They take out appliances, chairs and even a pool table that doesn’t belong to them. The family puts their house in order in southwestern Ecuador, having just been rescued from drug traffickers, who impose a cruel extortion: paying to keep the house.
The atmosphere is tense in the violent coastal town of Durán, near Guayaquil, guarded by soldiers and police. Under the burning zinc roof of the modest house, a pair of young men wearing face masks are kicking down improvised wooden walls. Others are throwing mountains of belongings that used to be used by the criminals into the street.
“They wanted me to pay them $2,000” in exchange for supposedly “looking after” the residence that was under construction, the owner told AFP, asking to remain anonymous for fear of reprisals.
The police recovered the home of this family, as well as that of many other victims of a new form of extortion in Ecuador, under which illegal organizations take over neighborhoods that are strategic for drug trafficking and crime.
“Don’t stay too long,” a police officer warns the manicurist, who is afraid to return permanently.
The woman says she paid the criminals $300, which was not enough to stop the threats against her husband and family.
“I had to leave here out of fear (…) They kill whoever,” he says in the middle of the official operation. The uniformed men break padlocks and knock down doors to reclaim the house taken by criminals in the Fincas Delia neighborhood, on the outskirts of Durán.
The small city, located on the banks of the Guayas River, is prized by drug traffickers for its estuaries that have become river routes to reach ports from which the drugs leave.
Before her escape, the woman had left the foundations and a few walls built. Eight months later, when she returned with the police, she found a house that had been completed and had been used by the criminals for their crimes.
“Irreparable damage”
Durán, an industrial zone with some 300,000 inhabitants, is a “place with a long history of abandonment and subjected to mafia rule for many years,” Billy Navarrete, director of the Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights (CDH) in the nearby commercial port of Guayaquil, told AFP.
The forced occupation of homes allows local mafias greater control over the territory, according to the expert. The so-called “vaccinators” arrive at previously identified homes with the potential to become “safe houses” for crime, he explains.
They also use the residences to “hold kidnapped people,” turn them into “storage rooms” for drugs and weapons or rent them out, Cesar Pena, prosecutor of the province of Guayas (capital Guayaquil), told AFP.
In Durán, where dirt roads and few public services still exist on the outskirts, children are easy prey for drug traffickers.
They are forced to act as security guards, traffickers or hitmen, which causes “irreparable damage to the social fabric” of the city, says the defender.
“These boys and girls extort money from within their community. They extort money from those who gave birth to them. That didn’t happen before,” he added.
In 2023, Durán was the second city with the most homicides in Ecuador, registering 450 deaths, behind Guayaquil (2,320).
Internal displacement
Peña acknowledges that extortion has skyrocketed in the country as a result of the Covid-19 pandemic, when crime has increased due to unemployment. In Guayas, authorities receive about 4,000 complaints per month for this crime, according to the prosecutor.
Criminals are not only targeting homes, businesses or shops. The “vaccines” have reached schools and human rights activists.
“If the owner does not pay a certain amount, they force him to leave the house, shoot him, kill a member of his family or plant an explosive device to scare him,” said the 47-year-old prosecutor.
The CDH recorded a while ago the threat to a defender who installed security cameras in a community center in Guayaquil. The groups called her an “informer” and forced her to leave.
“Internal displacement due to violence is a current reality in Ecuador and particularly on the coast,” Navarrete laments.
In a show of strength, the government of President Daniel Noboa deployed some 1,100 police and military personnel in Durán, warning the mafias that their “hours were numbered.”
At least 100 houses were recovered in the town in operations carried out in July. A month earlier, 170 houses were returned to their owners in Guayaquil.
The passing of a motorcycle alerts the policeman who is accompanying the family in the repossession of their house. These “people ride around on motorcycles, watching everything to tell those terrorists,” the officer whispers.
After the eviction, mattresses, dishes, a bicycle, a television, beds and other furniture belonging to the former squatters are burned in a bonfire on the dusty street.