“Things are dangerous right now. Death can come from anywhere,” Paul tells us. Small, skinny and about 30 years old, he is a member of one of Ecuador’s most violent criminal gangs.

He believes he has been on a rival group’s hit list for a year and a half and the only reason he is still alive is thanks to his mother’s prayers: “It’s like God doesn’t want me up above, and the devil won’t take me down below.”

Paul (not his real name) explains that he has spent about half of his life in a gang in Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil. Like many, he joined young, when he was 15. He thought it was going to be all “raves, parties, and girls”.

Paul is afraid that if he stays still too long, his enemies from rival gangs – which are waging a bloody turf war – will catch up with him. So we keep moving around the city to make it harder for anyone to follow us.

“I wanted respect,” he says about his reasons for joining one of the up to 20 gangs which have contributed to the violence that has changed the face of Ecuador.

Until recently considered one of the safest countries in the region, Ecuador, which is also the gateway to the Galapagos Islands and home to the rainforest, attracted many tourists.

But now it has the highest recorded murder rate in Latin America.

In 2023, police recorded about 8,000 violent deaths. That is eight times more than in 2018 and puts Ecuador ahead of countries like Mexico and Colombia.

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