The story of Fito, Ecuador’s most dangerous drug trafficker whose escape has the country in suspense

Last Sunday, the disappearance of José Macías, alias “Fito” , from the Litoral penitentiary located in Guayaquil, Ecuador. The police and the army invaded the prison premises during the day to search for the number one criminal in the country who had been in prison for 12 years and is leader of the Los Choneros organization partners of the Sinaloa cartel.

José Adolfo Macías Villamar, alias “Fito”, is the leader of Los Choneros, considered by Ecuadorian authorities to be one of the largest criminal gangs in the country. “Fito” is 44 years old and is the subject of 14 legal proceedings for various crimes, including theft, organized crime, possession of weapons and murder, which totals maximum sentence of 34 years in prison 12 of whom were detained at the Guayaquil regional prison.

Ecuadorian prosecutors say they have opened an investigation investigation into the alleged leak of “Fito” the largest and most populous prison facility in the country. The commander of the Ecuadorian National Police, General César Zapata, said in a press conference on Sunday that the armed forces had noticed the disappearance of an inmate from the prison. “Fito” He disappeared a few hours before being transferred at La Roca Prison, a maximum security prison.

This is not the first time he has escaped. In February 2013, “Fito” and 15 other prisoners of the Los Choneros gang, including the group’s former leader, Jorge Luis Zambrano, escaped from the maximum security prison. The rock , which is located in the same Guayaquil prison complex. For 10 months, they were the most wanted criminals in the country, until they were found by the police, according to the Ecuadorian daily El País.

More recently, “Fito” had been associated with an important political assassination . In the run-up to last year’s Ecuadorian presidential elections, the the candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who spoke out against the powerful cartels The Ecuadorian drug trafficker was murdered in Quito, the capital, in August. Days before his death, Villavicencio said he and his team had received threats from “Fito” and Los Choneros . Three days after his death, the drug trafficker was transferred to the high security prison of La Roca.

Former President Guillermo Lasso declared on this occasion that the organized crime He was behind Villavicencio’s murder. Days after his death, a video appeared on social media in which armed men wearing balaclavas claimed responsibility for the killing. The men said they belonged to the gang Wolves , rivals of Los Choneros. But hours later, another video appeared on the Internet in which another group of men, this time without masks, claimed to be Los Lobos and denied having any role in the murder, saying the other video was an attempt of their rivals to trap them. . a trap.

“Fito’s” ascension to the Los Choneros mandate occurred following the assassination of Jorge Luis Zambrano, aka “Rasquiña” , which maintained the hegemony of the organization created in the 1980s in Manabí, a province on the Ecuadorian coast. The Choneros became famous as hitmen, although over time they expanded their crimes to drug trafficking, microtrafficking, extortion and theft. They were the first to create links with foreign cartels, according to police information. After the crime of “Rasquiña”, Los Choneros separated and trusted men took charge, forming new cells: Los Águilas and Los Fatales, the latter directed by Macías .

Until now, the whereabouts of “Fito” and his means of escape are unknown. The Secretary of Communication of the Presidency and former ambassador of Ecuador to Chile, Roberto Izurieta, declared last Sunday during a press conference that more than 3,000 law enforcement officers They were trying to locate him. “We cannot, as you understand, give many details about this operation,” Izurieta said.

“We are confident that with the support of the Armed Forces and the Police and their professionalism, we will successfully complete this research” , assured Izurieta. However, the National Service for Comprehensive Attention to Adults Deprived of Liberty and Adolescent Delinquents (SNAI) limited itself to indicating that once it is completed, the results and data of the procedure will be published.

He Guayaquil Prison Complex the complex where “Fito” was located, includes five prisons where more than 12 thousand people are deprived of their liberty . And the search operation in the complex comes just after the President of the Republic, Daniel Noboa, announced the construction of two maximum security prisons, respectively in Santa Elena and Pastaza, on the Pacific coast and in the Amazon. The highest authority in the country even announced that the first stone of the complex in the Amazon would be laid on January 11, in the same spirit that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele built his prisons in his war against gangs.