Ecuador's police fight gangs, corruption in drug war's front lines

In the city of Durán, Ecuador, the streets after dark belong to the gangs. Captain Jean Carlos Bustamante knows this intimately. At 34, he leads a hand-picked police unit through neighborhoods where windows are barred shut and residents speak only in whispers, if at all. The fear is justified. When people talk against the gangs here, they die. Silence is survival.

Bustamante's real enemy, he says, is not just the criminals on the streets. It's the rot inside his own institution. "We have many, many bad people inside our unit, inside the state, inside politics," he tells me. "We have many, many guys that are corrupt. They are in the pay of the gangs." The only officers he trusts are the ones standing beside him now, moving through the darkness in body armor, weapons ready. They raid an abandoned house controlled by Los Aguilas—The Eagles—and find two handguns and ammunition for an assault rifle. It's a small victory in what Bustamante knows is a war of attrition. The gangs, he admits, have far more weapons and far more money than the state.

Ecuador has become the world's cocaine superhighway. About 70 percent of the cocaine reaching Europe and the United States flows through this country, according to President Daniel Noboa. A decade ago, Ecuador was a peaceful tourist destination. Now it is a killing ground. Last year, more than 9,200 people were murdered—one of the highest murder rates on earth. The drug pours in from Colombia and Peru, the world's largest cocaine producers. Local gangs with ties to Mexican cartels and Albanian mafia groups move it onward, exploiting Ecuador's porous borders, underfunded security forces, and long Pacific coastline. The president has imposed an iron-fisted crackdown over the past two years, but critics say it has backfired. When top crime bosses were arrested, the gangs fractured and multiplied rather than weakened.

Bustamante keeps fighting anyway. On another operation, he watches a playground through a drone, spots three figures moving at the edge—micro-traffickers, he calls them, the bottom rung of the drug chain, selling in tiny amounts for dollars rather than kilos. Within minutes, his team has tracked them to a house. The battering ram breaks the door. Inside, a middle-aged woman protests. A young girl bursts into tears. Officers move room to room by torchlight—there is no electricity—opening wardrobes, lifting mattresses. Upstairs, they find a hiding place behind a window. Three suspects are detained. In a flowerpot, Bustamante discovers tiny paper packets of heroin mixed with other drugs, sold for a dollar each by neighborhood dealers. One suspect is charged and could face five years in prison. The other two are released by prosecutors. This happens constantly, according to Colonel Santiago Gavilanes, the deputy commander of Durán police. "We imprison them and they release them," he says. "We know because when we carry out raids, we recapture them. Some of those who are released kill people and leave orphans behind." The gangs, he explains, have money to "buy laws, judges, and politicians."

One anonymous officer describes being contacted twice by text with offers of massive bribes—enough to retire on. He refused both times. Someone, perhaps a colleague, had told the gang exactly where he worked and what he did. "You never know who is watching," he said. That phrase echoed throughout a week spent in Durán and the surrounding areas.

The police claim progress. The murder rate in Durán is down by half in the first six months of this year, they say. Streets are no longer deserted after 7 p.m. Bodies are no longer found beheaded or dismembered, which used to be routine. But elsewhere, the criminals are containing the police. Through a contact, I met a gang leader—calling himself Jonathan—on his home turf about an hour outside the city. At 37, he is only a few years older than Bustamante, but on the opposite side. He says he joined a gang at 18 to feed himself. Now he has four police officers on his payroll, paying them $1,500 to $2,000 a month for early warning before raids. "Whenever they're going to do an operation, they call me," he said. "They tell me to hide things, and to get out of here. When they arrive, they find nothing."

Jonathan and his men—and boys—walk the rough streets in broad daylight with weapons, including a semi-automatic rifle and a pistol. The youngest gang member visible was 17, wearing a bulletproof vest and flip-flops. All covered their faces. Jonathan admitted to being a drug pusher and a killer. When asked how many lives he had taken, he replied casually: "Well, until now about eight, I think. I don't remember well." He held a handgun in his lap, pointing in my direction. He claims his gang kills only rival criminals trying to take their territory, not innocent people. He makes no apologies for putting guns in the hands of teenagers or selling cocaine in the neighborhood. He insists the drug trade cannot be rooted out. "I think it's an issue that will never end," he said. "If they shut us down, another one will come along, and if they shut that one down, there will be another." He expects to die by the gun, as he has lived. "Death is paid by death," he said. "But if they come to kill me, I won't make it easy for them."

Two nights later, back in Durán, the reality of that violence materialized. A man lay dead beside a motorbike, bullet casings scattered on the ground. Police lights flashed. Neighbors stood in silence. A man and woman held each other and wept—relatives of the dead. Police suspected a revenge attack between gangs. A witness, unwilling to give his name, described what he saw: "He already had a bullet in his back. As he fell, they finished him off with a shot to the head. He was shot six times by two men on a motorbike." He said people here are used to this now because it happens every day. "You might just step outside and catch a stray bullet," he said. "You can't even go out or talk to friends or family because someone could shoot you." He does not expect the president's crackdown to change anything. "Criminals are like ghosts," he said quietly. "They pop up wherever they please." Then he disappeared into the warm night. You never know who is watching.