Victoria Gómez de la Torre, the supervisor of the Migrant Education Program with Alachua County School Board and an Ecuadorian expatriate, has reflected on her land’s outcry with a heavy heart.
“Your homeland you carry in your soul,” the 63-year-old Gainesville resident said. “What happens in the homeland hurts you deeply.”
For Gainesville’s Ecuadorian community, the violence back home has left a lingering pain.
The country’s outbreak of gang violence has escalated since an attack at a television network in Guayaquil Jan. 9 spiraled the nation into fear. After the country’s powerful drug lord, José Adolfo Macías Villamar, known as “Fito,” escaped prison Jan. 8, Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, declared a 60-day state of emergency for what he’s coined an “internal armed conflict.”
A fundamental part of the rising violence has been the country’s weak authority system, which began taking a toll during the COVID-19 pandemic. It led to violent outbreaks within jails which soon found their way onto the streets. Drug trafficking has also fueled gang related activity in Ecuador, plaguing the country with corruption and fear.
The country has undergone business closures, an 11 p.m. curfew and military advancements to ease the brutality sweeping the region.
Community members beyond the nation are expressing a mix of fear, anger and heartbreak, trying to make peace with policies they don't agree with while also placing their anger aside and simply feeling for their loved ones.
Gómez de la Torre is concerned with the nation’s sudden shift from peace to chaos.
“I think we got too comfortable with that idea that maybe it was never going to affect us,” she said.
She’s been keeping up with the conflict daily as well as checking up on family members who reside in South America. She believes the nation’s former president Rafael Correa and his policies could have been leading causes to the country’s current state, she said.
“He’s the main architect of this collapse,” she said.
Gómez de la Torre believes the nation’s vulnerability has made it easier for crime organizations to prey on younger individuals who are seeking opportunities in a country with scarce job resources, she said.
UF acknowledged the crisis Jan. 10 and addressed the on-campus Ecuadorian community.
The university’s Interim Dean of Students Jonathan Yorkowtiz sent out an email to the Ecuadorian body acknowledging the crisis and offering support during the difficult time.
“I want you to know that support is available for you,” Yorkowtiz wrote in the email and listed multiple resources, encouraging students and faculty to reach out.
Director of UF’s Latin Studies Department Carlos de la Torre said the violence is a product of many economic, geographic, social and political dynamics within the country.
De la Torre said the departure of the United States’ military base in Manta made the nation more vulnerable to drug imports and eventually grew the country’s exports.
“It’s very, very sad,” he said. “The future of Latin America could be dominated by drug lords.”
But de la Torre said the nation is still regionally diverse, making some areas more dangerous and others much safer. The more dangerous spots are the ports where cocaine is distributed, he said.
Kleber Naula, is a 44-year-old UF professor of Quechua, an indigenous language spoken in the Americas. Naula is originally from Ecuador and said he has two separate perspectives on the problem: a more objective view and a more personal viewpoint on the trajectory of the country’s fall.
Naula said the problem is rooted in all levels of social class because there is corruption within the government that makes it difficult to combat the origins of the crisis.
Corruption is inevitable if there are gangs threatening people’s lives or their loved ones if they refuse to comply, he added.
Naula said poor families are placed in vulnerable situations like being promised lucrative profits but also being threatened into exporting drugs or laundering money.
Naula also believes the crisis will start a dispersion of Ecuadorian roots and increase emigration, similarly to what Venezuela has seen in the past decade, he said.
“They don't have any job opportunities or opportunities in education,” he said. “So we are starting another diaspora.”
Naula said his own family, who is from the Chimborazo Province, is also suffering from a lack of resources. His own nieces and nephews are looking for jobs and better education, he said, but because of limited opportunities and now the violence, the diaspora feels unstoppable.
“We are creating this culture of fear: ‘cultura de miedo,’” he said. “Society is panicking about the criminal groups, and [these groups] know they have the power, and that is what is affecting the culture as well.”
Sara Almeida, an 18-year-old UF mechanical engineering freshman, has been keeping up with the crisis through family members and the news. She said she’s disappointed her nation’s beauty is now masked by crime.
“Ecuador is a very pretty country, and it should be recognized for its beauty and not the narco violence,” she said.
Almeida’s father lives in a city near Guayaquil, and she’s concerned for his safety because of his proximity to the violence, she said, but she’s remaining hopeful that authorities can control the situation.
Valentina Gabino, a 20-year-old Santa Fe College nursing sophomore, said she feels not only for her family but for every Ecuadorian.
“It’s something very real,” she said. “I don't know a single person, friend, family who hasn't been affected.”
Gabino said her father had to leave the country to protect himself; she also said her friends back in Ecuador closed their businesses for their safety.
A large issue Gabino has seen among her relatives is gang bribery.
“My grandpa has land in Quevedo, and if gang members know you’re sowing, you risk being threatened for large sums of money,” she said.
Gabino said the bribery goes beyond farming and is also seen in businesses and homes, especially in upper-class neighborhoods.
Amongst different perspectives on violence, policy and solutions, community members all fall back to reminisce on their country’s rich and fascinating presence, one that Victoria Gómez de la Torre collectively remembers as peace.
“I hope this ‘land of peace’ can become a land of peace, again,” she said.
Contact Nicole Beltran at nbeltran@alligator.org. Follow her on X @nicolebeltg.
Nicole Beltran is the Fall 2024 Senior News Director and El Caimán Editor. She's reported for El Caimán, University and Enterprise desk. In her spare time, she enjoys journaling about her day, watching movies and drinking matcha.
