Guayaquil buying coke

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Guayaquil buying coke

Coca prices have collapsed in parts of Colombia amid record hectares of cultivation. Could oversupply do what years of eradication have failed to achieve, prompting coca farmers to switch to legal crops? This is wishful thinking, as world cocaine prices remain stable even as new markets in Asia are developed by traffickers, with European mafias assuming a growing role in the global trade. The reasons behind the decline in coca prices in parts of Colombia obey three different dynamics: conflict in areas of cultivation, which creates uncertainty and keeps buyers away; the saturation of drug smuggling routes out of Colombia amid high seizures; and the extraordinarily rapid growth in coca cultivation, with which supply chains have struggled to keep pace. But we believe that during this gap will be closed, and global organized crime, especially in Colombia and Peru, will enjoy bloated profits. They also provided a one-stop shop for traffickers, not only securing access to the raw material, but protecting drug laboratories, internal movement corridors, and departure points. Now traffickers have to deal with multiple warring factions in areas the FARC once dominated: the eastern plains, the southern jungles, and much of the Pacific coastline. And it will adapt fast. Potential cocaine production in Colombia alone has increased since by tons. UNODC figures had possible cocaine production at 1, tons in , and at 1, tons in This is a huge potential windfall for transnational organized crime and already Mexican and European traffickers are queuing up to get their share of the Colombian cocaine bonanza. With the growing volume of cocaine shipments, seizures are up. Yet the seizure rate is barely keeping up with the increase in production, while the government policy to reduce eradication of drug crops means that potential cocaine production is still rising, even if, as the UNODC suggested to InSight Crime, coca cultivation is leveling off. There is currently cocaine stacked up in the supply chain, waiting for export. This is a non-perishable product that has a shelf life, if vacuum-packed, of at least five years. The US market for cocaine has remained relatively stable for years. The European market is still growing. Of the 10 largest seizures of cocaine in European history, five were recorded during , according to an InSight Crime database. European criminals are increasingly being arrested upstream in Latin America as they negotiate to secure cocaine at its source and seek to maximize their earnings per kilogram by arranging their own transport. The InSight Crime database also revealed that 38 senior European drug traffickers have been arrested across Latin America and the Caribbean since , more than the previous 10 years combined, with Italians leading the tally, followed by the Dutch, and then traffickers from the Balkans. Here there are strong middle classes with significant incomes, virgin markets ripe for exploitation. The traffickers consulted expressed no worries of international prices falling. They were focused on diversifying markets beyond the traditional destinations of the United States and Western Europe. Control of the business will be achieved when one of the warring factions gains hegemonic control over certain coca-growing areas. Ideology now plays little part in the Colombian civil conflict, and different factions have already shown a willingness to work with foes in the interests of maximizing earnings from the drug trade. While conflict between different factions will continue in certain parts of Colombia during , in others it seems likely that new front lines and cooperation agreements will be negotiated, allowing the cocaine business to flourish once again. While coca cultivation has grown exponentially in Colombia, Peru and Bolivia have also seen increases. What is worrying in these two nations is how political chaos is pushing counternarcotics strategies further and further down the list of government priorities. In Peru, President Pedro Castillo was removed from office and imprisoned in December , while his deputy and successor, Dina Boluarte, has faced widespread civil unrest. Bolivia is preparing for general elections for the