Violent cartels seek to 'take over' Ecuador, borrowing from playbook of military staging a coup
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Transcript
00:00 For more, let's go to London.
00:01 Christopher Sabatini, a senior research fellow for Latin America at the think tank Chatham
00:07 House.
00:08 Thank you for speaking with us here on France 24.
00:11 You heard our correspondent there earlier describing it as becoming another Colombia.
00:17 Another Colombia or another Mexico?
00:19 Well, a little of both, actually.
00:22 Colombia is obviously a producer of the coca leaf and cocaine, but it's Mexican cartels
00:28 who sort of, you know, taken root as well as the Colombian narcotics traffickers.
00:33 But Mexican cartels are really the ones who've taken over in Ecuador in terms of the trans
00:39 shipment and shipping it to the north, both to the United States and to Europe, as your
00:43 very good story just now indicated.
00:46 So you've got both combinations of a on the ground production unit, the taking over of
00:53 elements of the state, as well as trans shipment, which basically risks tipping Ecuador into
01:01 a narco state should this not be addressed, as Mo is clearly trying to do and taking it
01:06 head on.
01:07 But of course, it's going to bring more violence, very similar to what we saw in Mexico when
01:11 Felipe Calderón was elected in 2006 and sort of decided to try to decapitate the Mexican
01:17 narcotics traffickers and exploded in violence that we're still seeing today in Mexico and
01:21 simply hasn't worked in Mexico.
01:23 So it's going to be a difficult road.
01:25 Colombia's been relatively successful, as your report said, but being a trans shipment
01:29 point is a difficult task as well, because there's no real ground area that you can sort
01:34 of attack them on.
01:35 Yeah.
01:36 And you heard our correspondent describing how on the radio earlier, President Noboa
01:43 sort of goading the escape gang members, saying, go on, try to take a shot at us.
01:53 Yeah.
01:54 I mean, this is, what happened, of course, was he originally declared a state of emergency
01:58 and then Macias was escaped and then the seizure of the television station.
02:03 And basically the criminal gangs declared war on the government.
02:06 And now this is really out and out warfare.
02:09 And you know, what Noboa is trying to do, this is a president who was only sworn in
02:13 in November of last year.
02:15 He only has until 2025, he's somewhat of an interim president.
02:19 And he's 36, he's young.
02:21 He's trying to assure the country, trying to be a little bit sort of, can I say so,
02:26 macho and iron fisted about this to demonstrate that he can assert control over the country.
02:30 But he doesn't have a long time to do it.
02:31 It's a country that's legitimately scared.
02:33 Citizens have been worried about insecurity for a long time.
02:36 But clearly, seizing a television station, sending a message, quite frankly, this is
02:40 a playbook, this is a play straight out of the playbook of militaries when they stage
02:44 a military coup.
02:45 They're trying to instill fear in the hearts of Ecuadorians to try to basically take over
02:50 the country.
02:51 The world didn't heed the call when there was that assassination on the campaign trail
02:55 of the candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
03:00 That's exactly right.
03:01 And that was a warning shot.
03:02 And it's important to the Fernando Villavicencio had actually already named Fito Macias and
03:09 a number of criminal organizations.
03:11 And this wasn't obviously just a rare occurrence.
03:15 Now you see, NOBOA has named again these 22 organizations, calling them terrorists.
03:22 And the world needs to step up.
03:23 Let's also remind ourselves, and again, your very good report before this interview demonstrated
03:29 that, it's cocaine consumption that's fueling these narcotics groups.
03:33 That cocaine consumption is occurring mostly in the developed north, in the United States
03:36 and Europe.
03:37 These countries, these regions need to step up and assist a democratically elected government,
03:43 retain control and regain control over territory and a government to be able to prevent Ecuador
03:49 tipping into a narco state.
03:52 Yeah.
03:53 And because it's, we saw in that report about how there's the United States, which can play
03:58 a role, but a lot of that cocaine through the port of Antwerp and other places also
04:02 coming to Europe.
04:03 Yeah.
04:04 And that was one of the big advantages, oddly enough, for where and why Colombian narco
04:10 traffickers after the crackdown on narcotics trafficking and the peace agreement a few
04:15 years ago in Colombia, where they sought to sort of move their business operations was
04:19 because you had a port that had steady business with Europe, with the United States.
04:24 The Pacific area was relatively unpoliced, unlike the Caribbean and the Atlantic.
04:29 So it really provided, if you will, sort of virgin territory for a number of these narcotics
04:33 organizations to move their product to the markets where it's most in demand.
04:38 Quick final question for you, Christopher Sabatini, what does this young 36 year old
04:43 president do now?
04:45 I think he has to show resolve.
04:47 I think he's already doing that.
04:48 I think he needs to also try to calm the fears of citizens.
04:53 What the narcotics traffickers are trying to do, the terrorists are now trying to do,
04:56 is trying to sort of instill sort of a certain amount of disrespect or lack of confidence
05:03 in the presidency to restore order.
05:05 I've seen this in other countries, in Peru, for example, in the 1990s.
05:10 What they're trying to do is demonstrate, you know, we can have peace if you just allow
05:12 us to go about our business.
05:14 Nobuo is saying, no, that is no longer possible.
05:16 And I think it's to demonstrate that he has the international community with him, as well
05:22 as the citizens with him, and he's willing to take the steps necessary to restore Ecuador
05:27 to a peaceful island, as your report said at the beginning.
05:31 Christopher Sabatini, so many thanks for joining us from London.
05:33 [BLANK_AUDIO]