At the end of September, another riot had already cost the life of 119 inmates in the same penitentiary center after clashes between gangs.
Le Monde with AFP
This is a new tragedy that strikes the Ecuadorian prison of Guayaquil. A riot between detainees, who started Friday, November 12, made 68 dead and wounded, announced the Attorney General’s office. A first assessment showed 58 dead.
“These events are the result of a territorial dispute between criminal bands inside the penitentiary,” said the Tannya Varela police commander. “What happened yesterday more violently than usual started around 19 hours, when, following an alert, the National Police implemented the protocols to contain violence inside the penitentiary center, “she explained.
The police intervention to try to restore order in prison has “saved lives,” said Pablo Arosemena, governor of the province of Guayas (whose capital is Guayaquil). He has castigated “the water level” of the attackers “who wanted to enter the block 2”.
This same prison had been the theater, at the end of September, from one of the worst massacres of prisoners in Latin America: 119 detainees had been killed. Some of them had been dismembered or burned in these violent clashes between gangs related to Narcotrafica and Mexican cartels.
As was the case during the massacre of September 28, families of detainees were gathered, Saturday in the morning, in front of the penitentiary of Guayaquil, trying to take news of their relatives or shouting from despair at the announcement of The death of one of theirs.
overcrowding
In this prison, which houses 8,500 detainees and whose overpopulation reaches 60% according to official figures, violence has not stopped since.
After the September incidents, 15 other detainees were killed. In February, 79 detainees had died in simultaneous riots in several prisons. The riots in Ecuadorian prisons have made more than 250 deaths since the beginning of the year.
The September massacre prompted the Ecuador government to declare the state of emergency for the penitentiary system for sixty days, the army shoulder the police to try to reign the order in the sixty-five prisons of the country . They can accommodate 30,000 people but are occupied by 39,000 inmates, an overpopulation of 30%.
Ecuador is facing an increase in drug trafficking crime: nearly 1,900 violent deaths have been identified in this framework since the beginning of the year, especially in Guayaquil, Port City and Economic Center country.