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BOGOTÁ — It was a side effect of the November 2016 peace accord that 13,000 fighters of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), once Colombia’s biggest leftist rebel force, signed with the Colombian state: cocaine production lost its biggest “regulator” in southern Colombia.
A year later, The New York Times would observe that for five months, the informal economy that depended on coca production and processing was practically suspended, as there was no armed force to police the area. This sudden deregulation that came with the FARC peace accord had not been foreseen by the Colombian or Ecuadorian governments, neither of which had designed policies to respond to its consequences — most notably a cut-throat turf war over a lucrative business.
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By 2022, in the southern department of Nariño, 60,000 hectares (232 square miles) which comprises Colombia’s biggest land surface used to plant coca, the state prosecution service reported as many as 11 gangs fighting over the area. Some had names that said it all: Nuevos delincuentes (“New Delinquents”) or Gente del nuevo orden (“New Order People”).
A subsequent report by the International Committee of the Red Cross mentions at least seven gang wars going on in that department, responsible for more than 16,000 victims in the first semester of 2023 — including fatalities, expulsions, mine injuries and missing persons.
A lot of Nariño’s booming cocaine production is sent through the port of Guyaquil, in Ecuador. Indeed, until recent years, Colombia’s southern neighbor was a largely peaceful country. But now, gangs are fighting practically everywhere to control the drug business, setting off a national crisis in Ecuador.
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has declared an “armed internal conflict,” ordering the military to restore order in the country after a week of nationwide unrest that followed top gang leaders escaping from high-security prison.
A journalist colleague of mine believes there may be 70 or more gangs fighting it out right now, though the recent decree declaring a state of emergency only cited 21. They consist mostly of youngsters who seem to be both easy prey and cannon fodder for the big criminals.
Disposable assassins
Take last week, for example, when scrawny hoodlums casually brandished their weapons at the television studio they had taken over in the capital Quito. They looked like rowdy teenagers or neighborhood “punks” rather than professional killers.
The gang would sell their merchandise to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, which took it north.
But still, they kill: the assassins of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in August had a similar profile. And being dispensable, they were later murdered in jail.
InSight Crime, a think tank dedicated to the study of organized crime in Latin America, cites Los Choneros (The “Chone Boys”) as the FARC’s former partners and shippers to Guayaquil. Members of the gang would sell their merchandise there to Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, which took it north. For decades the Choneros controlled this point, without much trouble.
Favored prey
But, according to InSight Crime, after the chaos that followed the FARC pact, another Mexican cartel, Jalisco New Generation, moved in and began arming another local gang, the Lobos — active in the districts of Machala and Cuenca. As their power grew, other gangs joined them in the hope of displacing the Choneros and their partners from Guayaquil.
Who knows which strategy is best?
With less than two months in power and without a defined security policy, the country’s new president (the very wealthy Gustavo Noboa) felt he must call in the army to face off criminal gangs’ assault on the nation’s security.
Other countries have tried this, but after a while, crime, filth and corruption begins to infect the armed forces; or if the army stays clean, the result is a lot of brutal killings — as seen in the Philippines under Rodrigo Duterte or El Salvador now, under Nayib Bukele.
In Colombia, Gustavo Petro is trying the opposite: talking to gangs and launching a state offensive called Jóvenes en paz (“Youngsters in Peace”), offering the most vulnerable in society prospects in terms of work and education.
Who knows which strategy is best, as drug trafficking remains immensely lucrative while drugs are illegal? Meanwhile, Latin America’s youngsters will be the cartels’ favored prey, and frustrated youth and poverty will remain the perfect tools to subvert our democracies.
