Employees in coveralls remove body bags from a container at the forensic headquarters in Guayaquil, the epicenter of Ecuador’s violence linked to drug trafficking. For several days, a strong smell of putrefaction has permeated the neighborhood.
“I smoke to reduce the smell,” a man told AFP on condition of anonymity, taking a drag on his cigarette as he waited in the crushing heat to collect the remains of a loved one.
Residents of this neighborhood of the country’s main port on the Pacific coast, where the number of unidentified bodies continues to grow due to gang violence linked to drug trafficking, began to smell a smell of putrefaction a few days ago. .
This has been going on for “about three or four days,” says a neighborhood coffin seller, who tries to protect himself from the nauseating odor with a mask, while passers-by and relatives cannot help but make gestures of disgust.
In the absence of official data, the local press puts forward the figure of 200 corpses present in the forensic institute, remains often unidentified or unclaimed by relatives.
Authorities acknowledged Tuesday that “due to the increase in criminal violence in the country, there are a greater number of unidentified corpses” in Guayaquil morgues.
In addition to the increase in the number of bodies, “two refrigerated containers” broke down, they explained. Breakdown which caused disgusting bodily fluids to leak out of these same containers, according to morgue employees, quoted by the local press.
In images obtained by AFP on Thursday, we can see some of these employees taking body bags out of a container, placing them in coffins, then wrapped in plastic and then loaded into hearses.
“Inconveniences”
The forensic institute simply told AFP that the authorities were meeting to analyze the situation.
The office of the governor of the province of Guayas, whose capital is Guayaquil, assured that it had “succeeded in resolving” the “inconveniences that occurred” in recent days, due to the failure of the refrigeration of the containers, without further details.
“There are quite a few people who need to get out [les corps]people who come from far away,” explained to AFP a 57-year-old man who asked to be simply called Mena.
The scientific police headquarters receives the bodies of victims of violent deaths from Guayaquil and the neighboring town of Duran, both shaken in recent years by gangs linked to cocaine trafficking to North America and the Europe.
Ecuador reached a record 47 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023, compared to six per 100,000 in 2018. Around 1,900 homicides were counted in the first four months of the year, while across the last year, 8,004 were counted.
The level of violence has reached such a point in the country, once considered a haven of peace, that bodies often appear riddled with bullets, dismembered or hanging from bridges, abandoned there by their executioners.
Faced with rising violence, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa declared “war” in January against gangs described as “terrorists”, which allowed him to deploy the army in the streets and prisons to try to maintain the order.
This is not the first time that the number of corpses has exceeded the capacity of the Guayaquil morgue. During the COVID-19 pandemic, the dead had to be crammed into containers from which fluids from decomposing bodies also leaked.
