The disappearance of four boys in Ecuador after they came into contact with the armed forces is posing a severe challenge to President Daniel Noboa’s “war on drugs”.
The four – all black, aged between 11 and 15, and residents of Las Malvinas, a poor area in the country’s largest city, Guayaquil – were returning from a football game near their homes on 8 December when 16 air force soldiers approached them.
The boys were allegedly freed 26 miles (42 km) away and have not been seen since. On Christmas Eve, four incinerated bodies were found in the same region, and experts are trying to determine if they are the boys’ remains.
The case, known as Los Cuatro de Guayaquil (the Guayaquil Four), has caused national uproar and sparked protests nationwide.
Once one of the countries with the lowest crime rates in Latin America, Ecuador has, in recent years, experienced an explosion in crime; the country is a route for cocaine trafficking to Europe, primarily through the port of Guayaquil.
Since Noboa declared a state of “internal armed conflict” in January, the armed forces have been at the forefront ofthe president’s security project, with soldiers patrolling the streets, conducting anti-drug operations and controlling prisons.
The measures initially enjoyed popularity – a referendum in April endorsed them – but a change of direction might be under way. Human rights activists consider the boys’ disappearance the greatest popularity crisis for Noboa’s hardline policy, less than two months before the presidential elections in which he will seek another term.
“This case represents the straw that broke the camel’s back for the outrage that had been building up due to the way the public forces have been acting,” said Billy Navarrete, the executive director of the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights (CDH), based in Guayaquil, which has been following the case. “Human rights violations by state agents, particularly the military, have been quite recurrent.”
Desperate over the disappearance of their children, the families approached the armed forces the next morning, but the case began to move forward only after it caused a national uproar almost two weeks later.
Initially, the Ministry of Defence denied involvement but acknowledged that the military had approached the boys. According to the ministry, the teenagers were allegedly involved in robbing a woman, but the public prosecutor investigating the case stated that there was no evidence of that.
The ministry claimed the boys were released in the Taura region – 26 miles from their homes – near an air force base. One of the boys supposedly borrowed a phone, called his father, and told him what had happened.
Since then, there has been no further news of them, and the public prosecutor is investigating whether they may have been victims of the military or of organised crime, as the boys were abandoned late at night in an unfamiliar rural area.
“Though hopes are slim at this point, we are all praying that the children are alive,” said Uriel Castillo Nazareno, the national coordinator of the Ecuadorian National Afro-Descendant Movement, who is close to one of the families. “If the children are not alive, I don’t know what will happen in this country. The worst instincts of this society could emerge.”
As the four bodies found in a marshy area had been incinerated, a DNA test may be necessary to identify them. Meanwhile, the 16 soldiers who approached the boys have been suspended and held under military custody.
Noboa initially avoided acknowledging the state’s responsibility in the case, but later said the four boys should be considered “national heroes” and that whoever was involved, there would be “zero impunity”. In power since winning the 2023 snap election after the early departure of Guillermo Lasso, Noboa will seek re-election in the 9 February election to govern the country for a full term (2025-2029).
“These soldiers, probably murderers, are also victims of a doctrine, of a state, of a society where the elite believes that the popular sectors consist only of criminals and servants,” said Nazareno. “This must change in Ecuador.”
