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ОглавлениеA Tragedy in Posorja: When “People’s Justice” Goes Horribly Wrong
Three innocent people were burned and beaten to death by a lynch mob in a collision between a centuries-old method of meting out justice and the lightning speed of social media mass hysteria. This crime has left a quiet town and a largely peaceful country reeling with questions over what it means to live in the twenty-first century.
The brutal tragedy that befell two men and a woman in the sleepy fishing village of Posorja on October 16, 2018, began with the three victims robbing two local women and ended just hours later after a mob of two thousand enraged citizens broke into the police station, dragged them out, and lynched them in the street.
Social media had sentenced the three to death by wrongly convincing people that they were pedophiles who had drugged and abused a local child. It triggered a traditional “people’s justice” that overwhelmed armed police and sowed death and destruction before the army brought the mob under control.
This chillingly complicated story began a few months earlier, but the events of that fateful day began to unfold when two women went to the local school to drop off their children, just like any other day. Outside the school, they were approached by a woman trying to sell them a cheap ring. The two friends declined, whereupon they were drugged, using scopolamine, a tasteless, odorless powder made from the flowers of the borrachero tree. The drug is popular with criminals throughout Colombia, Ecuador, and Peru because it temporarily “zombifies” the victims, putting them at the mercy of the perpetrator. It is not unusual for a victim to wake up hours later to find they have been raped, their bank account drained, or, in extreme cases, that they are lacking one or more vital organs. The drug can be slipped into food or drink or, as in this case, blown into the victim’s face.
Two men appeared and forced the dazed women into a taxi. They were driven to a local park, where they were robbed of two hundred dollars (the US dollar is Ecuador’s official currency) and two cell phones.
One of the women, however, suffered only minor effects from the drug and was able to escape. She called the police, who captured the three perpetrators, identified as Tonny Mauricio Pareja Valladares, forty-four; Jackeline Cecibel Mero Figueroa, thirty-five; and Ronald Gustavo Bravo Rosado, twenty-five; as they tried to leave town. The trio was taken to the local UPC (Unidades de Policía Comunitaria) station where they were to be housed until they could be transferred to the Playas judicial unit, which handles crimes of this nature. Within hours, they were dead.
The village of Posorja lies 120 kilometers (seventy-five miles) south of Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city, where the wide, slow-moving Guayas River empties into the Gulf of Guayaquil. Posorja has a population of only eleven thousand, but that afternoon the sleepy fishing port was rocked by a horrendous crime that rivalled anything that might occur in any major city around the world.
A horde of local citizens, inflamed by social media accounts that children had been drugged (or according to some rumors, killed), stormed the UPC building. The mob dragged the two men and the woman from the station and beat them to death using iron bars and stones, some of which had been ripped up from the sidewalks. As a result of the melee, five police officers and two soldiers were injured; a taxi, a police car, and five motorcycles were set on fire; and the police station was damaged to such a degree that it was no longer usable.
As bizarre as this incident might appear at first glance—a twenty-first century lynch mob taking justice into its own hands—there is more to the story. Although all three victims possessed criminal records, they were in no way associated with the heinous crime for which they were executed on that warm, cloudy afternoon.
A spokesperson for the police department stated: “There was much confusion about the robbery and the result turned into tragedy. The robbery suspects were being detained at the police station awaiting transfer to Guayaquil when a crowd gathered outside, shouting, ‘Kill them, burn them.’ ”
The crowd grew through the afternoon, eventually breaking down doors and windows of the station and dragging the suspects outside. According to witnesses, the suspects were stripped, beaten, and set on fire by men and women wearing masks or shirts covering their faces.
Meanwhile, looters tore holes in the roof and walls of the police station in order to gain entry. Police uniforms and equipment, radios, ammunition, even air conditioners, disappeared right beneath the noses of the overwhelmed forces.
Soldiers from a nearby army base who had been called in to assist police arrived minutes after the suspects had been killed.
