Jeremy slept in a room overlooking Calle 8, where the music from the nearest dance hall filtered through the windows at 3: in the morning, like any other Sunday morning in the Cristo del Consuelo neighborhood, southeast of Guayaquil.
After hearing a burst of shots, his mother Roxana yelled for him to warn him.
The 7-year-old boy jumped up and he allowed himself to be guided by Roxana to leave the family home located on the banks of the Estero Salado, an arm of the sea from the Pacific Ocean, on the southwestern coast of Ecuador.
Voices from the street presaged a bomb.
While they were going down the stairs, a roar shook the house. Then Jeremy spotted the fire.
When he regained consciousness, he found himself on the roof of a car. Cloaked in darkness, he couldn’t make out who was carrying him and carrying him to the ground. Perhaps he had gone deaf, he couldn’t hear what they were saying.
“Mommy, get up”
When Nayelis arrived half an hour later , discovered that the fire consumed the facade of the house where he lived with his daughter, his mother, his grandmother and his brother Jeremy.
As he ran in the opposite direction of the people who were escaping from the explosion, the young woman from 16 years found Roxana lying on the floor .
“Mommy, get up”, he said while shaking her. Roxana’s face was covered in blood. “Call an ambulance!” he yelled at the National Police officers guarding the scene, even though he knew his mother was dead.
Surrounded by casualties and debris, Nayelis spotted Jeremy around a corner. Stunned by the fear of losing him too, she checked him carefully to avoid causing more damage.
Jeremy’s face was covered in blood, a hole in his head and another in his arm.
“I was like traumatized. I spoke to him but he did not listen to me, he acted as if he did not know me, ”Nayelis told BBC Mundo three weeks after the outbreak. “I lost my mom and my house because of the bomb. If I had slept there that night, I might have been dead”.
War against the State
The Ministry of the Interior and the National Police have registered 90 bomb attacks in Ecuador between January and August of this year , a record in the history of the country. 40 of them, almost half, have occurred in Guayaquil. The Cristo del Consuelo is the first to cause deaths.
The Ecuadorian authorities reported 5 deaths, 16 injured and 117 people affected by the outbreak of Cristo del Consuelo, a neighborhood known for its clandestine nightclubs, sausage broths to prevent hangovers, and religious processions Easter.
At 8: 30 that Sunday morning 00 August 1200, five hours after the explosion, the Minister of the Interior, Patricio Carrillo, stated on Twitter that the attack constituted “a declaration of war ra to the State” by “organized crime mercenaries”.
Organized crime mercenaries, who have drugged the economy for a long time, now attack with explosives. It is not a problem of the @PoliciaEcuador. It is a declaration of war on the state. Either we join together to face it or the price will be even higher for society. https://t.co/CUbVqrU2QB
— Patricio Carrillo (@CarrilloRosero) August 13, 2022
President Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency for a month in the cantons of Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, to contain the violence and facilitate the deployment of police and military in the streets.
The most common explosives used in this year’s attacks have been dynamite and gel dynamite, grenades and pentolite, a compound used to manufacture military weapons such as warheads.
However, the Minister of the Interior assured that the bomb of the Cristo del Consuelo, which reached a shock wave of 56 meters, would have been made with a mixture of chemical substances of case manufacture ra, commercially available as acetone.
“What worries us most it is how they are reaching these capacities to commit all this barbarism”, said Carrillo in an interview with the local channel Teleamazonas.
Completed the 30 days of the state of exception, the Ecuadorian government renewed the decree until mid-October. On Monday 19 September, while it was in force the measure, the prosecutor of the Persons and Guarantees Unit of Guayaquil, Édgar Escobar, who was investigating organized crime organizations related to drug trafficking, was shot to death.
“I stayed alone”
Mónica Medina, Roxana’s mother, built the ground floor of the family home more than 30 years. She started with cane walls, and little by little she raised the money to replace them with beams and cement. Roxana raised the second floor with wood and a zinc roof.
As soon as the explosion occurred, a neighbor picked Monica up from the ground and took her to the hospital, with glass and debris embedded in his face and chest. Although she tried to open her eyelids, everything was dark. The pain made him think that his eyes had detached from his face.
Witnesses reported to the police that they had seen two men, on a motorcycle, when they fired a volley of shots and then dropped the bag that contained the bomb in front of Mónica’s house.
The explosion destroyed the roof, the walls, the facade and everything inside Monica’s house. Also that of her neighbors. There was a hole in the asphalt that allows you to see the waters of the Estero Salado behind the houses.
