Ecuador in a multicrisis. How did we get here?

It was the night of the 9 January 2024. As usual, I was preparing class material for the next day with some colleagues. Suddenly, I received message after message from my sister: “Armed criminal bands have just broken into TC’s night forecast.” “They are pointing a gun at the reporter.” “The reporters are now being kidnapped!!”; “I am hearing gunshots!!”. 

That was the day Ecuador came to know true terror, the day the country acknowledged its problems, which led the president, hours later, to declare that the country was in an internal armed conflict.

How did we get here?

There is no precise date marking when Ecuador began its ties with drug trafficking. What can be traced, however, is the point at which the state began to lose control over its territory. Security experts argue that since 2018, violence linked to drug trafficking started to escalate as local crime gangs gained competitive positions in the trade. The number of prison massacres soon became uncontrollable, and this lack of security for inmates prompted gang leaders to bribe security chiefs for better protection. With money in play, they managed to gain more control. And with a corrupt police force, the gangs now operate from prisons with impunity.

Historically, Ecuador has always been considered a ‘developing country’. However, during the years 2007-2017, an attempt was made to build a national unification project to leave behind the path of the ‘third world’ and enter into real development, and while I do not claim this was achieved, we were getting closer. What was not addressed in this project was a drive to become a country with solid institutions, strong independence of powers, and state transparency. Later, neither Ecuador, nor indeed the rest of the world, expected that its economy and normality of life would come to a halt two years later to face the societal challenges of COVID-19.

A multicrisis emerges

During the 2020-2021 school year, 150,000 children and adolescents stopped studying. Households that relied on informal businesses ceased to receive income. Abused women endured having their partners at home 24/7. Poverty and violence increased, and above all, inequality. In parallel, the state faced a high fiscal deficit. All of this feeds the breeding grounds for narcos, penetrating more than ever into the most broken social fabrics. Above all, they penetrated my beloved home city, Guayaquil, making it now one of the most unsafe cities to live in Latin America and the world.

When, in addition to the routine social dilemmas, the state has to face a war against drug trafficking, the focus of state investment shifts. National security becomes a priority; Ecuador must now contend with approximately 1,500 criminal gangs. The problem grows when the state’s fiscal box is limited, and social investments are shortened. For instance, after the COVID crisis, the Ecuadorian state reduced its investments in areas such as education, gender violence, and sports. Now that it faces this new problem, monetary decisions are even more difficult and obvious: social protection weakens. In a social fabric so broken, criminal gangs offer children and adolescents what the state cannot: a sense of identity, opportunities, and the ability to forge a new destiny, even at the cost of personal and others' suffering: I refuse to believe that a 12-year-old enjoys helping to kidnap women.

In the shadows of systemic failure, the malign influence of crime fills the void left by state neglect, perpetuating a cycle of despair and lawlessness that must be urgently addressed.

I do not intend to be reductionist and conclude that what we see in Ecuador is due to a social investment crisis. If that were the case, all Latin American countries would be a replica of what my country is now. Narcoterrorism infiltrated Ecuador precisely because of our institutional weakness, lack of good governance and planning, and the absence of firm, prepared politicians who treat citizens as adults, capable of telling them the truth and pursuing a plan of national reunification (because no one cares for what they do not love). Ecuador is one of the smallest countries -territorially- in Latin America and neighbour of a country that went through the same 40 years ago and managed to resolve it.

Optimism is always the answer and will always be my flag.

Thus, hope remains, and a personal hope more than ever after completing part of the MPP programme. Being surrounded by strong, committed, and intellectually driven individuals who want to go back to their countries to ensure things will work for the rest, no matter what the cost, has reinforced for me the idea that there is always something we can do. Every day, we reviewed cases of countries that were institutionally and economically rebuilt after wars, economic crises, epidemics, and so on, and the conclusion is that there is always a solution when we learn from the ones who got it right and if we are surrounded by the right people to pursue those changes. Optimism is always the answer and will always be my flag.

With presidential elections coming next year, candidates must be aware that this problem will not end unless they first offer an efficient strategy against the criminal takeover of state institutions. The government must be the sole controller of the state apparatus. Only when the state regains control over its territory and institutions with the right people in power, will it be able to offer the social investment needed, the economic reactivation we desperately demand, and the much-needed repair of the social fabric.

It was the night of the 9th of January, and I thought: I want to return to a country where the person I voted for can actually govern, and not the one who tried to kidnap my family in broad daylight a few months ago.

Denisse is the inaugural Blavatnik School Alumni Scholar.