At least 68 people have died in gang-related violence in a prison in Ecuador, just weeks after a similar melee in the same facility became the deadliest jailhouse chaos in the country’s history.
The Litoral Penitentiary in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, once again became a battleground for rival gangs linked to international drug cartels and competing for control of the prison’s wards, officials said.
Wp Get the full experience.Choose your plan ArrowRight
Inmates used dynamite to knock down walls and burned mattresses to escape from their cells in clouds of smoke, said Tannya Varela, Ecuador’s police commander, citing drone imagery. Videos on social media showed burned and wounded bodies, and inmates pleading with police for protection. In addition to the dozens confirmed dead, at least 25 people were wounded, officials said.
Story continues below advertisement
The violence, which began Friday night and lasted more than seven hours, was prompted in part by the recent release of a gang leader, which left behind a power vacuum in one of the prison’s units, officials said.
Advertisement
“Left without a ringleader, other wards, other gangs tried to break them down and carry out a total massacre,” Gov. Pablo Arosemena of Guayas province, where Guayaquil is located, said in a news conference.
The clashes come just weeks after similar fighting in the same prison, in late September, left at least 116 people dead — included five people beheaded — and 78 injured, the worst prison violence in Ecuador’s history. It prompted Ecuador’s president to declare a state of emergency across the South American country’s penitentiary system.
Story continues below advertisement
In February, brawls in three prisons on the same day left 79 inmates dead, and in July, similar fights led to the deaths of 22 inmates.
This weekend’s violence brings the death toll in the country’s prisons to more than 300 this year, well more than double the total in all of 2020, according to the Ecuadoran Ombudsman’s Office.
Advertisement
“The enemy is drug trafficking,” Arosemena said.
Located between the world’s two biggest producers of cocaine — Peru and Colombia — Ecuador has played a growing role in the international drug trade, according to current and former officials. As Mexican cartels have sought out partners in Ecuador’s criminal groups, the country’s gang wars have spilled into its overcrowded prisons, causing an explosion in violence.
Story continues below advertisement
Ecuador’s prison system has the capacity to manage fewer than 30,000 inmates, but houses 39,000. About 9,000 of them are in the Litoral Penitentiary, the country’s largest prison.
Across Latin America, which has some of the highest incarceration rates in the world, notoriously packed prisons and turf wars among drug cartels have led to multiple bloody prison riots over the past few decades.
Advertisement
Ecuador’s attorney general’s office said it has opened an investigation into the violence, and urged state institutions to take “urgent measures” to address the crisis in the country’s prisons. It called on the judicial system to address the fact that 40 percent of inmates have not received a sentence.
Story continues below advertisement
In response to this weekend’s violence, inmates in a prison in the neighboring province of Azuay refused to eat their meals, officials said, calling it an apparent “show of solidarity.”
On Saturday, a familiar scene took place outside the penitentiary in Guayaquil: dozens of families praying, protesting and waiting for news about their relatives in the prison.
“The military must take control,” read one of their signs.
Diana Durán contributed to this report.
Read more:
Ecuador’s prison riot: Drug cartels, overcrowded cells and a bloodbath
More than 100 killed in Ecuadoran prison riot as gangs fight for control