In the neighborhoods of Guayaquil, the silence hangs heavy. No longer does one hear the shouts of children running after a ball, nor the music that once came from speakers on the street corners. Even the salsa has ceased. The daily hush is only interrupted when one hears gun shots.
People throw themselves to the floor, away from the windows, hide under a table or in any corner that offers safety. Outside, bullets ricochet randomly, a Russian roulette. Every shot may herald the end of a life, the irreversible rupture of a family. So it was with Ezequiel, or Eze, as he was called by everyone who knew him. A five-year-old boy who was shot to death on the doorstep of his home.
The hitman turns at the corner of Muisne Street, on the edge of Guayaquil, not stopping for a single second. His pistol points in front of him, its shots sounding one after the other, his target a young man in the middle of the road. Little concern for the safety of onlookers is evident. The sounds pierce the air and calm of the Sunday afternoon in August. A 16-year-old runs with one arm reaching back, shooting blindly while he attempts to flee the macabre scene he's left behind, as Eze's grandmother Mayra remembers it. Eze had been standing near the target, and hadn't run when the shooting began. He was paralyzed immediately when one of the bullets hit his back, a lethal blow.
In Ecuador, between January and August of this year, 386 minors have been murdered, the equivalent of three children and teenagers being slain every 48 hours, due to growing violence in the country. That figure represents a 50% increase in comparison with the same period last year, when 258 minors were killed. According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 91% of these victims were killed by firearms.
Milena Pincay goes over every detail from the day her son Ezequiel was murdered. "I had told him we'd go out to play, but he couldn't wait and went out with my mother," she recalls. They lived in her parents' small home, where the only space Eze had to play in was the bed where he slept. Since that day, Pincay has focused all her energy on her search for justice, raising money to cover the fees of a legal process that seems unending. September 25 marked the third attempt to bring charges against the 16-year-old who took Ezequiel's life.
The young man who shot and killed her Eze is well-known in their neighborhood. "He's the child of some of the followers," says Pincay, alluding to the fact that the boy's parents are active members of an evangelical church. "They are selling their house because they want to get their boy out of jail," she says, upset and disappointed. At 26 years old, Pincay has not received any answers to heal the loss of her son. On September 4, Ezequiel would have turned seven, and they were unable to celebrate. Everything was ready for the party, but Pincay took some of the supplies and brought them to the cemetery. Alongside the grave of her son, they sang Happy Birthday, a bittersweet reminder of the boy, but also a way of facing a reality that no one has explained to her how to navigate.
With 6,021 homicides so far this year, mourning has become a perpetual part of life in the areas where organized crime ends the lives of children and recruits adolescents as its labor force. Violence has penetrated the most intimate parts of life, and it is transforming social structure and familial dynamics, according to sociologist Evandro Moreno from the Center for Social and Community Studies (CESCU), which works in the most violent parts of Guayaquil. "Where the state has left our neighborhoods, along with quality education, security and public space. Those who step in to govern are the narcos, who come with their production model, their culture, impose new norms, reconfigure the ways the neighborhood relates to itself -- and the people try to adapt to survive."
In the neighborhoods that have been most beaten down by the violence, survival depends on strategies that have become nearly routine: don't leave your house, don't stick your head out the window, don't go to the store, don't go to school on your own. According to CESCU, failure to follow these rules can also lead to tragedy. Such was the case of Mikel, a 14 year old who had gone just a few feet from his house to meet up with a friend, and was hit by a stray bullet from a shoot-out.
Moreno says that the damage goes beyond these killings, and that criminal logic has wound up infecting the entire social fabric. "People who live amid this violence are impacted by a kind of trauma based on revenge: 'You killed my friend and I have to avenge his death,'" the sociologist explains. And therein lies one of the central problems: crime replaces fundamental values. Moreno warns of the bleak future that awaits neighborhoods where children grow up without a strong family structure, which is essentially what transmits values, a sense of security and affection. "The family is nourishment and love, it regulates, calms and provides security," he says, emphasizing criminal activity can step into the void left by a lack of familial warmth.
"Drug traffickers impose their own ways of relating. Children no longer greet their elders, they don't want to go to school, they don't understand why it is necessary to protect their sexual health. They're growing up without tools," Moreno says.