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In the month since Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa declared a state of 'internal armed conflict" more than 7,000 people have been arrested around the country. The government has officially labeled 22 gangs in Ecuador as terrorist organizations.
On January 9 the leader of the Choneros gang José Adolfo Macías, aka "Fito" escaped from the prison to avoid being transferred to a maximum security section of the facility. The military now controls the prison. Prisoners have no communication with the outside world and their cellblocks have no electricity. In recent years drug-related violence and widespread extortion of local residents in Ecuador's coastal provinces has caused many people to move to safer parts of the country or emigrate abroad, with large numbers to the United States.


Photos and footage by John Moore

Music from Epidemic Sound - To Make Down by Christoffer Moe Ditlevsen, Hannah Ekström, Anna Dager

Video produced by Xavier Mostacero