In Ecuador's war against black market weapons

By Alexandra Valencia

QUITO (Reuters) – The weapon – a 9-millimeter pistol – left a trail of violence even by the standards of one of Ecuador's most dangerous neighborhoods, Guayaquil's Nueva Prosperina district.

Bullet casings from the gun, found at the scene of 27 separate violent incidents, have been linked to 34 deaths, according to a police forensics unit. And a police medical examiner told Reuters that authorities believe the gun remains on the streets.

The devastation attributed to a single gun illustrates the challenges facing President Daniel Noboa's crackdown on an explosion of violent crime and homicides since 2020, fueled by a sharp increase in arms trafficking over the same period. period, many of which originate from the United States. Ecuador recorded 7,994 murders last year, a six-fold increase since 2020.

Reuters was the first media outlet to gain access to police bullet tracing efforts, a key part of Ecuador's fight against crime. Tracing the origins of bullets and guns could help authorities choke off trafficking routes and establish a forensic history of illegal weapons for future prosecutions, police said.

But it's slow work.

Of more than 40,000 weapons seized since 2019, only 900 have been recovered, Major Efrain Arguello, who heads a national forensic investigations unit, told Reuters.

The weapon used in Nueva Prosperina may have belonged to, or been rented from, five rival drug trafficking gangs fighting for control of the police station, Arguello said.

Police are investigating murders, robberies and other violent incidents linked to the same weapon.

“A weapon linked to 30 crimes means that there is not only an increase in trafficking, but also in the circulation or internal sales of illicit weapons,” said Renato Rivera, director of the research group of the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime.

Guayaquil, a Pacific port city, is a drug trafficking hub and the scene of internecine wars between Mexican, Albanian and foreign cartels, which have led to a sharp increase in homicides.

Noboa in January designated 22 gangs – including the five operating in Nueva Prosperina – as terrorist organizations.

Since taking office last November, after being elected to finish out his predecessor's term, Noboa has increased funding for the security forces by 6.6 percent, to $3.52 billion.

Equipment shortage

But two senior police officials told Reuters that Ecuador was struggling to block arms trafficking routes from the United States, Peru and other countries in the region due to a lack of funding, forensic equipment and trained personnel.

Ecuador has only eight bullet-tracing microscopes in a country of 17 million people, police said, and 247 trained technicians.

“We plot with what we have,” Arguello said.

In a small room in Quito's scientific police building, technician Jhony Tapia observed, through the city's only ballistic microscope, the casings and bullets from five firearms used to kill four people in a bar in the Amazon.

The distinctive firing pin markings of individual firearms, visible under a high-powered microscope, allow technicians to match bullets to firearms or other bullets fired from the same weapon.

“The firing pin leaves a more effective trace (for tracking) than a fingerprint,” said Lt. Col. Benjamin Molina, head of the National Police's arms and explosives trafficking unit.

Tapia will spend the next few hours studying 126 shell casings of different sizes, he told Reuters.

Its findings will be compared to a national police database of bullets and casings.

Finding a match is easier if police also recover the gun, allowing technicians like Tapia to compare marks on the barrel, called rifling, with marks left on bullets.

The seized weapons are checked against international databases managed by the United States and Interpol.

Forensic staff have not said whether the weapons involved in the Amazon case have been recovered.

Unlike neighboring Colombia, which has struggled for decades with drug trafficking networks, Ecuador was until recently considered one of the safest countries in Latin America – a popular destination for foreign tourists and retirees.

But after an increased drug crackdown along Colombia's Pacific coast, traffickers shifted their routes to Ecuador and violent crime soared.

Ecuadorian police have identified seven gun trafficking routes, Noboa's office said.

Three of them pass through Peru, while a fourth route enters northern Ecuador, near the border with Colombia, although police have not said whether the weapons came from there.

ARMS TRAFFICKING ROUTES FROM THE UNITED STATES

Three other arms trafficking routes come from the United States: one by plane from Miami to the coast of Manta, another via Lima and then by land, and a third by sea via the famous Galapagos Islands, police and Noboa's office said.

Police said they also found gun parts shipped via courier services from Miami or produced using 3D printing.

In April, police seized a 3D printer in the coastal province of Manabi that they said was used to make up to 20 gun parts.

Police would not share estimates on the prices of illegal weapons, but the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory said Glocks and other pistols sell for up to $4,000 new and $500 used.

Rifles can cost between $8,000 and $15,000, the research group said, while weapons made with 3D printers cost $3,000. There is also a market for homemade weapons, it added.

Police seized nearly 10,000 firearms across Ecuador last year, according to police data, more than half of which were revolvers or pistols, nearly double the number seized in 2019.

At least a quarter of the weapons found were acquired legally in the United States, but they generally have no record of legal entry into Ecuador, police said.

Authorities also found at least 36 weapons that had been legally exported from the United States to Peru and smuggled into northern Ecuador, said Molina, head of the anti-arms trafficking unit.

Peruvian authorities told Reuters they raided three businesses selling weapons on the black market in March and charged 18 people.

Molina said police were also looking into the possibility that Ecuadorian gangs were trading cocaine for weapons from Mexican cartels.

Since 2022, Ecuador has strengthened its cooperation with the United States to combat arms trafficking, obtaining access to the eTrace Internet database of the US Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Weapons. fire and explosives (ATF).

Last year, the ATF searched more than 500 firearms seized in Ecuador, the State Department and ATF said in a joint statement, compared to fewer than 100 in 2021.

Yet some analysts say that without a specific plan to combat arms trafficking, gun and ammunition seizures will remain a secondary accessory to drug seizures.

“There is no intelligence oversight process to track suppliers and systems and anticipate arms trafficking,” said Mario Pazmino, a former military intelligence chief and security analyst.

Noboa's office said security forces have had a number of successes against arms traffickers, including the seizure of 2,291 weapons since the president declared war on gangs in January.

(Reporting by Alexandra Valencia in Quito, with contributions by Yury Garcia in Guayaquil and Marco Aquino in Lima; Writing by Julia Symmes Cobb; Editing by Suzanne Goldenberg and Julia Symmes Cobb)