Ecuador’s Lobos Turn El Oro Province Into Battleground

The Ecuadorian coastal province El Oro has emerged as a new hotspot for violence, as splintering criminal groups compete for control of the region’s lucrative criminal economies.  On January 12, assassins killed Eber Ponce, the mayor of Arenillas, a municipality in the south of the province near Ecuador’s border with Peru.

The extreme violence in the province has also taken a heavy toll on citizens. In December 2024 alone, assassins killed three at a car shop in Machala; while in El Guabo, a municipality just outside of Machala, 10 were murdered in another massacre. Homicide statistics from the Ministry of the Interior revealed 591 homicides in 2024 (about 82 per 100,000 inhabitants), surpassing 2023’s record of 561 homicides.

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