Cauldrons boiling in prisons in Ecuador: New clashes after the massacre with 13 dead

New clashes broke out yesterday Monday (24/10) in prison of Guayaquil, in Ecuador with at least one dead and two injured, a few days after the massacre with 13 dead, as announced by the Penitentiary Service (SNAI) of the Latin American country.

“Unfortunately, one of the prisoners who were taken to health centers (…) died,” SNAI clarified via Twitter. Earlier, the agency announced that “three inmates who were injured were transported to health centers” in Guayaquil, after “conflicts between inmates” at the Guayaquil 1 prison.

The Police assured that they regained control a few hours after the incidents broke out, found inside cells and proceeded to seizure of 2,000 bullets, a rifle, three pistols, knives, drugs and liquid.

On October 5, in the same prison, part of a huge complex with a total of 13,000 inmates, clashes broke out among prisoners with 13 dead. Two days earlier, incidents at another prison, in the central Andean city of Latacunga, cost the lives of 16 prisoners reports the Athenian-Macedonian News Agency, citing AFP.

Unprecedented wave of violence

THE Equator is facing an unprecedented wave of violence due to clashes between rival gangs with control of the gold-rich drug trade at stake. Conflicts often take place inside prisons, where there is an acute problem of overpopulation and where some 400 prisoners have been killed since February 2021.

Ecuador, with almost 18 million inhabitants, between Colombia and Peru, the two countries where the largest quantities of cocaine are produced in the world, has become in recent years a hub for the trafficking of the white powder to Europe and the USA and a battlefield for the cartels . In 2021, authorities announced that 210 tons of drugs, mostly cocaine, were seized, a record amount. In the same year, the homicide rate reached 14 per 100,000 inhabitants, in other words almost doubled compared to 2020.