jan. 8, Brazilians observed the anniversary of their own capital riot, which was instigated by supporters of former President Jair Bolsonaro who rejected the results of the country’s October 2022 election.

The events mirrored the Jan. 6, 2021, insurrection in the United States. But more so than their U.S. counterparts, Brazilian courts have moved quickly to open investigations against those involved. Government prosecutors have asked that Bolsonaro himself be included in ongoing probes of the riot, though he has not been indicted. A court has already ruled him ineligible to run for office for eight years due to election denialism on a separate occasion.

Brazilians are also less divided on the riot than Americans. Recent polls found that only 6 percent of Brazilians support the Jan. 8, 2023, capital riot, while 22 percent of Americans back the mob that stormed the U.S. Capitol on Jan. 6, 2021.

In trying to build a coalition to defeat Bolsonaro and tune down some of the acidic polarization of the Bolsonaro years, leftist Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva chose a running mate from a center-right party, Geraldo Alckmin, and made an effort to build working relationships with center-right politicians during his campaign and the first year of his administration.

There is an inherent tension in Lula’s attempt to build bridges with the political right while establishing a consensus that challenges to democracy are beyond the pale.

Some on-duty members of Brazil’s military stood by while the rioters approached government buildings in Brasília, and some retired members participated in the riot. But no member of the military—a generally right-wing constituency—has received criminal charges, according to a tally compiled this month by the BBC. As part of the military’s internal discipline system, one person received a warning, and another received three days in detention. The lax punishments have prompted analysts to speculate that Lula and his allies worry pushing for the prosecution of military members could prompt political backlash—possibly endangering his coalition.

This week, in an interview with Folha de São Paulo, Alckmin asserted that all should be punished for their involvement, “civilian and military.”

Lula must seize the current moment of consensus, the Getulio Vargas Foundation’s Oliver Stuenkel wrote in Foreign Policy last year: “If Lula fails to rein the military back in now, the process of Brazilian democratization will remain incomplete—and subject to the vagaries of those in uniform for years to come.”