Ecuadorean coyotes sentenced

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One of the most tragic events in recent Ecuadorean history was the drowning of 98 emigrants in August 2005 when the fishing boat they were crammed into below decks foundered 100 miles off the Pacific coast of Colombia. Most were from southern Azuay province, which has sent a high proportion of the 2 million Ecuadoreans (15% of the population) thought to have left the country over the last half century. Most emigrants end up in the United States, and that was the final destination, via Guatemala, of those lost in the 2005 shipwreck.

Largely as a result of pressure from victims’ families, the government subsequently took a harder line in prosecuting coyotes and the tightly knit mafias that control the illicit emigration industry in Ecuador.

Last week, the families finally got some measure of justice when a national court in the Azuay capital Cuenca handed down convictions of the two ringleaders, sentencing each to 12 years in jail. That was the maximum term a convicted coyote with blood on his or her hands could serve at the time of the tragedy. Maximum sentences have since been extended to 25 years. According to prosecutor Paul Vasquez Illescas, 10 of the 14 members of the coyote ring are still at large.

Posted by Chris Kraul in Bogotá