How did it happen? First of all, there is a popular concept in Ecuadorian society known as justicia indígena, or indigenous justice. In 1998, indigenous justice was recognized and legalized in the Ecuadorian constitution, but the practice dates from centuries ago. When the Spanish conquered the country in the sixteenth century, they treated the indigenous people as less than human, more like animals to be subjugated and used for the benefit of the conquistadores. Understandably, the people fought back. Unfortunately, the Spaniards’ weaponry was far superior to the crude armaments of the natives, and those who weren’t slaughtered were quickly subdued and enslaved. A few groups, mostly in the remote stretches of the Andes Mountains or the Amazon Jungle, proved to be too fierce and too stubborn to be conquered. The Spanish largely ignored them and went about the business of colonizing the rest of the country with a brutal efficiency.
The latest update of the constitution, ratified in 2008 upon the election of populist president Rafael Correa, further entrenched the idea of the autonomy and rights of the indigenous peoples. Members of the indigenous population were given explicit permission to mete out indigenous justice, but with limitations. Murder, rape, kidnapping, and armed robbery are to be prosecuted by the local authorities. Punishment for less serious crimes usually takes the form of public shaming, perhaps a bit of whipping with nettles and tree branches, and, in extreme cases, expulsion from the community.
In Ecuador, only 7 to 10 percent of the population is truly a member of one of the twenty-eight groups that make up the indigenous population. It is doubtful that any of the two thousand rioters that afternoon was indigenous. Even if they had been, they were clearly acting outside the law. Yet if you talk to local citizens today, more than a year later, you will hear very little in the way of condemnation of the perpetrators of this monstrous act.
“Posorja is a peaceful town,” says resident Julio Parrales, though he adds, “People reacted violently because they are tired of justice not fulfilling its role. That is why the people take these matters into their own hands.”
Many articles and research studies have been published on this controversial subject, but Señor Parrales, in that simple statement, has clearly defined the core of the problem. Ecuadorians have little faith in the police or the judiciary system. They see and experience indifference, incompetence, and outright corruption on a daily basis.
Ex-president Correa, mentioned above, is currently living in Belgium, and a warrant has been issued for his arrest on corruption charges if he should ever return. Jorge Glas, his vice president, is currently in jail, having received millions of dollars in bribes to help Odebrecht, a huge Brazilian conglomerate, obtain lucrative public-works contracts.
Corruption is viewed as nothing more than an unfortunate fact of life in Ecuador and, of course, how an individual views the subject has everything to do with that individual’s economic or social status. It is safe to assume that the members of that lynch mob were on the lower end of both scales.
Over the years, fueled by the citizens’ mistrust of the judicial system, the concept of “Indigenous Justice” has mutated into what is commonly known as “Traditional Justice” or “People’s Justice.” Conveniently falling by the wayside are the limitations noted above.
Motorcycle crime, where one or two criminals perform brazen holdups, sometimes at gunpoint, and escape astride small-engine bikes, is common in Ecuador. In numerous cases, the swift action of the citizenry has resulted in the suspects being apprehended, beaten, and their bikes set afire, before they are able to leave the neighborhood.
By the time the police arrive, they will find only a charred and, perhaps, still-smoking motorbike and a couple of dazed and bloody thieves. The neighbors quickly retreat to their homes and a “wall of silence” goes up, making it difficult, if not impossible, for the police to build a case (assuming they want to). The people could not care less. In their minds, justice has been served.
You are likely thinking right now: “That’s all very interesting, but how did a seemingly innocuous crime such as the theft of two hundred dollars and a couple of cell phones, even with the added element of drugging the victims during the robbery, result in the gruesome murder of three suspects in full view of the local police?”
The answer lies in the collision of centuries-old notions of justice with the lightning speed of modern technology. A rumor spread quickly on social media that one of the children had died as a result of ingesting scopolamine. Although neither of the children was actually given the drug or harmed in any way, this rumor inflamed the souls of the locals, who already were mistrustful of the police and the local judiciary.
The woman who made the initial call to the police (her name has been withheld for her protection) later changed some aspects of her story in a late-night statement to the police.