presidency and Congress in In Colombia, Petro has seen his approval ratings drop to the lowest point of his tenure. All of this means that there will be diminishing resistance to cocaine trafficking during in the main production nations, while transnational organized crime sorts out its supply chain issues. A worrying development has been the establishment of industrial plantations of coca outside of the three traditional growers of Colombia, Peru, and Bolivia. Venezuela, Guatemala, and Honduras have now replicated the cocaine production system established in Colombia, with coca fields alongside laboratories and airstrips or close to other departure points. While still in its infancy in these nations, Colombia has shown that despite billions in US aid aimed at reducing production, once coca takes root it is very difficult to eradicate. Central America is now an ideal place to grow coca. The damage of the cocaine trade is not restricted to the producer nations. As interdiction in Colombia improves, traffickers need to find new ways of getting the drugs to market. And with there being no land bridge to Europe, maritime trafficking is the norm, meaning that ports with international container shipping are particularly sought after by transnational organized crime. Perhaps the most sobering story of the dangers for any transit nation has been that of Ecuador during With the port of Guayaquil one of the principal contamination points for cocaine shipments heading to Europe, the country has seen its murder rate quadruple over the last five years and seen native organized crime, allied with Colombians, Mexicans, and Europeans drug trafficking organizations, undergo unprecedented growth. So much so that criminals did not hesitate, in August , to assassinate a presidential candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, who was campaigning on a tough security platform. Cocaine has long been the foundation of transnational organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean. While synthetic drug production, illegal gold mining, human smuggling, and human trafficking, as well as environmental crime, earned billions for criminal syndicates in , cocaine remains the principal driver of criminal evolution and earnings. So, when those cocaine earnings can increase by billions of dollars, the threats to Latin America and the Caribbean are potentially very grave. How many new cartel members can be recruited with increased cocaine earnings? How many officials can be corrupted, how many communities can be won over, how much more state penetration and criminal governance will we see in a region where democracy is already under siege? And how much more violence will be generated as different criminal groups, with state embedded allies, fight for control of the trade? Latin America faces a new challenge in an established criminal economy during While Europe has awoken to the threats the cocaine trade presents to the Old World, dedicating more resources and home and upstream, to fight the drug flow, the United States, long the dominant regional player in the fight against cocaine, has lost focus. Fentanyl and migration dominate the political agenda in Washington, even as the country readies for presidential elections, while US influence in Latin America wanes, especially in the two nations key to fighting the cocaine scourge: Colombia and Mexico. While transnational organized crime will focus during on the cocaine bonanza, politicians across the region are going to be distracted. McDermott has more than two decades of experience reporting from around Latin America. He is a former British Army officer, who saw active More by Jeremy McDermott. In , Dudley More by Steven Dudley. Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a weekly digest of the latest organized crime news and stay up-to-date on major events, trends, and criminal dynamics from across the region. Donate today to empower research and analysis about organized crime in Latin America and the Caribbean, from the ground up. Skip to content. Jeremy McDermott. Steven Dudley. Stay Informed With InSight Crime Subscribe to our newsletter to receive a weekly digest of the latest organized crime news and stay up-to-date on major events, trends, and criminal dynamics from across the region.

