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In the lead-up to the country’s presidential election last year, candidate Fernando Villavicencio-who spoke out against Ecuador’s powerful drug cartels-was killed in the capital Quito in August. Fito, now age 44, was serving a 34-year sentence for drug trafficking, organized crime, and homicide.īut the gang leader already had a history of getting out of his imprisonment: in February 2013, he escaped from La Roca, a maximum security prison in the infamous Guayas Penitentiary Complex, with 17 others and had been on the run for months before being caught in May that year.įito has also been linked to a more recent prominent political assassination. Like other gangs, Los Choneros’ criminal activity is believed to extend outside the prison walls, even reportedly functioning as an operating arm of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel.įito had been detained since 2011, but he only became leader of Los Choneros after the murder of former head Jorge Luis Zambrano González (who was known as Rasquiña) in 2020. With many of its members imprisoned, it holds sway over the South American country’s penitentiaries that have been consistently neglected by the government. Known as one of Ecuador’s most dangerous criminals, Fito is the leader of Los Choneros, a prison gang that engages in drug trafficking and extortion. Several American airlines have canceled flights to Guayaquil amid the unrest. Shortly after, Noboa issued another decree declaring an “ internal armed conflict” in Ecuador, and he designated more than 20 gangs as terrorist groups, including the Los Choneros and Los Lobos groups, ordering the Ecuadorian Armed Forces to “neutralize” them. The same day, teachers and students at the University of Guayaquil were also reportedly taken hostage by unidentified attackers. Then, on Tuesday afternoon, 13 men in masks broke onto a live broadcast by TC Television network, brandishing pistols and apparent explosives. Fabricio Colón Pico, who allegedly helms Los Choneros’ rival gang Los Lobos, is also still being searched for by authorities. Monday, the day after Fito vanished, some 90 miles northeast of Guayaquil, another Ecuadoriangang leader escaped a different prison with 31 other inmates, local authorities announced. “We are not going to negotiate with terrorists nor will we rest until we return peace to all Ecuadorians.” “These narcoterrorist groups try to intimidate us and believe that we will give in to their demands,” Noboa said in a video on social media announcing the declaration. Since Monday, more than 70 people have been arrested.

Schools and businesses have been shuttered, explosions were reported in several cities, and some police officers were killed in Guayaquil, Reuters reports, while more than 100 guards are being held hostage in gang-run prisons.

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In response to Fito’s disappearance as well as violence that broke out in and out of prisons after, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared on Monday a 60-day state of emergency over the nation, which reportedly entails nightly curfews and a suspension of the right of assembly.īut that hasn’t prevented a nationwide surge of unrest-including the prison escape of another rival gang leader and the ambushing of a TV station during a live broadcast by a group of masked, armed men.

Thousands of authorities in Ecuador remain engaged in a manhunt to locate one of the country’s “most-wanted” criminals, after officials revealed Sunday that notorious drug lord José Adolfo Macías Villamar, known as “Fito,” had disappeared from his prison cell at a detention center in the port city of Guayaquil.