“I went to school with my daughter, my friend and her daughter. Two people approached us. They tried to sell us a fake ring. Then they enchanted us, drugged us. We came to a place; I don’t know how we got there. They put me in a vehicle, but I was able to escape, and they left. They stole my cell phone, my friend’s cell phone, and some cash. We, at that moment of fright, we misunderstand or something, I don’t know, but the children never got in the car. The one who got in the car was me.”
The police acted quickly enough in rounding up the suspects in the lynching. They studied videotapes of the conflict and sent plainclothes detectives and special police units into the barrios (neighborhoods) of Posorja, El Morro, and Playas.
On the morning of October 18, less than forty-eight hours after the incident, General Tannya Varela said that eight suspects had been detained and transferred to Guayaquil for an “audiencia de flagrancia” (similar to an arraignment or preliminary hearing in the US judicial system). That afternoon, Judge José Ortega agreed with the prosecutor’s request, and all eight were placed in preventive detention for the crime of murder. Murder, as defined in Article 140 of the COIP (the Ecuadorian Organic Criminal Code), carries a sentence of twenty-two to twenty-six years in prison.
The prosecutor’s office also opened investigations into three other individuals for the crimes of instigation, theft, arson, and destruction of public property.
The two women who were the victims of the theft that morning, and who initially raised the alarm to the police, were ultimately entered into the Attorney General’s Victim and Witness Protection Program after receiving death threats from relatives of the deceased.
Minister of the Interior María Paula Romo said in a televised interview that “what happened is unacceptable, there is no possibility of justifying a lynching that ended with the murder of three people. That case will not remain in impunity and in this regard, there are eight people detained.”
Romo went on to caution that citizens should avoid spreading false information. “We are concerned about the situation of our children, their safety, but we must act responsibly.”
The local police defended their actions, or lack thereof, during the riot. “We had no riot gear and not nearly enough officers to stand up against two thousand angry citizens,” said one officer. “We were completely overwhelmed. I feared for my life, and for the lives of my fellow officers.” The families of the victims were not satisfied with the police department’s words, or their actions.
“The cops had enough time to ask for reinforcements, and they didn’t,” a relative of one of the deceased claimed. “There is a video where they are heard saying, ‘They’re going to burn them.’ So why didn’t they call for reinforcements earlier?”
Relatives of Jackeline Figueroa, the murdered woman who left behind five children, said that the three had been arrested at noon, but the families had not been notified and only found out what had happened on social media.
Regardless of where one stands on the issue of vigilante justice, it is readily evident that what happened in Posorja on that warm, cloudy afternoon in October 2018 was a tragedy. So, how did it go so horribly wrong?
The story begins exactly two months before. On August 16, thirteen-year-old Kerly Loor disappeared. According to the newsmagazine Vistazo, the girl’s mother, Gloria Bones, went to the local police station. An officer posted a picture of the girl on the department’s Facebook page, asking for information. In a matter of a few hours, the picture had been shared thousands of times. As a result of the publicity, a woman reported having seen the child in the company of a young man in the Barrio Cristo Vive. The woman stated that the young man was new to the neighborhood and was considered by the locals to be a suspicious character. Señora Bones took the name of the young man to the local UPC, where she was told that he had a record for the rape of a minor. The police promised to “look into it,” and the distraught mother went home to wait.
Around two in the morning, she received a phone call from her daughter. “Mama,” the girl said. “I’m lost. I don’t know where I am.” The connection was broken, and the frantic mother again went to the police, but was told that they didn’t have the proper equipment to trace the call. She was then told that she would have to go to Guayaquil to the office of the Attorney General.
Having already made the all-day round-trip journey twice without success, Señora Bones was devastated at the thought of doing it once more. She wept so uncontrollably that one of the officers took it upon himself to phone a colleague in Guayaquil. The colleague was able to trace the call to the bus station in the town of Chone, 330 kilometers (two hundred miles) north, in the province of Manabí. The girl was found in the bus station, disoriented and apparently drugged. Miraculously, she had been able to escape from her captor and make the phone call. Her abductor, however, was nowhere to be found.