GameChangers 2023: The Cocaine Flash-to-Bang in 2024

Guayaquil buying coke

Just a few years ago, Ecuador was a peaceful eco-tourism hotspot. Last year, it had the highest murder rate in Latin America. In the same part of the city in December an armed gang showed up at a house and shot dead four children between five months and seven years old; their intended target was the house next door. They told their parents they noticed a bad smell. Next to the ball they discovered a woman whose body was wrapped in bed sheets, dismembered and decomposed — presumably tortured before being killed. For much of the world, horror stories like these occur once in a blue moon. In Guayaquil, events like these have fast become part of the daily news cycle as in Ecuador was given the unwanted title of the Latin American country with the highest murder rate , overtaking Honduras and Venezuela along the way. A street in Guayaquil, Ecuador — Danny Wiser. This decision enabled a rapid expansion of the narcotics network internally within Ecuador, and the more the money they made, the more those groups were tied into violent activity. As a result of this, numerous splinter groups like Los Lobos, Chone Killers and Los Tiguerones came about and have been wreaking havoc not only fighting the state, but fighting amongst each other. The truth is everything was allowed in that institution. Cevallos acknowledged that in her centre the administrative staff gave mobile phones to the teenagers, who outside the prison had often been groomed by the gangs like Los Tiguerones to commit crimes, most commonly kidnappings, drug trafficking, extortion and even murder. Prior to the events of 9 January, the Andean nation was clearly on the brink of becoming a narco-state, with violent crime and corruption infiltrating every level of society. What was once a country of peace, attracting half a million Venezuelans, now has its own citizens wanting out. Here in Ecuador, not only in Guayaquil, people no longer want to go out to the streets, people who have money want to sell their businesses and move to other countries due to the extreme lack of safety. Homes in Guayaquil, Ecuador — Danny Wiser. Some attribute the rise of gang power to the tenure of former President Rafael Correa who is currently in exile in Belgium. Correa, who was fiercely opposed to foreign interference, removed the US navy base from the Western city of Manta which was serving as a control and deterrent against drug trafficking. Since then Guayaquil has become a major hub for trafficking cocaine in the region. Ecuador seemed like fertile soil for Mexican cartels from Sinaloa and Jalisco to bring their business because they would go relatively unchecked. And Ecuador is geographically sandwiched between the two largest cocaine producing nations, Peru and Colombia. With water balloons, flour and foam launched in the air to mark the festivities, carnival in Guayaquil was once a time of colour, dancing and parades. Families and friends would often come together to have barbecues and cool down from the blistering heat in their inflatable pools that residents put out in the street for people to enjoy. In recent years carnival has become a more low-key affair in Guayaquil, with restrictions forcing people to either go to the coast or mountains to celebrate or to stay at home, as gathering in big crowds is unwise given the current situation in the city. Though he is brave enough to take on fires, Bastista is not immune from the perils of gang crime, and since he has been the victim of several attempted kidnappings. The most recent incident last year saw 18 bullets fired into the tyres of his car where he was hiding close to his home. Batista used his military training to navigate the kidnap attempt, protecting not only himself but his children and his mother who were inside his home nearby. The father-of-three reclined his car seat, and managed the situation practically blind by carefully guiding himself with the live footage from the security video camera he installed into his rear view mirror. Instead of going directly back into his house after averting the danger, Batista drove on his flat tyres to the Citizen Police Unit to ensure that no gangsters would follow him directly into his house after the attack. In the same way that many Ecuadoreans have to implement various precautionary measures in their everyday life, firefighters have also had to make adjustments to their work in light of the increasing risk of narcoterrorism. Hiding their names and covering their faces for fear of retribution is considered a normal safeguarding action for firefighters these days, and given the recent trend of emergency service workers specifically being targeted by gangs, they are even forced to use unregulated equipment such as bulletproof vests as part of their uniform, weighing them down further whilst tasked with responding to a blaze in an already heavy suit. In light of the regularity with which gang bombings occur in the city, the Guayaquil Fire Academy has been training of its firefighters on how to respond to emergencies when explosives are involved. Batista explained that dealing with explosions is not always plain sailing as often when they arrive at the scene of a car bombing, an armed gang will be waiting for them. Batista recounts an incident in which the fire service received a fake emergency call from an armed gang. Upon arrival the young gangsters instructed the firefighters to exit their truck and film them inside. Due to their threats, the firefighters complied and recorded the gang members dancing inside the fire truck, taunting the audience. This video later circulated on social media, leading to attacks on the firefighters who were portrayed as accomplices of the criminals. Guayaquil at night — by Jose Garcia on Unsplash. Gang crime in Guayaquil reached new heights on 9 January. Batista was in a meeting with the fire department authority in the afternoon when news broke of the terrorist attack during the live broadcast. Batista and his team began to guide people on the street, explaining where to go to avoid the gunfire. With streets closed, public transport at a standstill and no taxis available, Batista was stuck in traffic for 3. Comparing the chaos of Guayaquil that day to that of Gotham City, Batista explained that as a calm-natured individual for him the hardest aspect of the day was the communication issues that were unfolding as he attempted to contact his family. Walking around Guayaquil, one will often find young children roaming the streets selling sweets. Having taught in the school for 40 years, Carmen Zapote says that in recent times children aged 11 are regularly being caught with drugs by sniffer dogs that the police have brought to the school, finding narcotics hidden in their underwear. The most you could find would be a boy who went to the bathroom to smoke cannabis. Then came an era in which we were inundated. The eruption of drugs and violence in the school, led the Spanish literature teacher to retire early. With inspections of rucksacks every morning in her former school, teaching hours were lost to this long and arduous process. That said, Zapote recognises it is a necessary security measure as they once found a boy with a pistol in his bag. Most businesses and services remain closed; even if they are losing money from being shut, when open they run an arguably higher risk of losing more money through extortion. Photo of Guayaquil — by Anthony Surace via Flickr. All those things have been lost from our Ecuador. There are often shootings. Zapote and people from her generation are distraught seeing how crime has taken over what was once a stable nation. She sees how children are dying. Main image by VV Nincic via Flickr. Danny Wiser.

Guayaquil buying coke