{"id":12679,"date":"2024-01-18T17:58:50","date_gmt":"2024-01-18T17:58:50","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12679"},"modified":"2024-01-18T17:58:50","modified_gmt":"2024-01-18T17:58:50","slug":"cocaine-cartels-and-corruption-the-crisis-in-ecuador-explained","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/?p=12679","title":{"rendered":"Cocaine, cartels, and corruption: The crisis in Ecuador, explained"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

\n\n“Ecuador, according to its president Daniel Noboa<\/a>, is now \u201cin a state of war.\u201d Earlier this week he had announced a state of emergency<\/a> after the leader of one of the country\u2019s top two gangs<\/a> escaped from prison. The following day, armed gang members stormed the TC Television news program, broadcasting their hostage-taking and violence live<\/a> to make an announcement of their own.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It was far from the only act of shocking violence the country has suffered this week.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

In what appeared to be a coordinated campaign Tuesday \u2014 and one with a brazenness that recalled Mexico\u2019s cartels<\/a> in the mid-2010s, or worse<\/a> \u2014 armed men stormed hospitals, businesses, and universities. Prisons were taken over in violent riots<\/a>, bombs were set<\/a> off in multiple locations, and police and prison guards were kidnapped<\/a> and murdered. At least 10 people were killed<\/a> in gang attacks, including police, and over a hundred prison staff were taken hostage.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

It may seem like an inexplicable turn for Ecuador, a country that many experts, including Felipe Botero, a program head at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, told Vox used to be an \u201cisland of peace\u201d in an often-troubled region.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But this turn to violence in an upper-middle-income country<\/a> of 18 million didn\u2019t happen overnight.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

While there are factors that accelerated a spike in crime over the last couple of years, experts say this is a story nearly a decade in the making. Ecuador\u2019s security crisis is the product of years of growing impunity enjoyed by gangs, the influence of transnational crime groups, shifts in global cocaine consumption, and, above all, increasing institutional corruption.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That means even with President Noboa\u2019s promised military crackdown<\/a>, this chaos won\u2019t be solved overnight.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/2024\/1\/11\/24034891\/ecuador-drugs-cocaine-cartels-violence-murder-daniel-naboa-columbia-crime<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“Ecuador, according to its president Daniel Noboa, is now \u201cin a state of war.\u201d Earlier this week he had announced a state of emergency after the leader of one of the country\u2019s top two gangs escaped from prison. The following day, armed gang members stormed the TC Television news program, broadcasting their hostage-taking and violence live to make an announcement of their own.
\nIt was far from the only act of shocking violence the country has suffered this week.<\/p>\n

In what appeared to be a coordinated campaign Tuesday \u2014 and one with a brazenness that recalled Mexico\u2019s cartels in the mid-2010s, or worse \u2014 armed men stormed hospitals, businesses, and universities. Prisons were taken over in violent riots, bombs were set off in multiple locations, and police and prison guards were kidnapped and murdered. At least 10 people were killed in gang attacks, including police, and over a hundred prison staff were taken hostage.<\/p>\n

It may seem like an inexplicable turn for Ecuador, a country that many experts, including Felipe Botero, a program head at the Global Initiative against Transnational Organized Crime, told Vox used to be an \u201cisland of peace\u201d in an often-troubled region.<\/p>\n

But this turn to violence in an upper-middle-income country of 18 million didn\u2019t happen overnight.<\/p>\n

While there are factors that accelerated a spike in crime over the last couple of years, experts say this is a story nearly a decade in the making. Ecuador\u2019s security crisis is the product of years of growing impunity enjoyed by gangs, the influence of transnational crime groups, shifts in global cocaine consumption, and, above all, increasing institutional corruption.<\/p>\n

That means even with President Noboa\u2019s promised military crackdown, this chaos won\u2019t be solved overnight.”<\/p>\n

https:\/\/www.vox.com\/world-politics\/2024\/1\/11\/24034891\/ecuador-drugs-cocaine-cartels-violence-murder-daniel-naboa-columbia-crime<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_monsterinsights_skip_tracking":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_active":false,"_monsterinsights_sitenote_note":"","_monsterinsights_sitenote_category":0,"footnotes":""},"categories":[13],"tags":[1486,744,986,439,1929,1224,1700],"class_list":["post-12679","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-article-share","tag-cocaine","tag-crime","tag-drug-cartels","tag-drugs","tag-ecuador","tag-gang-violence","tag-south-america"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12679","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=12679"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12679\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":12680,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/12679\/revisions\/12680"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=12679"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=12679"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lonecandle.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=12679"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}