The Oliver Sinisterra Front allied with Nueva Marquetalia to control cocaine routes on the border. Their allied gangs clash in Esmeraldas. Ecuador contains violence with 1,768 soldiers.
While the president of Colombia, Gustavo Petro, bets on total peace, two of the nine drug criminal groups with whom he wants to sit down to negotiate escalate their fighting in the border department of Nariño and cause problems in Ecuador.
Since the end of 2022, the dissidents of the Oliver Sinisterra Front (FOS) began a fierce counteroffensive against the feared Urías Rondón Mobile Column (CMUR).
In December, the FOS retook control of part of the territories where the cocaine plantations and processing laboratories are located, as well as the transport routes to the Pacific, along the coast of Colombia and Ecuador, according to intelligence sources from both countries.
The FOS has gained strength in recent months with the support of Nueva Marquetalia, considered one of the most powerful FARC dissident groups, with incidence in Nariño and Putumayo.
The Nueva Marquetalia is led by Iván Márquez, a guerrilla leader who is taking refuge in Venezuela.
This organization is allied with other FARC dissidents, including the Border Commandos, which has been operating on the Putumayo and Sucumbíos border, since 2016.
Both groups, which would add up to 1,500-armed people, were included by President Petro in the list of armed targets.
This means that they will only be watched and not persecuted by the Colombian Army.
PRIMICIAS toured the border area of Esmeraldas, together with patrols from the Armed Forces, which have deployed 1,768 uniformed personnel from the Navy, Army and Aviation there.
Of this contingent, 1,648 are troops and another 120 are officers.
All this contingent is part of the Esmeraldas Joint Task Force (FTCE), under the command of General Alexander Levoyer.
The FTCE operations intensified in March 2023, when President Guillermo Lasso decreed the State of Exception in Esmeraldas for the third time, after another wave of violence unleashed by criminal gangs and FARC dissidents.
The Force has been deployed in this province for nine months.
They carry out patrols and have had five confrontations with the FOS and the Urías Rondón in Ecuadorian territory, forcing them to retreat to the Colombian side.
During this period, they have carried out 121,371 operations and have captured 218 people with the support of the Police.
“This device has allowed us to contain violence. But reversing crime rates will only be achieved in the medium and long term, with investment and social plans, which the Government has planned”, says Levoyer.
On the other side of the border
On March 13, 2023, Petro announced that his government and the Central General Staff of the dissidents (former FARC) will establish peace talks, after the Prosecutor’s Office announced that the arrest warrants against 19 members of that group had been lifted.
“Practically half of the armed people today enter into a peace process with the Government. Half (of the dissidences) is still missing. We are waiting for the events that derive from that other half, which still continues in violence,” Petro said.
The groups with which Gustavo Petro is trying to reach an agreement are the FARC dissidents, who did not sign the Peace Agreement promoted by Colombia in 2016.
Many of these organizations have fought with the state and are engaged in drug trafficking, along with the Mexican cartels Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación.
The department of Nariño is the epicenter of these clashes, the consequences of which are felt in Ecuador.
For this reason, between the military and the police, Petro’s decision arouses more doubts than certainties. The uniformed officers consulted estimate that it is unlikely that the criminal groups that live off drug trafficking will lay down their weapons, what are they going to live on?
Despite Petro’s decision, coordination with the Colombian military forces is permanent, through mirror operations, to confront drug trafficking.
In the last month, thanks to this cooperation, with the exchange of information, 85 laboratories were discovered to process cocaine: 83 in Colombia and two in Ecuador.
The last appointment of the military commanders was on Wednesday, March 15, 2023, with the participation of the head of the Joint Command, General Nelson Proaño, and General Helder Giraldo, commander of the Colombian Military Forces, in the Motorized Infantry Brigade No. 31 Andes, in Tulcán.
The purpose of the meeting was to refine operations to neutralize clashes between armed groups for drug trafficking and related crimes.
Why does it affect Esmeraldas?
The trigger for the violence in Esmeraldas and Guayaquil is the increase in the volume of cocaine from Colombia, which leaves through Ecuador.
So far in 2023, 30 tons of cocaine have been seized, which shows an upward trend in the trafficking of this drug.
In 2022, 173 tons of that drug were captured and in 2021 there were 190 tons.
Now Ecuador, which used to be called the ‘island of peace’, is the country that captures the most cocaine in the region, after Colombia.
The homicide rate almost doubled in 2022, for the second consecutive year, reaching 26 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in Latin America.
Levoyer agrees that most of these murders are due to clashes between local gangs and Colombian armed groups.
In Esmeraldas, the rate exceeds 50 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants.
In 2022, 511 violent deaths were reported: 374 occurred in the capital of that province and 53 in San Lorenzo.
The most conflictive and dangerous areas are in neighborhoods of the capital Esmeraldas, San Lorenzo and Río Verde.
Criminal activities headed by Los Tiguerones, Gangsters and Los Choneros, who engage in drug trafficking, extortion and fuel trafficking, have taken root in these areas.
The criminal attack has hit the economic and tourist activities in Esmeraldas.
The situation is very complex. Very few inhabitants dare to speak to the press about gangs and extortion, threats. Fear has settled and is expressed in silence.
A parish priest from Esmeraldas, who works with vulnerable groups, says that the government has abandoned the population to its fate.
“This abandonment is ideal for drug trafficking, there is the hand of drug politics that, through its silent operators in the governments on duty, prevents education and work needs from being met. There is no intention for this to be solved, but for it to get worse”, he says.
Despite its wealth in agriculture, fishing, minerals and tourist areas, Esmeraldas is the poorest province in the country. 52% of its inhabitants are in poverty and 21% are unemployed.