Ecuador arrests its most wanted criminal, the drug lord known as ‘Fito’

—Sing out your full name!

—José Adolfo...

—Louder!

—José Adolfo Macias Villamar.

The voice of the man who was once the country’s most wanted criminal is barely audible. He is lying on the ground, his face pressed against the cement, a soldier’s pistol pointed at the back of his head. The scene, filmed by the soldiers who arrested him, marks the end of a 17-month manhunt that has exposed the vulnerabilities of Ecuador’s prison and security system.

José Adolfo Macías Villamar, aka Fito, leader of the Los Choneros criminal organization, was recaptured on Tuesday, June 25, in Manta, the port city where he was born, about 250 miles from Quito. He was hiding inside a bunker in a house in the city center, according to preliminary information released to the media.

President Daniel Noboa, who is on tour in China and Europe, was quick to celebrate the operation from his X account: “To those who opposed and questioned the need for the Solidarity and Intelligence laws: thanks to those laws, Fito was captured today and is now in the hands of the Security Bloc. Congratulations to our police and military. More will fall. We will take back the country.”

The last trace of José Adolfo Macías dated back to before January 7, 2024. That day, during a routine operation at the Guayaquil Regional Prison, a group of soldiers entered the cellblock where the feared leader of Los Choneros operated from. Their goal was to destroy the cellblock’s light switches and seize inmates’ weapons and cell phones. But what they found was even more alarming: Fito was no longer there. No one knew for sure when or how he got out. The escape of the country’s most dangerous inmate exposed the deep cracks in the prison system, which was being touted as a maximum-security facility.

His escape unleashed a storm. Within hours, riots erupted in seven penitentiaries across the country, taken over by inmates. The violence soon spilled over to the streets: explosions and terrorist attacks rocked several cities. The climax came with the storming of a television station during a live broadcast. Faced with the chaos, President Noboa declared an internal armed conflict for the first time in recent history and ordered the militarization of prisons and the streets.

Since then, the army and the police have formed a search force to track Fito down. They finally found him in his home turf: Manabí, the province that gave birth to Los Choneros, a gang that began as a group of hired hitmen in the 1980s and evolved into drug trafficking, extortion, and transnational crime.

The army said that the capture was carried out “with precision and without casualties.” Macías Villamar, 45, was facing 14 judicial proceedings for crimes including murder, organized crime, and weapons possession. He had already served 12 years in prison out of a 34-year sentence. This was not his first escape, either: in 2013, he had already escaped from La Roca, the maximum-security prison in the same penitentiary complex, along with other members of his organization.

Fito’s rise to prominence came after the assassination of Jorge Luis Zambrano, aka Rasquiña, the longtime leader of Los Choneros. After that, the group splintered. New cells emerged, such as Los Fatales, which reported directly to Macías. But the latter didn’t just inherit the leadership. He also transformed the organization: he established alliances with international cartels, especially the Sinaloa Cartel, one of the most powerful in Mexico.

His power extended from the prisons to the streets, where he controlled drug trafficking routes and hitmen networks. Through Los Choneros, he shipped tons of cocaine to the United States. This activity earned him an indictment in a federal court in New York.

“The defendant was a ruthless leader and prolific drug trafficker for a violent transnational criminal organization. By leading the Los Choneros’ network of assassins and drug and weapon traffickers and importing potentially lethal quantities of cocaine into the United States, the defendant has caused great harm to his own country and the United States, which was the destination for the vast majority of Los Choneros’ cocaine shipments,” stated U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of New York John Durham in an April press release to announce the seven-count indictment against him.

 Ecuador, for its part, has already initiated the extradition process. Now, with his recapture, the government seeks to show that the state still has clout, especially after the recent escape of another feared criminal known as Fede, who escaped from the Litoral Penitentiary on June 20 with the complicity of a group of military personnel.

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