Cocaine and bananas: Why the US may get asked to help Ecuador tackle gang violence

Gangs, drugs and public safety threats are ravaging Ecuador’s largest city and may push the president to seek help from the United States.

The convoy moves fast — half a dozen unmarked pickups and SUVs, plates ripped off, weaving and speeding through traffic. The vehicles cross into bus lanes and straddle road dividers, but the other drivers barely react as they pass, numb — it seems — to this kind of chaos. The convoy’s passengers suit up, adding tactical vests over their clothes, ski masks over their heads. If not for POLICIA emblazoned across their body armor, anyone would think this was a crew of masked bandits, not the undercover law enforcement officers they are. The vehicles screech into a neighborhood in Pascuales, a gang stronghold in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city, allowing CNN to follow them. Families are grilling outside, and children splash in pools set up in the tightly packed streets as the largely Catholic population celebrates the end of Carnival and prepares for the start of Lent. Officers pile out of the vehicles and rush into multiple homes at once. Police tell us they have four targets — suspects linked to the drug trade that’s making this city so dangerous. When the raid ends, only one man is taken into custody. Relatives quickly step forward, removing the man’s bracelets and earrings as officers load him into the back of a pickup truck. His mother, arriving just in time to see him taken, shouts through tears: “Que Dios te bendiga” (may God bless you).