The U.S. State Department designated Los Lobos and Los Choneros, two of Ecuador’s main criminal groups, as foreign terrorist organizations, as announced Thursday in a public note.
The Los Choneros gang is one of the most feared gangs in the South American country and has worked with the Sinaloa Cartel in Mexico and the Oliver Sinisterra Front in Colombia, according to the crime investigation center InSight Crime. The organization’s report notes that it emerged in the late 1990s in the coastal city of Chone, Manabi province, and grew to become the largest in the country.
Drug dealer José Adolfo MacÃas Villamar, alias Fito, was the leader of Los Choneros and became the first criminal to be extradited to the United States in July, after, through a referendum, Ecuador again allowed the surrender of its citizens to the U.S. Justice.
The Choneros have mainly exploited the Pacific illicit drug route, which passes through Ecuador and accounts for 74 percent of the cocaine that arrives in North America, according to the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project (OCCRP), a network of investigative journalists.
For its part, Los Lobos began as a group of hitmen operating alongside Los Choneros, who are now their rivals in the dispute over drug trafficking, according to the U.S. Treasury Department.
The Wolves have been involved in drug trafficking, paid murders, and illegal gold mining, and, in addition, provide security services for the Jalisco New Generation of Mexico Cartel in support of the efforts of the Jalisco New Generation Cartel to dominate the cocaine trafficking routes in the port city of Guayaquil in Ecuador, the U.S. authorities reported.
This criminal group was also singled out for planning the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio on August 9, 202,3, after a rally in Quito.
Following the announcement by the State Department, Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, welcomed the decision. The Choneros and The Wolves can still believe that no one touches them. But the reality is another: they have been declared terrorist groups by the United States, and with their support, we will remain firm in our struggle to recover our country,” he published on his X account.
The Treasury Department indicated that Wilmer Geovanny ChavarrÃa Barre, alias Pipo, is the top leader of Los Lobos and that between 2011 and 2018, while he was imprisoned, he was running groups of hitmen when he responded to the band of Los Choneros, which would later become his rival. As part of that confrontation, in 2022, he ordered the murder of two leaders of Los Choneros, the Treasury said. So far, Pipo remains at the forefront of justice.
Rubio in Ecuador
At a press conference in Quito, U.S. Secretary of State Marco Rubio said the appointment gives Washington many options to fight criminal groups, such as sharing more intelligence information.
In addition, he argued that these are not common drug traffickers. They’re narco-terrorists; they commit terrorist acts against the population. They use Ecuador as a transit country, and this government (of President Daniel Noboa) is confronting them, he said.
The head of U.S. diplomacy also announced that he signed an agreement with Ecuador for $13.5 million to combat drug trafficking and crime, and another for $6 million for the delivery of drones to the Ecuadorian Navy. According to him, both countries are working to modernize the extradition treaty, as the current one was signed more than a century ago.
In response to questions from the press, Rubio defended the military operation launched on Tuesday against a boat that allegedly carried drugs in the south of the Caribbean and rejected Venezuela being considered a minor actor in drug trafficking, a UN report says.
I don’t care what the UN says; you don’t know what you’re talking about. Maduro is indicted by an investigating jury in the Southern District of New York.
There is no doubt that Maduro is a drug dealer accused in the United States and a fugitive from U.S. Justice. The Venezuelan government has previously rejected accusations of drug trafficking and said in a statement that the United States resorted to threats and defamation.
The Secretary of State said a similar unilateral military operation against drug trafficking involving countries allied to the U.S. would not take place. For other governments that cooperate, there will be no need, because those governments will help us identify them, find them, and bust them, if that is what is needed. They’re going to help us, he said.
As for operations against smugglers, he reaffirmed: “Let’s continue to hunt them down. This time, we’re not going to go after the drug dealers with their fast boats and try to arrest them. The president has said he wants to launch a war against them.
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