A June That Rewrote the Record
Ecuador's Manabí and Its Worst Civilian Toll

← Back to Latin America News

According to the Latin America and the Caribbean Overview: July 2026 published by ACLED (the Armed Conflict Location & Event Data Project), Ecuador's Manabí province recorded at least 63 incidents of organized-crime violence against civilians in June. It is the deadliest month since ACLED began tracking the country's organized-crime violence in 2022. Even as President Daniel Noboa's government foregrounds a hardline security stance, the figure lays bare a reality in which local safety is, if anything, deteriorating.

What happened

The number 63 is not one large event counted once; it is the sheer density of violence repeated across Manabí in a single month. ACLED's monthly overview cites the use of explosives, drive-by shootings, and roadblocks built from obstacles, and points to a growing brutalization of the violence.

Much of the harm spread not as a feud aimed at specific individuals but by drawing residents into the crossfire. Manabí is one of Ecuador's leading agricultural and tourism regions, taking in the provincial capital Portoviejo and the towns along the coast. A land that had been rebuilding since the major earthquake of 2016 now sits on the front line of organized crime.

Context

Manabí has long been known as a stronghold of Los Choneros. The port of Manta and Puerto López are key nodes on the Pacific-coast drug-trafficking routes, and controlling the export corridors for cocaine translates directly into the groups' revenue. Being port cities open to the sea is exactly what makes this region an asset the gangs cannot let go of.

In recent years the challenger to that control has been Los Lobos, a group that broke away from Los Choneros, grew, and, according to reporting, spread into wide areas of the country. Much of the violence recorded in June is read as the fallout of a "battle for the routes" between these two groups spilling into the middle of civilian life. A fight over control of the port is being converted, directly, into danger on residential streets and main roads.

The question

Since taking office, President Noboa has designated 22 criminal organizations as terrorist groups and has repeatedly declared "states of emergency" (estado de excepción) that put soldiers on the streets. Joint operations with the United States have also been carried out. A hardline stance makes for a visible show of force, but June's Manabí figures show it has not translated into suppressing local violence.

There are limits built into the hardline approach. Even when raids and sweeps take out a group's leadership, successors emerge as long as the revenue structure remains. ACLED's report notes that the temporary weakening of a group can instead make the map of power more fluid, opening a new violent vacuum. Each time one head is removed, a fresh fight over the vacated turf begins.

A second issue is trust in the security institutions. Reports have questioned the National Police's use of force against civilians, and a heavy-handed method risks deepening residents' distrust of the government. If the very tools meant to curb violence erode the trust of the people they are used on, the response itself can end up spinning its wheels.

My perspective

Twenty-three, then 43, then 63. The line traced by Manabí's monthly count as it climbs year after year is a record of the effort put into security and, at the same time, a record of that effort failing to keep up. What I feel, following Latin America's security news, is the difficulty of a story in which "a strong leader crushes crime" does not necessarily translate into safety on the ground.

Weaken one group and another wave of violence erupts over the turf it leaves behind. Terrorist designations and states of emergency can move the numbers in the short term, but as long as the foundation of revenue — drug demand and transport routes — remains, the total volume of violence is slow to fall. The more a region lives on farming and tourism, as Manabí does, the more heavily the burden of these turf wars falls on it. While the record keeps being rewritten, the everyday lives of the people who live there are chipped away, little by little. You cannot, I think, talk of "results" while leaving that view out.

Glossary

estado de excepción = a state of emergency; a measure that temporarily restricts constitutional rights and strengthens the powers of the military and police, which the Noboa government has repeatedly declared as a security tool. narcotráfico = drug trafficking; the fight among groups over the Pacific-coast transport routes lies behind Manabí's violence.

Twenty-three, then 43, then 63. The record that Manabí's monthly count rewrites every year is, just as much, a record of the failure of security policy.

※ This article is the author’s commentary based on public information. Please confirm the latest figures, dates and procedures with governments and primary sources. Quotations are kept minimal and sources are cited.