A brutal prison riot in Ecuador has left 116 inmates dead, with many victims butchered with chainsaws or beheaded with machetes. The violence erupted at the Litoral penitentiary in Guayaquil, as rival gangs Los Choneros and Los Lobos fought with machetes, guns and grenades. Security forces retook the prison on Wednesday, finding bodies dumped in bathrooms, corridors, and courtyards, some stuffed into air ducts.
Col Mario Pazmiño, former director of Ecuador's military intelligence, said the escalating savagery was driven by Mexican cartels—Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation—vying for control of cocaine smuggling routes through local gangs. He described the dismemberment and decapitation as a 'strategy of terror' to gain territorial control both inside and outside prisons.
President Guillermo Lasso declared a 60-day state of emergency in prisons, deploying police and the army and directing $24m to pacify jails. He acknowledged that prisons have become 'terrain for disputes for power between gangs.' The surge in violence is linked to the assassination of Los Choneros leader Jorge Luis Zambrano in December.
More than 200 inmates have died in Ecuador's prisons this year, more than double last year's toll. The country, sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, is a key smuggling route for cocaine due to its Pacific coastline. Former prison director Itania Villarreal blamed authorities for failing to relocate dangerous inmates and for a shortage of prison workers, saying 'the prison system has collapsed.'
