Gangrene the drug gangs in Ecuador: They pay children to become murderers

Instead of children playing and rejoicing in their carelessness Ecuador become very early paid assassins. Drug-trafficking gangs have turned into gangrene, recruiting children from the age of 10, initially as drug dealers. “First they sell, then they give them a gun and they become paid killers,” confirms Duran police chief Jorge Hadati.

Authorities in a hideout of the “Los largartos” gang, one of Duran’s gangs, seized several fluffy crocodiles. Police believe that in order to get acquainted and later to attract children, the gangs give them toys. The specific district has become a “nursery for assassins”, a former senior police officer, who does not want to be named, will tell the French Agency.

Of the 230 criminals arrested in Duran from January to April 2022, the vast majority were minors or had just reached adulthood. “And they had already committed four or five murders,” according to the police commander.

Beheaded corpses in the middle of the street

Luis Sarmiento was leaving early one morning in March to go shopping for bread with his grandson in Duran when, in front of him, on the street, he saw two decapitated corpses, their hands tied to a pole.

Reflexively he turned and secured the eyes of the child, who understood, nevertheless, the macabre message of the gangs that move drugs.

“I covered my grandson’s eyes, took him back home, closed the shutters and I do not know anything else,” said the 78-year-old retired worker, who has lived in the poor Cerro Las Cavras neighborhood of Duran, Duran, a city of 200,000. not far from the port of Guayaquil (west).

In February, two bodies were found hanging from a footbridge. As of October 2021, about ten corpses, mutilated, hanged or released, have been left in plain sight, certifying accounts cleared by the barbaric method of Mexican drug cartels.

The killings are part of the undeclared war of opponents gangs to control traffic that, according to official figures, could generate up to $ 1.8 million a month in Duran alone.

Since January, 363 people have been killed in Duran and the neighboring cities of Samporodon and Guayaquil – the latter being the country’s largest port, a cocaine smuggling hub to Europe and the United States – crimes believed to be linked to trafficking as reported by APE-MPE, citing AFP.

Drug supermarket

On the slopes of Cerro Las Cavra, some thirty police officers check cars for weapons or drugs. In the neighborhood, equestrian police officers stop a man for a physical examination. Locals watch the businesses looking sideways, without leaving their homes, nor catching a conversation. The law of silence reigns.

It is a “drug supermarket”, according to the Chief of Police. “Families make a living from selling or taking money from the mafia and the rest are silent because they are afraid,” he says.

During their last raid on Cerro Las Kavras the police had the support of the army, which developed internally under the state of emergency declared by the government of Conservative President Guillermo Lasso in three provinces, including Waia, where Duran is located, to tackle organized crime.

“The gangs are playing cat and mouse with us,” said NCO Washington Regges. They have provided children with “lighter-sized” walkie-talkies, in order to warn them about the authorities’ operations.

The leaders of the dreaded “Los Tsoneros” gang come from Cerro Las Cavras. Junior Roldan and Ben 10 both started their criminal activities like paid pistols, according to the authorities.

The “Los Tsoneros” gang has been repeatedly involved in the barbaric episodes that have been raging since last year. prisons of the country.

Last Monday, 44 detainees were killed in Belavista prison in the province of Santo Domingo de los Tsatsilas, 80 kilometers west of the capital Quito, when two gangs decided to clear their accounts. As of February 2021, some 400 detainees have been killed in clashes, often involving prison control.