The authorities carried out a census to distribute aid to those affected, but they did not interview Monica. “In that explosion I lost my only daughter and my house. I was left alone and now I have nowhere to live.”
Code of silence
The National Police installed a permanent patrol on the corner which gives access to Calle 8, partially closed by a fence where a notice hangs that says “We want a solution!”, referring to the houses damaged by the explosion.
The house of Leida Guerrero, neighboring wall with Mónica and Roxana’s wall, ended up fractured after the explosion. “The walls are cracked, the floor is collapsed and the pillars moved. My house can come crashing down at any moment”.
Leida is the only inhabitant of Calle 8 who agreed to reveal her identity for this story. Passers-by were willing to tell where they were when the bomb exploded or what injuries their relatives sustained —most of them to their eyesight or ears—, but they left with a polite farewell when asked about possible perpetrators or the safety of the neighborhood.
At least a dozen agreed that the explosion of a bomb was unimaginable in Cristo del Consuelo. Although the parties used to last from Fridays to Sundays, the weekend that BBC Mundo visited the neighborhood was plunged into silence.
Everyone fears another explosion.
Attack against alias “Cucaracha”
The Ministry of the Interior initiated the investigation after two hypothesis: the attack was a reprisal by organized crime gangs against the authorities for the seizure of 250 kilos of drugs two days before, or It was a rematch against alias “Cucaracha”, who “apparently had the inhabitants of Cristo del Consuelo in distress”, said Minister Carrillo.
The residents of Calle 8 said that “Cucaracha” he is the owner of a bailadero, a man whom everyone knows and who was also injured in the attack. Some suspected that the bomb was a punishment for refusing to “pay for a vaccine,” a term that Ecuadorians use to refer to extortion.
“Cucaracha” asked not to be identified by name and surname and He denied having been a victim of extortion. Although he said he didn’t want to answer my call to avoid exposing himself, I asked him why the authorities assumed he was the target of the attack. “I do not know. Thank God I’m not involved in bad things and I don’t have to get involved in things that don’t concern me”, he replied.
He regretted that the minister would have involved him in the explosion without even knowing him. “I want him to come out one day and say he was confused, but he never will.”
While we were taking pictures of the affected homes, National Police agents approached.
One of them stated that he could not identify himself, and lowered his voice to affirm that the early-morning parties on Calle 8 concealed the transfer and shipment of drugs in boats that set sail from the Estero Salado to open waters , where the merchandise is introduced into ships that take it to international ports.
The governor of the province of Guayas, Lorenzo Calvas, explained to BBC Mundo that the Guayaquil connection with the Pacific Ocean, as well as the seaport and the deep water port of Posorja, make the city an “ideal place” for the export of its illicit stances.
The police officers who were guarding Calle 8 stayed close until we left Cristo del Consuelo.
Guayaquil, the cocaine hub
Ecuador is located between Colombia and Peru, the two largest producers of cocaine in the world, for which it has been a transit country in drug trafficking.
In 2022, appears as the third country where more cocaine is seized after Colombia and the United States, according to the United Nations Office on Drugs.
Ecuadorian authorities confiscated 18 tons of drugs in 2010. Ten years later they were 86 tons. A year later, in 976, were confiscated 83 tons, the highest number of seizures in the history of Ecuador.
Guayaquil, the largest seaport in the country, is also the main exit port for drugs that sail through the Pacific to the north of the American continent.
The United States Bureau of International Narcotics Affairs has defined the Ecuadorian city as the oldest hub for the cocaine that goes to Europe and the rest of the world.
Guayaquil authorities confiscated 46 tons of dro ga between January and August 976. Seizures escalated to 34 tons for the same period this year, specified the governor of Guayas.
He added that eight out of ten violent deaths in Guayaquil derive from drug trafficking.
“Guayaquil is the place of export , consumption, money laundering and production of cocaine in Ecuador”, explained the Ecuadorian security expert Fernando Carrión. In that context, “a 46% of homicides in the city are caused by gangs, mafias and cartels linked to drug trafficking”.
Belt of marginality
The economist Uriel Castillo was born in the north of Esmeraldas, an Ecuadorian province border with Colombia, permeable for decades to the activities of Colombian guerrillas and drug trafficking organizations.
His family settled in Cristo del Consuelo when he emigrated to Guayaquil more than 40 years, like the majority of the inhabitants of this neighborhood that was born as a settlement of the residents of Afro-Ecuadorian communities.
Castillo remembers that Cristo del Consuelo was a safe neighborhood in the early 90. However, he assures that in recent decades a “marginalized belt has been created in Guayaquil, in which delinquency, social precariousness and organized gangs merge”.