A few weeks later, as Kerly still struggled to overcome the effects of her ordeal, the young man was again seen in Posorja, in the same barrio. The girl’s mother went immediately to the police but was told that if the girl was no longer in the custody of the young man, they could do nothing.
Kerly suffered a nervous breakdown and was sent to live with relatives in another town, while her mother wept in frustration and despair. The young man in question began to receive death threats and soon after, he left town.
A short time later, a ten-year-old girl from another local barrio was drugged and abducted. She was found in the bus station in Loja, five hundred kilometers (three hundred miles) to the southeast. It is not clear if the perpetrator was the same man who kidnapped Kerly, because the police made no formal investigation. Their reasoning? They did not catch the perpetrator “in the act.”
“There is no court, no office of the Attorney General in Posorja,” says a member of the local governing board. “A citizen has to lose an entire day in order to make the trip to Guayaquil. Here, the only way to publicize a child abduction or other serious crime is through social media, Facebook for example. Don’t demonize it by saying that it spreads fake news.”
Unfortunately, that is exactly what happened. For the intervening two months, social media was abuzz with false sightings of the suspect in the Kerly Loor case, and every child, it seems, that was a few minutes late returning home from school was liable to find their picture circulating through town.
On that fateful morning in October, an already hyperalert citizenry reacted swiftly to the news of the drugging and robbery. It is impossible to know how the rumor started that a child was involved—perhaps because the incident began in front of a school, perhaps because it was known that the two women regularly dropped their children off at school around that time—but once started, it took on a life of its own.
The rumor tore through the local markets, tiendas, and cafés like a fast-moving virus, infecting everyone. People abruptly stopped walking in the middle of the sidewalk as they studied their phones, absorbing the latest information.
The news that three suspects had been detained was met with relief, followed quickly by a sense of despair. The events, not only of those last two months, but of their entire lifetimes, had convinced the citizenry that the police and the judicial system could not be trusted. They would have to take matters into their own hands.
There is no happy ending to this story. How could there be? On October 14, 2019, just a few days shy of one year after the incident took place, Judge Odalis Ledesma pronounced sentence upon eleven people who were involved. Seven of them received thirty-four years for murder, while the other four were sentenced to seventeen years as accomplices. No one, it seems, feels that justice has truly been served.
María (not her real name), the mother of Ronald Bravo, has custody of the four daughters, ages fifteen, eleven, five, and two, that her son had with Jackeline Figueroa. María, who lives in Guayaquil, chose to allow the children to remain in their own home in Posorja, hoping that the familiar surroundings would help lessen their trauma. María’s aunt moved in with them, and María visits them on the weekend. Of course, the children have not escaped unscathed.
“When their parents were lynched, they watched the videos on social media,” María says. “They know how they died.”
The state has assigned a social worker, who makes frequent visits to the girls’ home to monitor their progress.
María does her best to move forward for the sake of her grandchildren, but it is difficult at times. She misses the frequent conversations that she had with her son. She has kept his last voicemails on her phone. “I try not to listen to them, but on his birthday, I couldn’t help it,” she says, breaking down in tears.
The stiff penalties handed down by the judge provide no comfort to María. She claims that Ronald’s killer is still free. “In the video you can clearly see the face of the man who gave him the final blow,” she says. “I will never forget his face.”
A framed photograph of her son and daughter-in-law hangs in the living room of her home. The caption reads: “We will love them and carry them in our hearts.”
Mauricio Pareja left behind an eighteen-year-old son, Israel (name changed for his protection). Israel, who suffers from cerebral palsy and is confined to a wheelchair, remains in the care of his mother, Mauricio’s ex-wife.
It appears that whatever problems he may have had with the law, Mauricio was a good father.
“He provided all of his medications,” says Mayra (not her real name). “He visited every day and took him for walks. They loved soccer and watched the games together. Israel rooted for the yellow and his father the blue.” Barcelona (the yellow team) and Emelec (the blue) are local Guayaquil teams and longtime rivals.
Mayra, who has a ten-year-old daughter from another relationship, works from home assembling cardboard crafts. Her small income is supplemented by the $240 a month stipend that the government provides for persons with disabilities, but it is barely enough. A box of muscle relaxants, which Israel needs to combat pain, costs nearly two hundred dollars and lasts a little more than two weeks.
