How Ecuador became mired in a ‘state of war’ with drug gangs

The newscast began like any other. Jorge Rendón, a veteran broadcaster at Ecuador’s state-owned TC Televisión in the bustling port city of Guayaquil, was running through the day’s stories with his co-anchor.

Then, with cameras rolling and the feed broadcast live to the nation, masked gunmen burst into the studio, brandishing high-calibre rifles and grenades. Some of the crew were forced to lie prone on the floor, others sat with their hands bound. Elsewhere in the building, audible on-air before the feed went down, shots were fired.

“It was terrifying, a moment of chaos and extreme tension,” Rendón tells the Financial Times. “They tried to make us speak out against the government, against the police, and against the world . . . it was an afternoon of chaos.”

A police task force retook the studio soon after, arresting 13 intruders and liberating the hostages, but across the country similarly harrowing scenes were playing out, triggered by the escape of jailed drug-lord Adolfo “Fito” Macías from his cell in the nearby Regional prison on January 7. 

In the days since Fito — leader of one of the country’s most prominent gangs, Los Choneros — sprung jail, bedlam has engulfed Ecuador. Over 158 prison guards and staff have been taken hostage by inmates in seven prisons, vehicles and buildings around the country have been set ablaze, and at least 15 people, including police offers, have been murdered. 

President Daniel Noboa, a 36-year-old US-educated scion of a banana empire who took office in November promising a tough line on crime, on Wednesday said that Ecuador was “at war” with drug-traffickers, a day after signing a decree making them military targets. He also declared a nationwide two-month state of emergency, including nightly curfews.

The harrowing…