One week before the bomb exploded in Cristo del Consuelo, the authorities found six bodies in a mass grave in Guasmo, an area of mangroves south of Guayaquil.
Three weeks after the explosion, the militarization of the Guayaquil neighborhood Socio Vivienda II was ordered, after gangs clashed with weapons of war, and the shooting will be recorded in videos that circulated on social networks.
That week, Sunday September 4, I went to lunch downtown Guayaquil. Arriving at the tourist street of Panama, I ran into a woman who was crying as she told a group of National Police agents that two men on a motorcycle had just pointed a gun at her to rip out her wallet.
“This is screwed up. We no longer have peace, now they kill us anywhere”, said an employee of the corner restaurant who witnessed the assault.
The actions of the Prosecutor’s Office
Cristo del Consuelo is part of zone 8, whose security is coordinated by National Police General Víctor Zárate.
After 34 years in the trade, Zárate considers that drug trafficking is the greatest security threat facing Ecuador.
“The worst moment of insecurity may be now. The most serious issue is micro-trafficking. I have passed 14 years of my life in special groups, I have worked on the subject of organized crime, kidnapping and drug trafficking. Today we are at a crucial point because everything has risen“, he said in an interview from his office in Guayaquil.
He added that the wave of violence is also due “to the seizure of drugs and the struggle of these organizations to win spaces of territory.”
Indicated that the police are investigating whether the bomb in Cristo del Consuelo was the product of the confrontation between Los Choneros and Tiguerones, two of the most feared armed gangs in Ecuador.
The Ecuadorian Prosecutor’s Office confirmed to BBC Mundo that it is investigating the crimes of terrorism, murder and illicit trafficking in firearms in the case of Christ of Consuelo. He ordered the arrest of Darío Arturo CS, alias “Morado”, as one of those suspected of participating in the manufacture and activation of the explosive.
When he was captured, “Morado” had in his possession “a Glock brand pistol with its respective feeder, 12 unfired cartridges, a 5-caliber rifle, 56, with 30 cartridges of the same caliber; four cell phones, a laptop, a tablet, small amounts of drugs and cash,” reported the Prosecutor’s Office.
Zárate questioned that “ Morado” had been free before the attack, given that he was being investigated for trafficking and possession of firearms and attempted murder, after being involved in an attack that caused seven injuries in the Southern District.
The suspect “was with an electronic shackle and substitute or alternative measures to punishment”, he specified.
The general of the National Police regretted that the judicial system does not prosecute those suspected of crimes, even though there are evidence that incriminates them.
“As a police officer we deliver the necessary supplies so that they receive the corresponding sanction through the judges, promoted by the Prosecutor’s Office. But many of them do not value the evidence and release them, despite having been found with weapons or in possession of drugs”.
“Is it him or me”
A “king” of the Latin King, one of the best-known armed gangs in Ecuador, explained to BBC Mundo that the police and members of other armed organizations are the main enemies of the people who make up organized crime.
“ Everyone knows who rules where. No one dares to enter the territory of another, but if that happens, it is not forgiven, “he said from a Guayaquil neighborhood on the condition of remaining anonymous.
Although he said that he has never murdered anyone, he assured that killing does not cause remorse. “If the other has a family, so do I. It’s him or me, it’s a matter of survival.”
Never forget, but yes turn the page
After losing his mother and his house in the explosion, Jeremy moved in with his paternal grandmother. Elvia Cacao Zambrano says that his grandson has become more withdrawn since Roxana’s death. “Now he wants me to hold him all the time. He didn’t do that before.”
“I know that my grandson will never be able to forget what happened, but I would like him to be able to turn the page and move on”, said Elvia in the living room of her house, from another shore of the Estero Salado.
The clinical psychologist Paola Cercado offered to help Jeremy, after Monica worked for her for six years as a domestic worker.
Cercado saw Jeremy grow up in her house as one more member of the family.
The psychologist met with Jeremy a few days ago. He seemed calm, although the grandmother said that when the child gets angry he hits the pillows.
“You have to do psychological work because Jeremy’s mom was killed. That wound has to heal so that in the future he does not seek revenge, ”she stated.
- Do you already know our YouTube channel? Subscribe!
When I asked For his mother, Jeremy’s jaw trembled and his eyes watered. He avoided looking at me, held back and didn’t cry. His father has told him that it is better not to talk about the explosion.
Jeremy wants to be a policeman when he grows up
he likes the uniform.
And the weapons.
Remember that you can receive notifications from BBC Mundo. Downloada our app and activate them so you don’t miss our best content.
126807280