Photo by: Lucas Bustamante
Esmeraldas in Crisis
Esmeraldas province is located on the northern Pacific coast of Ecuador, bordering Colombia. It has a majority Afro-descendant population, and has the highest poverty rates in the country. The province faces very high unemployment rates, precarious housing and lack of basic services, problems of access to basic rights such as education and health, and one of the highest rates of teenage pregnancy in the country.
These circumstances in Esmeraldas should be framed in a context of historical abandonment and institutionalized racism, where everything is paralyzed except for natural resource exploitation. Those resources provide financial benefits to elites, but such benefits are not reflected in the province, and their extraction increases the precarity the province’s inhabitants face.
Historically, Esmeraldas is one of the provinces of Ecuador that has suffered the most from state abandonment: in terms of racism, insecurity, a lack of effective policies for social and economic development, and access to decent housing. Apart from Esmeraldas canton (57%), all cantons of Esmeraldas report over 80% of people are living in poverty with unmet basic needs, an infant mortality rate higher than the country average, and an illiteracy rate of 8.3% for people aged 15 and over[1].
Over the last decade, a series of natural disasters (including a landslide in 2013,[2] flooding in January 2016[3], followed by an earthquake in April 2016[4]) has served to highlight the Ecuadorian state’s neglect of those living in peripheral sectors and rural communities of Esmeraldas, underlining the urgency of current calls for comprehensive state intervention.
After the pandemic: organised crime and an earthquake
Like the rest of Ecuador, Esmeraldas province has been emerging from the Covid-19 pandemic, a health emergency that has seriously weakened the economy and societal stability, especially for those who do not have stable employment and live day by day. Covid-19 hit the province particularly hard given the lack of health infrastructure and lack of access to clean water. Unfortunately, once the health situation started improving and circumstances began to return to normal, citizens in Esmeraldas then found themselves being intimidated and terrorized by criminal groups operating within the province, seeking total control of the territory to carry out illicit activities such as drug trafficking, extortion, hitmen killings and other criminal activities.
In 2021, the total number of murders reported in Esmeraldas was 151[5] with Esmeraldas canton reporting the highest murder rates out of the seven cantons in Esmeraldas province. However, this total figure for 2021 has already been surpassed, with 189 violent deaths reported in Esmeraldas in the first five months of 2022, and estimates indicate the current year will end with approximately 500 violent murders. Most of the deceased had criminal records, leading a local police commander to downplay the incidents as “gang disputes”. However, these murders are not only framed by hitman violence or the revenge of criminal gangs, there are several reports of citizens being murdered after refusing to hand over their belongings under intimidation. Reports of theft and robberies - including personal robberies, home robberies, car theft, motorcycle theft, theft of auto parts, and robberies of businesses – have massively increased. Between January and March of 2022 alone, 585 robberies were reported in Esmeraldas province (compared to 1,801 in the whole of 2021; many of which occurred in December), causing many businesses to close their doors en masse, to avoid becoming victims of theft and extortion.[6]
Furthermore, gender-based violence is also increasing in the province, and is disproportionately experienced by black women. In 2021, 11 femicides, 151 crimes of domestic violence, 263 cases of rape and 186 cases of sexual abuse were reported, in Esmeraldas[7]. In the same year, ECU 911 recorded 2,255 emergency calls regarding domestic violence. Alex Estupiñán, the local head of this institution, explained that this relates to the Covid-19 health emergency and lockdowns. If we consider these numbers in this context, we would expect this year’s cases to fall following the end of lockdown, but this is not the case: so far, in 2022, 1,974 calls for help in situations of domestic violence have already been recorded. This implies that the 2021 figures are set to double by the end of this year. The conclusion is clear: gender-based and domestic violence is a constant reality for many women in Esmeraldas.
This situation of precarity was further exacerbated in March 2022, when a 6.0 magnitude earthquake hit Esmeraldas canton, 11.79 kilometres from the city of Esmeraldas. 9,778 people were affected by this earthquake in the cantons of Esmeraldas, Atacames and Rio Verde[8], and again, help from the state has remained largely absent, despite two visits from Ecuador´s President, Guillermo Lasso Mendoza, in the immediate aftermath of the earthquake. On these visits, he promised to rebuild the damaged homes, build new ones, and distribute stimulus cheques among displaced families. These proposals have largely failed to materialise, with 8,104 homes still needing to be built for families affected by the disaster.
State of Exception
In late April 2022, against the backdrop of this growing marginalisation and insecurity, the Ecuadorian state announced a ‘state of exception’, lasting until June 28, 2022, allowing it to install the military in Esmeraldas province on the grounds of maintaining safety and security. However, the reality is that this latest move serves only to exacerbate the precarity, violence and insecurity faced by Esmeraldeños, and there is little expectation amongst residents that the situation will improve any time soon. The Colectivo Mujeres de Asfalto is working to raise awareness of the current situation of crisis in the province, in the face of continued invisibility in the national and international media.
Translated and adapted by Proyecto RECLAMA and Colectivo Mujeres de Asfalto from a longer article in Spanish, which you can find on the Spanish version of our blog. You can also find a Portuguese version here.
------------------------------- [1] Grupo de Dialogo Provincial de Esmeraldas (2013): Prioridades para el desarrollo integral; GADPE Prefectura Esmeraldas (2015): Plan de desarrollo y ordenamiento territorial, provincia de Esmeraldas. [2] In 2013, a landslide left 13 people dead in the community of Tabete, in Esmeraldas canton. Multiple families lost their homes. Several families are still awaiting a state response to allow them to recover their lives. [3] In January 2016, the flooding of the Tabiazo and Esmeraldas rivers affected houses in populous neighbourhoods in Esmeraldas canton. Seventeen families have still not found a new home after losing everything, having passed through four shelters. For their survival, they have depended on voluntary contributions from the private sector and citizen initiatives, among others. [4] On April 16, 2016, a 7.8 magnitude earthquake hit the north coast of Ecuador. While the most severe damage and loss of life was felt in Manabí province, south of Esmeraldas, over 800 houses in Esmeraldas collapsed and many inhabitants of the southern canton of Muisne were evacuated and without power for several days. [5] Ministerio de Gobierno (Secretary of State) 2021 figures. [6] Whilst in 2021, 35,950 calls were made to an emergency phone line regarding citizen safety (Servicio Integrado de Seguridad ECU 911), reporting robberies, shootings, murders, and other life-threatening incidents, this phone line has already received 31,774 such calls this year (up to and including 23rd May 2022), further evidence of how insecurity has increased in Esmeraldas. [7] Fiscalia General del Estado (State Attorney General's Office) 2021 numbers. [8] Servicio Nacional de Gestión de Riesgos y Emergencias (Situational Report of the National Risk and Emergency Management Service, May 13, 2022).