“Alburqueque Robles Juan Gabriel, Ochoa Zuquilanda Luis Alfonso, Soto Hinostroza Luis Jordy, Sánchez Álava Víctor Manuel…” shouted a police officer in front of the gate of the penitentiary center in Machala, a coastal city in southern Ecuador turned into a cemetery. Each name was that of one of the 27 prisoners murdered on the afternoon of Sunday 9 November, in a new prison massacre. “Gómez Romero Abel Eduardo…” the officer continued reading, until a woman’s heartbreaking cry interrupted him.
“Let me hear it!” he asked amidst the uproar, shouting the names of his relatives. The police officer read 27 names that correspond to the inmates murdered in the prison, which were added to the five killed hours earlier, early Sunday morning, in a firefight between inmates, which also resulted in the wounding of around thirty people.
The death of the 27 is surrounded by many unknowns and the silence of the government. There were no riots, nor signs of violence on the bodies. “Among them they committed asphyxiation, which caused immediate death due to suspension,” the National Global Warning Service for Persons Deprived of Liberty, SNAI, the body in charge of prisons, limited itself to reporting in a confused bulletin. The prisoners were found hanging in the minimum, medium and maximum security cells around 6pm.
The Interior Minister attributed the massacre to the Los Lobos and Sao Box criminal gangs, in an alleged attempt to regain control of the prison. Until last August, the prison had been under military custody for 19 months. In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa signed a decree on internal armed conflict, which entrusts the management of the prison system to the armed forces. According to the Ecuadorian Conflict Observatory, between January and August 2025, 395 people deprived of their liberty died in the coastal penitentiary of Guayaquil alone. This is 81% of the total victims of the 15 prison massacres that occurred between 2021 and 2024.
While the news shook the country, the Government began transferring the prisoners to the new prison complex built in the province of Santa Elena, officially called Encuentro prison. The transfers took place by air and by reservation.
The prison was conceived by Noboa as part of his plan to build one in the style of the Terrorism Confinement Center (Cecot) that Nayib Bukele built in El Salvador and after he abandoned his campaign proposal to have floating prisons in the Pacific. The penitentiary center has five pavilions with the capacity to accommodate 800 people. The comprehensive service for assistance to persons deprived of liberty, SNAI, has declared confidential all information relating to the construction of the new maximum security prison. The award procedure did not even involve the competition of various companies to contribute to the realization of the project.
The government has also not confirmed whether the prison will be fully completed or when it will begin fully operating. It all happens a few days before Ecuadorians return to the polls, on Sunday 16 November, to vote in the popular consultation and referendum called by Noboa, a nomination with which the president seeks to eliminate the ban on having foreign military bases and on having a Constituent Assembly to write a new Constitution.
