The current president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, has asked for international assistance to combat the drug trafficking and violence that has taken over his nation over the last five years.
This is violence that has affected Afro Ecuadorian people and caused massive displacement. We spoke with the Afro Ecuadorian journalist/community leader Juan Montaño about the situation.
AmNews: How does the armed conflict affect the Afro Ecuadorian population?
Juan Montaño: As one of the Ecuadorian ethnic groups with the highest rate of impoverishment, the impact is major. Black communities in the north of the province of Esmeraldas have been (and are) the most affected by the violence of different criminal groups who have allied with business groups. The reckless felling of the primary forest, illegal mining, and the planting of palm oil have all led to the migration of dozens of families to the cities of Guayaquil and Quito, and the creation of new population settlements in other provinces (for example, in Santo Domingo or the Ecuadorian East) and our dispersion throughout the country. This uprooting has an impact on the education of Afro Ecuadorian youth, a high percentage of whom are now members of criminal gangs. That also deepens the community’s impoverishment and gives some people an alleged justification for racist depictions of us and discriminatory actions.
AmNews: What are the most affected Afro Ecuadorian regions?
JM: Mainly in the province and city of Esmeraldas and in the neighborhoods of Guayaquil––for example, Pablo Neruda, and La Trinitaria, to name a few. The city of Esmeraldas, where I live, is economically dying from various extortion and business assaults. And the extortion is at all levels: The shoe-shiners are even being extorted.
We believe criminal groups from other countries are reorganizing and redirecting the local criminals in Ecuador. For example, extortion (usually called vacuna, the Colombian phrase for extortion), the number of hitmen (increased spectacularly), and the blackmailing of Ecuadorian and Esmeraldan authorities have increased. That is why this year, the province and city of Esmeraldas have shocking figures: 81 murders per 100,000 inhabitants, one of the highest in the world! An important, and quite large, proportion of the victims are Black people: yet, so are the perpetrators (they are mostly youth).
AmNews: What is Esmeralda’s situation in regards to this conflict and how do you think it could be solved?
JM: It needs to be noted that:
First, the violence has increased impoverishment, even though the province was already poverty-stricken. And it is a province with fewer people working in state institutions, so if the economic dynamics (like the circulation of the dollar) slow down or drop to a minimum, problems such as begging accelerate and grow, but the labor force for the criminal gangs increases. That’s what’s happening now.
Second, some authorities in Esmeraldas govern in absentia because gangs threaten them. But it must also be said that many of these authorities and their lack of vision took us back to the 1990s because of their inefficiency.
Third, private initiatives by Esmeraldans have stopped and one of their most important economic activities––tourism––has been reduced to almost nothing. Better said, unemployment has become a deadly tragedy.
Fourth, education levels, which were already tenuous following the last government administrations (of Lenín Moreno, Guillermo Lasso, and the current Daniel Noboa) worsened. Now there has been the creation of gangs or involvement of gangs in educational institutions. Again, everything is heading to a point of no return.
Fifth, the lack of social investments in the area is an “absence of the state.” Afro Ecuadorian organizations have denounced this situation many times, but this has been ignored and underreported by the traditional media. We even proposed doing a “March of 10,000” to Quito to demonstrate against this, but we were not able to come to a consensus and the march has been postponed.
In Afro Ecuadorian organizations, we believe that one of the only ways we can reverse our current situation will be to fight “by all means necessary,” following the philosophy of Malcolm X.