Over the past year, Ecuadorian news outlets have featured countless headlines about the alleged participation of minors in all kinds of crime, including the murders of police and attorneys.
For example, at the end of October, Second Police Sergeant Christian Wilson Pucha Islam, who was involved in antinarcotic investigations in the coastal city of Guayaquil, was killed by two alleged minors — a 16-year-old and a 19-year-old, according to a police report.
In cases like Pulcha Islam’s murder where minors are involved in crime, media outlets often describe the young people simply as murderers or “underage criminals.” But these accounts tell only part of the story.
Many of these children and adolescents have been roped in by criminal gangs whose power has grown with the increase in cocaine flowing through Ecuador. These organizations are recruiting minors at never-before-seen levels in the country, as a means of fueling their expansion and control of drug trafficking through the port of Guayaquil.
The Resurgence of Child Recruitment
Child recruitment has been a common practice in Ecuador since the early 2000s, when groups like the legendary Latin Kings gang used schools as their hunting grounds.
But recruitment has intensified in recent years, expanding in parallel to the increasing quantities of cocaine passing through Ecuador’s borders on its way to international markets, and the explosive growth of the criminal gangs behind this business.
SEE ALSO: Colombian Armed Groups Continue Recruiting Children Amid Peace Talks
Although there are no official figures on child recruitment in Ecuador, data on homicides and arrests of minors provide insight into the extent of the problem.
In 2022, 289 minors up to 19 years of age were murdered, an increase of 195% compared to the 98 cases reported in 2020, according to figures from the Interior Ministry and the police agency focused on homicides and disappearances. So far in 2023, the number of deaths has risen further: between January and July, 248 minors have been murdered.
Guayaquil and neighboring Durán are prominent battlegrounds for criminal gangs. Correspondingly, these cities in the Guayas province have the highest number of child deaths. In 2022, 48 minors were killed in Guayaquil and 15 in Durán.
In the first half of 2023, the national police arrested 1,326 children between the ages of 12 and 17 for crimes such as illegal possession of weapons, contract killings, drug dealing, and robbery around the country, according to a report by Ecuadorian news outlet Primicias. The police also arrested 12 minors on the high seas who were crew members of boats carrying drugs. InSight Crime contacted the police multiple times to confirm these numbers but received no response.
The province with the highest number of arrests was Guayas, with 367 cases. Most of them were concentrated in Zone 8, an administrative jurisdiction that covers Guayaquil and Durán.
An Explosive Mixture
Guayaquil is a city of contrasts. Home to Ecuador’s main port, it is an economic powerhouse, processing billions of dollars each year. Yet many families live in poverty and face high levels of violence.
“Guayaquil is where most of the violence and crime is concentrated,” said Max Campos, an Ecuadorian security analyst and reservist police colonel, in an interview with InSight Crime.
Certain marginal neighborhoods and areas of the city are particularly vulnerable to recruitment because of their strategic connection with the port, a major shipping point for drugs to Europe and other international markets.
These areas “are war zones,” said an Ecuadorian official knowledgeable about child recruitment who spoke to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity for fear of reprisal. “They go to bed to gunshots and wake up to gunshots.”
Durán, although not part of Guayaquil, has also been hit hard by the clashes for control of the port.
“Durán is like a big export warehouse for everything that goes out through the port,” Billy Navarrete, executive director of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDH) told InSight Crime. “So it’s a strategic place to contaminate containers with drugs.”
And the city has also been a locus of underage recruitment and the site of so-called “hitmen schools,” where recruited minors learn how to handle the high-caliber weapons used by gang hitmen.
In the escalating turf war between Ecuadorian criminal groups, child recruits play many key roles.
The gangs assign new recruits basic tasks, like working as a “bell,” or lookout, and serving as their eyes and ears on the streets. Gradually, minors are given jobs with greater responsibility, such as selling drugs in local markets or collecting extortion money. Some end up moving even higher in the drug trafficking chain and transporting cocaine. Others occupy the front line as assassins. Many girls are recruited for sexual exploitation and forced to be the partners of gang leaders.
Children and adolescents living in Guayaquil’s marginalized neighborhoods are ideal targets for gangs, as they often live in dysfunctional homes with deep economic deprivation. In addition, the official expert on child recruitment explained to InSight Crime that in the neighborhoods where these youths grow up, institutional presence is weak.
Schools, which should be a haven, are common recruiting grounds. There, criminal gangs promise young people money, Christmas gifts, drugs, and the social status that gang membership brings. Others are intimidated with threats of violence against them or their families.
What social programs and assistance existed were cut during the COVID-19 pandemic, the official told InSight Crime. In the absence of these social support networks, the gangs have filled the void.
“They have more people than the state itself to manage people’s needs,” the official recruitment expert said. “They offer them legal assistance in criminal proceedings and medical services.”
What most worries experts on child recruitment is that gangs that just a few years ago were small and localized are becoming power players thanks to massive recruitment.
“The power they have is impressive, as are their resources — both financial and people,” said the expert. “They are building themselves up into mini armies.”