Salinas: The Ecuadorian beach town of Salinas, with its idyllic hotel-strewn coastline, is the scene of a brutal war that most tourists never see.
Gangs here forcefully involve fishermen in the drug trade, a scourge that has turned one of Latin America’s most peaceful countries into one of its most violent.
“If you protest, you will die,” a 35-year-old fisherman in the area told AFP of the gangs’ recruitment methods, which include force and fear, but also large payments – though not always all they are promised.
The fisherman, who declined to be named for fear of retribution, works at the Santa Rosa pier in the city of 35,000 in Ecuador’s western Santa Elena province.
The atmosphere in the port is quiet, tense.
“We can’t stay here long,” the fisherman told AFP, looking around nervously as he explained how he and the others were being given a choice between transporting the cocaine for a lucrative payment or being killed if they refused.
Sandwiched between Colombia and Peru – the world’s leading cocaine producers – Ecuador has seen an outburst of violence in recent years as rival gangs linked to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.
Salinas is about 150 kilometers (93 miles) west of Guayaquil, the country’s largest city and a major trading port for drug exports and the epicenter of gang clashes that wage bloody battles over trade routes to the United States and Europe.
As the gangs gained ground, murders in Ecuador rose from six per 100,000 in 2018 to a record 47 per 100,000 in 2023.
Small towns like Santa Elena have become “strategic export points,” she added, from where drugs are shipped in small quantities to Central American countries for further export abroad.
“They do it with fishing boats,” but increasingly also with larger, semi-submersible vessels, added Boris Rodas, the navy captain who commands the area.
Santa Elena was overwhelmed by Los Choneros, one of Ecuador’s largest criminal gangs, as well as smaller ones such as Los Lagartos, Los Tiguerones, Los Chone Killers and Los Lobos, according to experts.
For a fisherman, a shipment can earn up to $10,000 – a number that is hard to turn down for workers in an industry hit hard by an ever-worsening shortage of fish.
But even for those who are not attracted by money, rejection is not an option.
“We never know who hires us. There are middlemen and we never know the boss,” the fisherman told AFP.
“And if you ask for the rest of the money, they’ll obviously do something to you,” said the fisherman. “They killed a fisherman a few days ago,” he added in a low voice.
At sea, gangs fight for their routes just as they do on land.
Fishermen are talking about the recent discovery of a headless body in the water.
“When the gangs meet at sea, they open fire,” a fisherman from Salinas told AFP, and sometimes men like him get caught in the crossfire.
Other times, they are killed simply on suspicion of working for a rival group. And they are blackmailed for protection money.
In April 2023, about 30 gunmen opened fire on a small artificial fishing port in Esmeraldas, northern Ecuador, killing nine people.