María and Mayra both say that the beginning of the school year is the hardest time. María had to move her four grandchildren to a public school. The quality of education in Ecuadorian public schools is notably terrible, and even the poorest citizens will scrimp and save to send their children to a private school. Mayra had to accept charity in order to buy the uniform and the school supplies for her daughter.
According to attorney Roberto Malagón, the judge ordered each of those convicted to pay fifteen thousand dollars in restitution, but the ruling has never been formalized. So, María and Mayra wait.
Minister of the Interior María Paula Romo defended the actions taken by the local police on October 16, 2018. “All proper procedures were followed,” she said in an interview a few weeks later. “It was an unforeseeable situation.”
When questioned as to why the ministry doesn’t publicize crime statistics for each of the small towns so that resources could be more efficiently utilized, Romo stated that she was going to work to make a change in the system but quickly followed that statement with this confusing and self-serving one: “Two-way work is very important in terms of responsibility. When these figures are used in a spirit of scandal, there is a conflict like the one we are living in Posorja. We are interested in publishing the figures with an appropriate reading. We are committed, since I arrived at the interior ministry, to incorporate more data to assess the level of conflict in an area, such as the number of calls received by ECU 911.”
Romo’s words largely fell on deaf ears in the community.
A little more than a year later, it is difficult to find physical evidence of what happened in Posorja on that awful day. A woman sells shoes out of her car in front of the police station, drawing a long line of pre-Christmas shoppers. A man repairs his motorcycle on the sidewalk in front of a parts store. A small black dog dozes in the shade of a utility box, escaping the midday heat. The fishing fleet is in, and vendors hawk fresh shrimp, conchas, and corvina, while the frigate birds gather overhead and swoop down to grab up any stray morsel.
But the memory of that day is never far from the surface. Jefferson Paéz, a young patrolman, remembers how he and his fellow officers at first merely locked the door to the station when the crowd began to form, thinking it was just another protest demonstration (something that happens with frequency throughout Ecuador).
“They threw gasoline on the door and set it afire. When the glass shattered, they rushed in and took the prisoners. They weren’t in a cell; they weren’t even in handcuffs because they were waiting to be sent to Guayaquil.” Jefferson—who, because of his rank, isn’t allowed to carry a handgun—cowered behind a desk and watched as his best friend (another patrolman) was hit across the back of his head with an iron bar.
What happened that afternoon was a tragedy and one would hope that lessons were learned from it. One would, unfortunately, be wrong. The tradition of “Indigenous Justice” or “People’s Justice,” whatever it is called, lives on throughout Latin America. Neither Amnesty International nor Human Rights Watch tracks these linchamientos (lynchings), but a 2015 study by the INE (Instituto Nacional de Estadística) indicates that such incidents in Guatemala and Bolivia (the two countries with the highest indigenous population) increased nearly tenfold since 2004. Mexico and Peru also experienced marked increases.
The study goes on to say that Colombia and Ecuador—once at or near the top of the list—have now, due to “better police response time and stiffer criminal penalties,” experienced dramatic improvements.
Ecuadorians, though, distrust scholarly studies and statistics as much as they do the justice system. Edison Segreda, over the clatter of his 125cc motorcycle-taxi engine, tells a story of a similar occurrence in a small town on the peninsula just recently. He claims that a young man attempted to steal a pickup truck and was caught, taken to a dirt road outside of town, and brutally murdered.
Details of this particular crime have not been verified; in fact, it may not have happened at all. Still, Edison believes it and sees nothing wrong about it.
“The police are lazy, stupid, and corrupt,” he says. “Until that changes…” He shrugs and extends his hands, palms up, out in front of him.
At a memorial service for the three victims, pastor Fausto Gonzaléz used his pulpit to read aloud an account of the number of unsolved cases in the area involving child abduction.
“In this country,” said Gonzaléz, “there is no confidence that the authorities will achieve justice, and the people, with troubled hearts, take justice into their own hands.”
