Who will purge the "purgers"?

 

                Yesterday, I spoke to Byron (real identity protected) a small businessman who, during the                      “state of exception” was driving between two cities on a routine delivery. He was intercepted    by masked gunmen who stole his vehicle and left him on the side of the road with nothing but the clothes he was wearing.

Later, he was given the opportunity to buy back his car for $3000.

I, jokingly, asked if the robbers were the police or other criminals.

He sighed and solemnly told me it was a mix of the two.

For traffic police, the state of exception is simply (illegal) business as usual. Empowered by the assumption that they might be checking vehicles for drugs or guns, they pull drivers over for minor traffic infractions, like balding tires. Threatened with towing the vehicle away the only solution is to offer a bribe, either in cash or a direct bank transfer to a personal account. Kerching! Extortion racketing by uniformed forces.

While the “civil war against organised crime” seemingly has the backing of the Nation because we all want the violence and fear to stop, the false positives of the militarization are now beginning to emerge.

Scratch the surface, and you’ll find courageous voices who are describing it as a war against the poor.

A war against the poor?

In an article by Tito Merino Gayas: “What does the state of exception mean for Indigenous people in Ecuador?” he states that:

“No one can deny that the State must pursue, combat, neutralize or eliminate terrorist organizations and organized crimes; this must be done all the time with its government structure, the national police, the judges, the assembly and the courts.”

But predicts a dark side to the purge:

“The corrupt and corrupting politicians, soldiers and police involved in terrorism and organized crime, together with drug traffickers, will be whitewashed and will emerge unscathed from their guilt, perhaps as heroes pursuing their own criminal and corrupting actions.”

Andres Tapia, head of communications for the Indigenous confederation (confenaie), describes the militarization as a façade.  

“We haven’t seen the narcotrafficker bourgeoise in their wealthy neighborhoods been arrested and maltreated. But we’ve permanently observed the militarization and humiliation of poor neighborhoods.”

He explains how drug cartels have penetrated the national economy. Two gangs (Los Lobos & Jalisco Nueva Generación) directly control 20 mining concessions and are linked to 40 earning them a lucrative profit of $3.6 million a month. While another cartel (Los Choneros) launder money through real estate management and public works and the Albanian mafia – through the national financial system of co-operatives and banks.

A manufactured confusion?

Reporter, Camilla Martinez, explains the effects of violence and militarization on the national psyche:

“The first thing we long for in such chaotic moments is to identify a person responsible, a cause or a culprit. The human brain in shock thinks the world in black-white, good-bad, safe-unsafe. It seeks in some way to guarantee its survival. However, the “internal enemy” does not explain to us how we got to this moment, nor how we will get out of the chaos. More than a month after the decree, we see that the president of Ecuador has not called for a war against drugs, but against the poor.”

Trigger-Happy Forces

Camilla describes a murder by the military on February 2, 2024, during a raid in the Cuba neighborhood of Guayaquil. Two students walking to university. They carried no guns or drugs and had no links with any drug trafficking networks. The military shot one of them, Carlos Javier Vega, with four bullets “without evidence, without knowledge and without reason.”

The Armed Forces described the incident as: “Terrorists apprehended following an attempted attack on a military checkpoint.” The Prosecutor’s office agreed.

A journalist who needed to flee the country

Karol Noroña is an award-winning Ecuadorian journalist who has specialized in investigating organised crime. She has since needed to flee the country, an assassination plot against her was being hatched. She is now safe in humanitarian protection. Her sense of the possibility of an authentic positive change is realistically cautious:

"I don't even know if it's possible to talk about purging [of the institutions], because we are at a level of penetration by organized crime... Sometimes I think that we have to destroy everything and start from scratch."

Human Rights Experts speak

Wambra journalists, Verónica Calvopiña and Gabriela Peralta, interviewed Human Rights experts for their take on the crisis.

David Cordero, Human Rights lawyer and academic, describes how the rhetoric of the enemy, historically can lead to state security groups abusing their powers – resulting in the disappearances of students and social leaders.

He says:

“Those law enforcement forces are groups that we do not know to what extent they are involved with organised crime groups.”

The Alliance for Human Rights, a collective of 14 organizations, describe the potential risks for civil society.

"We are all at risk of being executed, false positives being created, and our families beginning a long struggle in search of truth and reparation."