The governments of the United States and Ecuador have pledged to guarantee security and strengthen mechanisms to fight drug trafficking, Guillermo Lasso, the President of the South American country, Ecuador, announced on Wednesday.
After meeting with US National Security Secretary Alejandro Mayorkas in Quito, the right-wing president expressed on Twitter that “we are committed to coordinate joint action on security, the fight against transnational crime and drug trafficking.”
“We cannot successfully attack them alone, but in alliance with each other,” according to a statement from the US official at the Corondelet Palace, the presidential headquarters located in the colonial center of the capital. by the lasso.
The meeting was attended by the United States Ambassador to Quito, Michael Fitzpatrick, whose mission is nearing completion.
Ecuador, located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s biggest cocaine producer, is facing a surge in drug-trafficking crime.
Local drug gangs fight with blood and fire for power in the streets and in prisons.
Prisoners from rival organizations have been involved in more than a dozen bloody massacres at prisons since February 2021, with more than 400 people killed in a massacre that has become the worst in Latin America.
According to Washington, Mayorkas began a tour on Wednesday that will include Colombia to analyze migration to the United States.
The trip comes as Democratic President Joe Biden’s administration seeks ways out of the migration crisis at the border with Mexico, which hundreds of thousands of migrants try to cross each month through the dangerous Darien Wilderness border. . Colombia and Panama.
SP/ATM
AFP
