“Alburqueque Robles Juan Gabriel, Ochoa Zuquilanda Luis Alfonso, Soto Inostroza Luis Jordi, Sánchez Alaba Victor Manuel…” shouted a police officer outside the gates of Machala prison, a coastal city in southern Ecuador that had been turned into a cemetery. Each name was that of one of the 27 prisoners killed in a new prison massacre on Sunday afternoon, November 9th. “Gomez Romero Abel Eduardo…” The agent continued reading, but was interrupted by a woman’s pained screams.
“Let me hear it!” he demanded, shouting his relatives’ names over the commotion. Officers read out the names of the 27 inmates killed inside the prison, adding to the five killed and about 30 others injured in an inmate-on-inmate shootout early Sunday morning.
The deaths of 27 people are shrouded in many unknowns and the government’s silence. There was no riot, and there were no signs of violence on the bodies. “Some of them committed suffocation and died instantly due to suspension,” SNAI, the national service for persons deprived of liberty, which oversees the prison, said in a confusing bulletin. The prisoners were found hanging in their minimum, medium and maximum security cells around 6 p.m.
The interior minister blamed the massacre on criminal organizations Los Lobos and Sao Box, who are suspected of trying to regain control of the prison. The prison was under military custody for 19 months until August last year. In January 2024, President Daniel Novoa signed the Internal Armed Conflict Decree transferring control of the prison system to the national military. According to the Ecuador Conflict Monitoring Mission, 395 people deprived of liberty died between January and August 2025 in Guayaquil’s coastal prison alone. This represents 81% of the total number of victims of the 15 prison massacres that occurred between 2021 and 2024.
As the news shook the country, the government began transferring prisoners to a new prison in the state of Santa Elena, officially named Encuentro Prison. Transfers are by air and by reservation only.
The prison was conceived by Mr. Noboa after he abandoned his campaign proposal to build a floating prison in the Pacific Ocean, within the framework of a project to build a prison in the style of the Terrorist Confinement Center (Secot) built by Nayib Boucle in El Salvador. The prison has five pavilions that can accommodate 800 people. The Integrated Care Service for People Deprived of Liberty (SNAI) has declared all information regarding the construction of the new maximum security prison as confidential. During the award process, the project did not even pass the competition of several companies competing to build it.
The government has also not confirmed whether the prison is fully completed or when it will become fully operational. It all happens just days before Ecuadorians return to the polls on Sunday, November 16th. This was to vote in the national consultation and referendum called for by Novoa. With his appointment, the president aims to lift the ban on owning foreign military bases and convene a constituent assembly to enact a new constitution.
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