Violence in Ecuador's prisons continues unabated. A new clash between two criminal groups at the Machala prison in the south of the country on Sunday left 31 inmates dead and 34 injured. The government attributed the massacre to the transfer of dangerous inmates to the new maximum-security penitentiary, which began operations on Monday, although many mysteries still surround the case. The revolt reportedly began early Sunday when members of the Sao Box criminal gang killed four members of Los Lobos, the country's largest criminal organization and their former ally. That clash also left 34 people injured, including one police officer. The National Service for Comprehensive Care for Deprived of Liberty (SNAI), the state agency that runs the prisons, assured that the facility was «fully under control» without providing further details of what had happened. However, that same afternoon, it was discovered that 27 Sao Box inmates had been hanged by their cellmates, in an apparent retaliation by Los Lobos for the morning attack. The inmates wanted «to create chaos» Interior Minister John Reimberg stated on Monday that the clash between Los Lobos and Sao Box originated because they supposedly wanted «to create chaos» upon learning that some inmates would be transferred to the new maximum-security prison located in Santa Elena province, construction of which began in June 2024 and had not been inaugurated due to a series of unjustified delays. «They did not know the exact day we were going to transfer the detainees to the new Santa Elena prison, and they wanted to try to prevent this from happening,» Reimberg said in an interview with Canela radio, without specifying how the inmates had such information. The minister did not state how many inmates were to be moved to the new prison, called the ‘Prison of Encounter’ in reference to the slogan used by the administration of former President Guillermo Lasso (2021-2023), but local media began to report that around forty had been moved by air from different penitentiaries in the morning. «Crime wanted to challenge Ecuador and start its campaign. Today, Ecuador responded with facts. The first 300 PPL (people deprived of liberty) most dangerous have already been transferred to the Prison of Encounter,» President Daniel Noboa confirmed hours later on his X account, who is on leave until Thursday for the electoral campaign of the referendum he is pushing for this Sunday. In his post, he also attached photos of inmates in orange uniforms, with short haircuts, sitting on the floor side by side, heads bowed, and surrounded by soldiers. Violence in prisons The ‘Prison of Encounter’ was built as a response to the criminal violence crisis plaguing Ecuadorian prisons in recent years, where more than 500 inmates have been killed since 2021, mostly in a series of massacres from clashes between rival gangs. After taking office, Noboa declared an «internal armed conflict» in 2024 to fight criminal gangs and militarized the prisons in an attempt to reduce the violence level that led the country to lead the homicide rate in Latin America. Nevertheless, the violence has continued, and there have been four massacres with more than ten killed in the last two years, one of the most recent also at the Machala prison, where fourteen people died in September due to disputes between criminal groups.
