A horde of local citizens, inflamed by social media accounts that children had been drugged (or according to some rumors, killed), stormed the UPC building. The mob dragged the two men and the woman from the station and beat them to death using iron bars and stones, some of which had been ripped up from the sidewalks. As a result of the melee, five police officers and two soldiers were injured; a taxi, a police car, and five motorcycles were set on fire; and the police station was damaged to such a degree that it was no longer usable.
As bizarre as this incident might appear at first glance—a twenty-first century lynch mob taking justice into its own hands—there is more to the story. Although all three victims possessed criminal records, they were in no way associated with the heinous crime for which they were executed on that warm, cloudy afternoon.
A spokesperson for the police department stated: “There was much confusion about the robbery and the result turned into tragedy. The robbery suspects were being detained at the police station awaiting transfer to Guayaquil when a crowd gathered outside, shouting, ‘Kill them, burn them.’ ”
The crowd grew through the afternoon, eventually breaking down doors and windows of the station and dragging the suspects outside. According to witnesses, the suspects were stripped, beaten, and set on fire by men and women wearing masks or shirts covering their faces.
Meanwhile, looters tore holes in the roof and walls of the police station in order to gain entry. Police uniforms and equipment, radios, ammunition, even air conditioners, disappeared right beneath the noses of the overwhelmed forces.
Soldiers from a nearby army base who had been called in to assist police arrived minutes after the suspects had been killed.
How did it happen? First of all, there is a popular concept in Ecuadorian society known as justicia indígena, or indigenous justice. In 1998, indigenous justice was recognized and legalized in the Ecuadorian constitution, but the practice dates from centuries ago. When the Spanish conquered the country in the sixteenth century, they treated the indigenous people as less than human, more like animals to be subjugated and used for the benefit of the conquistadores. Understandably, the people fought back. Unfortunately, the Spaniards’ weaponry was far superior to the crude armaments of the natives, and those who weren’t slaughtered were quickly subdued and enslaved. A few groups, mostly in the remote stretches of the Andes Mountains or the Amazon Jungle, proved to be too fierce and too stubborn to be conquered. The Spanish largely ignored them and went about the business of colonizing the rest of the country with a brutal efficiency.
The latest update of the constitution, ratified in 2008 upon the election of populist president Rafael Correa, further entrenched the idea of the autonomy and rights of the indigenous peoples. Members of the indigenous population were given explicit permission to mete out indigenous justice, but with limitations. Murder, rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery are to be prosecuted by the local authorities. Punishment for less serious crimes usually takes the form of public shaming, perhaps a bit of whipping with nettles and tree branches, and, in extreme cases, expulsion from the community.
In Ecuador, only 7 to 10 percent of the population is truly a member of one of the twenty-eight groups that make up the indigenous population. It is doubtful that any of the two thousand rioters that afternoon was indigenous. Even if they had been, they were clearly acting outside the law. Yet if you talk to local citizens today, more than a year later, you will hear very little in the way of condemnation of the perpetrators of this monstrous act.
“Posorja is a peaceful town,” says resident Julio Parrales, though he adds, “People reacted violently because they are tired of justice not fulfilling its role. That is why the people take these matters into their own hands.”
Many articles and research studies have been published on this controversial subject, but Señor Parrales, in that simple statement, has clearly defined the core of the problem. Ecuadorians have little faith in the police or the judiciary system. They see and experience indifference, incompetence, and outright corruption on a daily basis.
Ex-president Correa, mentioned above, is currently living in Belgium, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest on corruption charges if he should ever return. Jorge Glas, his vice president, is currently in jail, having received millions of dollars in bribes to help Odebrecht, a huge Brazilian conglomerate, obtain lucrative public-works contracts.
Corruption is viewed as nothing more than an unfortunate fact of life in Ecuador and, of course, how an individual views the subject has everything to do with that individual’s economic or social status. It is safe to assume that the members of that lynch mob were on the lower end of both scales.
Over the years, fueled by the citizens’ mistrust of the judicial system, the concept of “Indigenous Justice” has mutated into what is commonly known as “Traditional Justice” or “People’s Justice.” Conveniently falling by the wayside are the limitations noted above.
Motorcycle crime, where one or two criminals perform brazen holdups, sometimes at gunpoint, and escape astride small-engine bikes, is common in Ecuador. In numerous cases, the swift action of the citizenry has resulted in the suspects being apprehended, beaten, and their bikes set afire, before they are able to leave the neighborhood.
By the time the police arrive, they will find only a charred and, perhaps, still-smoking motorbike and a couple of dazed and bloody thieves. The neighbors quickly retreat to their homes and a “wall of silence” goes up, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the police to build a case (assuming they want to). The people could not care less. In their minds, justice has been served.
You are likely thinking right now: “That’s all very interesting, but how did a seemingly innocuous crime such as the theft of two hundred dollars and a couple of cell phones, even with the added element of drugging the victims during the robbery, result in the gruesome murder of three suspects in full view of the local police?”
The answer lies in the collision of centuries-old notions of justice with the lightning speed of modern technology. A rumor spread quickly on social media that one of the children had died as a result of ingesting scopolamine. Although neither of the children was actually given the drug or harmed in any way, this rumor inflamed the souls of the locals, who already were mistrustful of the police and the local judiciary.
The woman who made the initial call to the police (her name has been withheld for her protection) later changed some aspects of her story in a late-night statement to the police.
“I went to school with my daughter, my friend and her daughter. Two people approached us. They tried to sell us a fake ring. Then they enchanted us, drugged us. We came to a place; I don’t know how we got there. They put me in a vehicle, but I was able to escape, and they left. They stole my cell phone, my friend’s cell phone, and some cash. We, at that moment of fright, we misunderstand or something, I don’t know, but the children never got in the car. The one who got in the car was me.”
The police acted quickly enough in rounding up the suspects in the lynching. They studied videotapes of the conflict and sent plainclothes detectives and special police units into the barrios (neighborhoods) of Posorja, El Morro, and Playas.
On the morning of October 18, less than forty-eight hours after the incident, General Tannya Varela said that eight suspects had been detained and transferred to Guayaquil for an “audiencia de flagrancia” (similar to an arraignment or preliminary hearing in the US judicial system). That afternoon, Judge José Ortega agreed with the prosecutor’s request, and all eight were placed in preventive detention for the crime of murder. Murder, as defined in Article 140 of the COIP (the Ecuadorian Organic Criminal Code), carries a sentence of twenty-two to twenty-six years in prison.
The prosecutor’s office also opened investigations into three other individuals for the crimes of instigation, theft, arson, and destruction of public property.
The two women who were the victims of the theft that morning, and who initially raised the alarm to the police, were