Buenos Aires Herald editorial

On Tuesday afternoon, horrifying footage rippled around the world of masked attackers breaking into a TV studio in Ecuador and taking the workers hostage live on air. These images became the symbol of a once relatively peaceful country’s decline into brutal gang violence.

First things first: at the Herald, we extend our solidarity to our Ecuadorian colleagues. No journalist should fear for their life because of their job.

In Argentina, many are asking whether aspects of Ecuador’s experience are cause for concern here.

The most politically resonant parallel is dollarization. Ecuador did this in 2000, and President Javier Milei made it his flagship campaign promise for Argentina. Security experts and even President Daniel Noboa have said that using the US currency makes life easier for transnational crime since it skirts the compromising paper trail left by exchanging large amounts of money of dubious origin.

The violence pummeling the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil has drawn comparisons with Rosario: both are port cities where homicides have spiked as rival gangs jockey to control trafficking routes. The toll is heartbreaking, especially in Rosario’s most deprived communities. 

Understandably, Rosario has become a standard-bearer for Argentines’ demand for security. The Milei government has promised to deliver, with as many khaki uniforms as it takes. But if there’s one lesson to be learned from Ecuador, it’s that you might not get what you were bargaining for when you bring in the troops. 

In Ecuador’s notorious “Metastasis case,” over 30 people have been arrested on charges they were in the narcos’ pockets. Accusations go right to the top, including cops and a former prison authority director. It shows the iron-fisted approach isn’t much use when there are crooks in the security forces — and there are always crooks in the security forces.

But, while we owe it to Ecuador to take its plight seriously, it differs from Argentina in important ways. Ecuador sits between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine producers. Colombia’s 2016 peace deal and the demobilization of FARC rebels prompted organized crime to shift towards Ecuador, but not towards Argentina. Ecuador’s prisons have been suffering brutal riots for years, and the prison system has essentially collapsed; Argentina’s penitentiary system, deeply problematic as it is, is a long way from that point.

Argentina’s opposition should not fall into the trap of treating Ecuador as a bogeyman in the way that the right has portrayed Venezuela in recent years.

Milei has resorted to medical metaphors for Argentina’s economic vicissitudes, claiming the current pauperization of the masses is the pain of the “cure” after years of anesthesia. Ecuador shows us that dollarization, far from the cure, feeds the disease. The president should learn from their experience.