Drug violence reaches Quito: ‘Gangs want to take over our area’

Walled houses, passages enclosed with metal gates, and completely fenced-off parks. Solanda, a neighborhood south of Quito, the capital of Ecuador, has transformed its open spaces into fortified zones. José Calderón, a neighborhood leader, opens the gate to enter a narrow street that leads to a block of houses. No one goes in unless they live there. Like his street, hundreds of others have protected themselves from danger with barriers. It’s their way of confronting the wave of violence devastating them. Residents watch in amazement as armed confrontation erupts every month. The evidence is there: murders, shootings, and businesses attacked with bullets.

Violence has escalated dramatically in Ecuador in areas like Solanda. In 2024 alone, the parish recorded nine violent deaths, according to police data. And as of May 13 of this year, there have already been 10. Solanda is a place of contrasts. With a population of 150,000 — one of the densest in Quito — a booming commercial sector and an increase in crime coexist. A couple of blocks away from José Calderón’s house is Jota Street, one of the most conflictive thoroughfares. Businesses are packed together. Clothing stores, markets, restaurants, and bars operate practically around the clock, without a break. It’s Saturday afternoon, and pedestrians are coming in and out of the shops, looking for something to buy or eat from the carts set up on the sidewalks. Everyone seems forced to coexist with the violence.

Police officer Gabriel Rosero, chief of operations for the Eloy Alfaro district — which includes parishes like Solanda — asserts that the murders of recent months are premeditated. This is a dispute between criminal gangs. It’s now common to hear that a shootout or massacre was a “settling of scores,” a euphemism that masks the dispute over control of territory for micro-trafficking. José Calderón knows this. One only has to walk a few meters from his house to find proof of the escalating violence: what used to be a bakery is now an abandoned house with shattered windows and bullet-riddled walls. The premises were left unoccupied after the attack. Those who pass by barely glance at it.

“In Solanda, these crimes have been occurring since last year. We were incredibly peaceful; absolutely nothing was happening here,” says Calderón. “But there’s a lot of commerce, and gangs want to take over our area.” The most recent attack occurred on May 9, when two men were shot and killed in the street. Cristina’s son — she prefers not to reveal her full name for safety reasons — witnessed the crime. “Luckily or not, he was passing by at that time. I can’t send my son out for a four-block walk at night anymore,” she says.

Violence in Ecuador has steadily increased in recent years, and 2025 shows no signs of improvement. Ecuador recorded 3,094 intentional homicides from January to April of this year, a 58% increase compared to the 1,951 in the same period last year. Even compared to 2023 — the bloodiest year in the country’s recent history, which closed that same quarter with 2,301 cases — current figures indicate that 2025 could become the most violent year on record.

Violence in Ecuador, which seemed to be a problem entrenched in border provinces or coastal cities like Guayaquil, Machala, and Durán, is now beginning to spread to areas of Quito. Between January 1 and May 13, 2025, 94 homicides were reported in the Metropolitan District of Quito, an increase of 32.4% compared to the 71 cases recorded during the same period in 2024.

The escalation of violence in areas like Solanda is partly due to the fact that organized crime groups have focused their efforts on recruiting local gangs, says Pedro Manosalvas, a security expert. “The expansion of these gangs has led to a turf war for control of micro-trafficking,” he explains.

Carolina Andrade, a member of the Global Initiative Against Transnational Organized Crime (GI-TOC), agrees that the increase in violence is due to the fact that Quito is viewed by organized crime groups as a consumer market. “When these violent incidents occur, it’s because these groups that control the distribution and supply networks for domestic consumption are under tension,” Andrade points out. “Why would they want to take over a parish?” asks Calderón. He immediately answers his own question: “It’s because they see that it’s good; they have somewhere to sell, people to sell to, and what’s more, control is minimal.”

Drug use and sales are nothing new in the area. Cristina, one of the neighborhood’s residents, claims that even school students are manipulated into selling drugs. “Many have had to remove their children from institutions. The children are being threatened, and their parents are being extorted,” she says. Calderón agrees, recalling that a few months ago, a woman invited some young people from the neighborhood to lunch and “told them, ‘Do you want to make money? It’s easy, I’ll give you some packages, you sell them.’” Calderón recounts that the children alerted him to what had happened: “A group of residents and I approached her and told her, ‘If you’re going to do that here, things are going to go badly for you. You’d better leave.’ Two weeks later, she left the area.”

Manosalvas also points out that the lack of police oversight and control has paved the way for criminal groups to operate without retaliation: “Impunity allows them to act with greater recklessness toward the population and authorities. It also favors the proliferation of other related crimes such as extortion, kidnapping, and arms and human trafficking,” he explains. Andrade adds another problem: high police turnover and lack of resources. “Everything is concentrated in the coastal cities, given the current situation there. This has an impact because it reduces resources to support work in other areas.”

Residents have tried to speak with the authorities, but have received no response. And when they have managed to arrange working meetings with the police, “the leaders don’t last even two months. We plan a work schedule, and a month later they change them, and we have to start from scratch again,” says Calderón.

For now, Solanda residents cling to the few spaces of peace they still have, like the ecuavoley court — a local variant of volleyball — in the Ecological Park. They gather there every weekend and play until late at night. It’s one of the few corners that hasn’t yet been fenced off, like the other parks and blocks in the city. But none of the residents can say for sure how much longer it will remain that way.

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