Bodies Hanging from Bridges - Where Mexico Led, Ecuador Follows - Insightcrime.org
The discovery of two bodies hanging from a bridge in Ecuador may be the starkest sign yet of the country’s accelerated spiral into violence, including copying the worst excesses seen in Mexico.On February 14, two bodies were left hanging from a pedestrian bridge over a major thoroughfare in the city of Durán, next to Ecuador’s southern port city of Guayaquil.
According to a national police press conference, the two men had been missing since January 11 and suggested the killings might be linked to the recent seizure of over seven tons in Guayaquil.One police source told the newspaper, El Universo, that a rival gang had kidnapped the two men as part of a fight for control of drug trafficking routes through the port of Guayaquil.
And last year, most of the 320 inmates killed inside Ecuadorean prisons were in Guayaquil’s Guayas 1 jail.Police sources told Ecuadorean news outlet, Extra, that one hypothesis behind the killings was that they were linked to an ongoing rivalry between the Águilas, a faction of the sizeable Choneros gang, and the Chone Killers.Much of the violence in 2021 was sparked by a bloody feud between the Choneros, once Ecuador’s largest gang, and a constellation of rivals, many of which were once part of the Choneros.
This rivalry has escalated rapidly in recent years as more and more cocaine has flowed through Ecuador, often leaving the port of Guayaquil to go to foreign markets, especially the United States and Europe.Ecuadorean gangs are entrusted with moving the cocaine through the country by larger criminal groups selling the cocaine from Colombia and Mexican groups receiving it.
These killings are the latest evidence that Ecuador, long less violent than its cocaine-producing neighbors, is catching up alarmingly quickly.While the actual presence of Mexican cartels in Ecuador has been somewhat overblown, their financial and material support for Ecuadorean groups have certainly ramped up the violence.Since first appearing as a cartel tactic in 2008, bodies hanging from bridges have gone from an aberration to a weekly occurrence in Mexico.
They were behind much of the violent innovations that worsened Mexico’s drug war, the legacy of which is still devastating the country today.While it is uncertain if the Chone Killers are behind the bodies on the bridge, like their Mexican cousins, they are playing an outsized role in Ecuador’s continuing descent into madness.
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