Ecuador declares a new state of emergency and curfew in two provinces and one city

The Ecuadorian Security Committee has agreed this Monday to declare, for 60 days, a state of emergency and a night curfew in the provinces of Manabí and Los Ríos and in the municipality of Durán.

The announcement of the new state of emergency has been made by the president of Ecuador, the conservative Guillermo Lasso, during a meeting of the Security Committee held in Durán, a municipality that is part of the metropolitan area of Guayaquil and that registers one of the highest rates of violence and insecurity in the country.

This new state of emergency, decreed due to the increase in crime and violence rates, covers the province of Manabí, where Manta is located, and the neighboring province of Los Ríos, which also borders the province of Guayas, where Guayaquil and Durán are located.

In all three jurisdictions, the curfew will be in effect from 10:00 p.m. to 5:00 a.m. local time.

States of exception have been recurring since the beginning of Lasso's presidential term in May 2021 to try to appease the spikes in violence from the insecurity crisis that Ecuador is going through.

The assassination of a mayor and other threats

The measure was taken one day after the mayor of Manta, Agustín Intriago, was assassinated. He was one of the most popular mayors in Ecuador and the event has shocked the Andean country and has mourned the campaign of the extraordinary general elections, where several candidates have suspended their activities as a sign of mourning.

38-year-old Intriago – who was re-elected last February – was assassinated on Sunday while on a tour of works.

So far there is one detainee for the crime, a citizen of Venezuelan nationality who is hospitalized after being injured in the attack, while the Police have also been able to recover four mobile phones that are under analysis, as well as the remains of the shots fired at the late mayor.

The case of Intriago is added to the attack last May against the mayor of Durán, Luis Chonillo, who this Monday participated in the Security Committee, and to murders that have occurred in Ecuador in recent months, including that of candidate for legislator Rider Sánchez, a few days ago in the coastal province of Esmeraldas.

In this sense, the Security Committee of Ecuador will meet again this Tuesday in Guayaquil with representatives of the Association of Municipalities of Ecuador (AME), the Consortium of Provincial Autonomous Governments of Ecuador (Congope) and the National Council of Rural Parochial Governments of Ecuador (Conagopare).

The AME plans to pronounce on the same Tuesday morning on the situation of violence and threats that some local authorities in the country are going through from delinquency and organized crime.

Ecuador closed 2022 with the highest rate of violent deaths in its history, registering 25.32 per 100,000 inhabitants, catapulted by street crime and organized crime, largely linked to drug trafficking, which has turned Ecuadorian ports into large springboards for sending cocaine to Europe and North America.

retained prison guards

Nearly one hundred prison guards are being held in five prisons that are part of the 13 prisons where inmates are on hunger strike, according to the National Comprehensive Service for Persons Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), in charge of the Andean country's prison system.

The largest number of detained agents is in the Turi prison, near the southern Andean city of Cuenca, where there are 40, followed by the Latacunga (Cotopaxi) prisons, with 25; from Machala (El Oro), with 14; from Archidona (Napo), with 12; and from Azogues (Cañar), with 5.

According to the SNAI, at the moment, the inmates on hunger strike belong to prisons in the provinces of Imbabura, Napo, Chimborazo (2), Tungurahua, Azuay, Cañar (2), El Oro, Loja, Guayas, Cotopaxi and Pichincha.

The SNAI has not yet specified the number of prisoners who are on hunger strike at the national level nor the reasons for this measure of force.