Violence in Ecuador's prisons hit the country harshly again on Tuesday, after learning that the latest massacre that occurred in the Litoral Penitentiary, its largest and most populous prison, left at least 31 prisoners murdered and 14 injured, at the same time. that in thirteen prisons the inmates went on hunger strike and kept 137 guards in six of them.
The confrontation between two of the rival gangs that are fighting for internal control of the Ecuadorian prisons began on Saturday night at the Penitentiary, located in Guayaquil, and lasted for three days with shots and explosions until this Tuesday a contingent of about 2,700 military police officers came to the prison.
The Police and the Armed Forces entered after the president, Guillermo Lasso, decreed a state of exception for the prison system to stop an almost unprecedented situation, with incidents in thirteen of the country's 35 prisons.
Less than 24 hours earlier, Lasso had announced an emergency measure suspending the rights of people to assemble and move freely in two provinces, one of which includes a city where a mayor was shot dead over the weekend.
Until this Tuesday, only six deaths and eleven injuries were known, but the real balance of the massacre could not be known until the forces of order managed to enter the prison and regain control among the inmates.
According to the decree that declared a state of emergency in all prisons in Ecuador, the confrontation confronted "Los Tiguerones" and "Los Lobos", two of the criminal gangs that since 2020 have staged a series of prison massacres in various prisons where more than 450 inmates have been murdered.
The Penitentiary, which currently houses some 5,600 inmates, has been the scene of some of the worst massacres, such as two in 2021 that resulted in 123 and 65 murders, respectively, and this one with 31 deceased is now added to them, especially for the cruelty towards the victims, which included lynchings and beheadings.
As on previous occasions, the prisoners had a wide arsenal of bladed weapons and firearms, from machetes to assault rifles.
Among the war material seized from the prisoners of the Penitentiary there are fifteen pistols, eleven long-range rifles, two revolvers, two mini uzi submachine guns and a grenade launcher, in addition to hundreds of bullets of different calibers, five bulletproof vests, two gas grenades and a craft-type explosive device.
Drugs such as cocaine and marijuana, industrial tools such as felling and a radial saw and other prohibited objects within the prison such as a hundred mobile phones, six radios, electrical appliances and more than 4,400 dollars were also found in their possession.
The Prosecutor's Office officially opened two previous investigations, the first for murder and the second for terrorism, for the detonations and quantity of weapons and ammunition found inside the prison.
The Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDH), which supports the families of the victims of the massacres at the Penitentiary to demand justice and reparation, said in a statement on Tuesday that this episode has demonstrated "the complete inability" to respond to these situations by the National Comprehensive Care Service for Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), which is in charge of Ecuador's prisons.
Likewise, it considered that "security management in the Ecuadorian prison system has been limited solely to reacting, in an untimely manner, to acts of violence." "In other words, it ignores solving the problem of the entry of massive weapons into prisons, the living conditions of people in prison and their right to rehabilitation," he added.
While it was a question of resuming order in the Litoral Penitentiary, there were other similar interventions in those prisons where, since Monday, the prisoners detained the SNAI prison staff for reasons that have not yet been appreciated by official organizations.
So far, according to data from the Presidency, 120 of the 137 agents who were held in the prisons of Latacunga (Cotopaxi province), Archidona (Napo), Cuenca (Azuay), Azogues (Cañar), Machala ( El Oro) and Loja (Loja), while on Tuesday afternoon the SNAI announced the end of the hunger strike that was being continued in thirteen prisons.
This episode occurred just three weeks after the extraordinary general elections were held, marked by the insecurity crisis due to the rise of delinquency and organized crime that includes armed attacks, kidnappings, robberies and extortion and that has led Lasso to decree for 60 days the state of exception in the provinces of Manabí and Los Ríos and in the municipality of Durán, belonging to the metropolitan area of Guayaquil.
