Drug lord Jose Adolfo Macias Villamar, alias “Fito,” was Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive before his arrest on Wednesday, more than a year after he escaped prison from where he commanded the country’s leading criminal gang.
The former taxi driver turned crime boss became the prime target of law enforcement early last year after escaping from a prison in the southwestern port of Guayaquil.
Ecuadoran President Daniel Noboa’s government released “wanted” posters with images of his face and offered US$1 million for information leading to his capture.
Photo: EPA
In a country plagued by crime, members of Fito’s gang, Los Choneros, have responded with violence, using car bombs, holding prison guards hostage and forcefully taking over a television station during a live broadcast.
After months of pursuit, Fito was captured in the coastal city of Manta in a massive military and police operation in which no shots were fired.
Local media reported that he was found hiding in a bunker accessible by lifting a trap door in the floor of a luxury home.
After his recapture, Noboa said that more crime bosses would fall.
“We will take back the country. Without respite,” he said.
Noboa also said that his government was awaiting a response from US authorities regarding Fito’s extradition.
US prosecutors have charged him, in absentia, with seven counts of cocaine distribution, conspiracy and firearms-related crimes, including weapons smuggling.
They allege his gang worked with Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel to control key drug trafficking routes between South America and the US.
Before his escape in January last year, Fito was the boss of his Guayaquil prison, which was adorned with images glorifying him, weapons, dollars and lions.
Videos show celebrations he held inside the prison, including with fireworks and a mariachi band. In one clip, he appears waving, laughing and petting a fighting rooster.
Fito exercised “significant internal control over the prison,” the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights said in a 2022 report following a meeting with the gang leader.
He earned his law degree in prison, where he was serving a 34-year sentence for weapons possession, drug trafficking, organized crime and murder.
Los Choneros, which first engaged in common crimes, established links with Colombian and Mexican drug traffickers.
The gang has ties to the Sinaloa cartel, the Gulf Clan — the world’s largest cocaine exporter — and Balkan mafias, according to the Ecuadorian Organized Crime Observatory.
The Ecuadoran Ministry of Defense has estimated that the gang is in 10 of Ecuador’s 24 provinces.
On social media, Los Choneros threatens journalists and issues warnings to other gangs in videos set to music.
“Active, Choneros, we are lions here. With Uncle Fito, as expected, controlling the neighborhood, we are bosses here,” they say in one of their songs.
When Fito escaped from prison, he was identified as the mastermind behind the assassination of presidential candidate and anti-corruption crusader Fernando Villavicencio in August 2023.
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