From pristine forest to prison fortress: why Ecuador is sacrificing fragile ecosystems to build jails

Walking along a path his grandfather once used, Donald Cabrera, a villager from Bajada de Chanduy, on the coast of Ecuador , points out different trees and their uses. Talking about the imposing ceibo trees, he praises the fluffy white kapok fibre that falls from their branches, which his ancestors used for mattresses. From the guasango tree, he highlights the tough wood that people used to make floors and tables for their houses – and even coffins.

The tropical dry forest on Pacific coast, full of bare tree branches and yellowing leaves, is bursting with life and resources, though it may not seem like it. For locals such as Cabrera, it is not only a unique ecosystem but also the repository of ancestral knowledge.

“We have kept this trail clean for many generations,” he says about the community’s sustainable use of this conservation area.

However, just a few metres from the path is a large construction site, where the forest has already been cleared. There, workers are building a new maximum-security prison, one of many election promises made last year by the hardline president, Daniel Noboa , to tackle Ecuador’s growing security crisis , which has seen murder rates rise sixfold in four years.

“We are indignant because they are imposing on us a project that is not ours and doesn’t indicate that it will solve the country’s problems, much less the province’s,” Cabrera says.

Like him, most people in the comuna of Bajada de Chanduy and neighbouring Juntas del Pacífico are outraged about the new prison, saying the authorities never consulted them before construction began in June .

There are dozens of comunas, or ancestral community organisations, along the coast of Ecuador, with more than 60 just in Santa Elena province , the site of the new maximum-security prison. These comunas have been settled for hundreds of years, with roots in pre-colonial Indigenous populations.

According to the 2008 constitution , these collective lands cannot be seized, divided or sold. They have their own governing body and collective ownership of their ancestral lands, where people harvest their crops and protect the surrounding dry forest.

Despite constitutional protection, the comunas historically faced land invasions and evictions, often due to the expansion of large-scale agriculture. There have been cases of companies falsifying land titles and comuna leaders selling land to third parties with officials’ approval, leading to disputes over ownership.

Now, once again, the community has been taken by surprise. Cabrera first learned about the location of the prison in March, when official documents were leaked to comuna members, he says.

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The prison site is just over six miles (10km) north of Bajada de Chanduy, in an area the community has long claimed. The neighbouring Juntas del Pacífico comuna and the state also claim ownership of the land.

Félix Adán de la Cruz Rivera, president of Juntas del Pacífico, says the comunas lost the land in 1995 after a member used it as collateral with a bank to obtain a loan – something that would be illegal today. During a banking crisis in the 1990s, when several financial institutions had to be bailed out, the state acquired the land.

This year, it was handed over to the national prison authorities (SNAI) to construct a maximum-security facility. In late March, military and SNAI officials started using drones to scan the area and clear paths in the forest.

In response, community leaders organised rallies and press conferences in protest at the construction, while filing requests for access to information on the project. They have also asked a judge to issue an injunction to halt building work. All were denied, and SNAI has since said that all information regarding the project is confidential.

The prison is progressing – and there is absolutely nothing they promised us

Félix Adán de la Cruz Rivera

Telmo Jaramillo, a Guayaquil-based lawyer with the human rights organisation CDH who has been helping Bajada de Chanduy, says it is illegal to keep information back if a public access request has been filed.

“There is a legal infringement here by the SNAI,” he says.

Neither SNAI, the presidency nor the environment ministry, in charge of carrying out impact assessments and approving construction permits, replied to requests for a response by the time of publication.

The $52.2m (£39m) construction project is expected to take 300 days. Today, a large swath of the area has been completely cleared, with excavators levelling the ground.

Ecuador’s environmentalists fear the facility could irreversibly damage the tropical dry forest, one of the country’s most endangered habitats , protected under the constitution as a “fragile and threatened ecosystem”.

“As everyone sees it as dry, they keep destroying it. The ministry [of environment] should be very concerned about it,” says Jaime Camacho, a biologist and consultant.

Experts say the dry forest is rich in wildlife and endemic species – more than 75 bird species and 19% of its vegetation are unique to the region. Dry forests are also important for maintaining moisture in the soil. Without it, the land would deteriorate, forcing local people out of the area, Camacho says.

The repercussions of creating the prison infrastructure include building or widening roads to the prison, creating sewage and waste-disposal systems, and constructing the infrastructure to house and service the workers, putting further pressure on the forest.

This would also open up the forest to hunters and animal traffickers seeking rare bird species, such as the red-faced parrot or Pacific parakeet, says Camacho.

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However, not everyone in the comunas is against the project. De la Cruz Rivera says he signed an agreement with SNAI and various government ministries in July, agreeing to the project in return for various benefits.

These included the construction of two pavilions at the local school – upgrading it so it can offer a baccalaureate in science – as well as a new health centre and a football pitch.

But even De la Cruz Rivera is starting to regret his decision, saying the government is not complying with their agreements.

“The prison is progressing, and there is absolutely nothing they promised us,” he says. “If they don’t comply, we will immediately paralyse the project.”

Leaders of both comunas agree that they were never consulted about the prison before building began, which is required for any infrastructure project planned on or near comuna territory, according to Ecuador’s constitution.

Several comuneros , such as Donald Cabrera, who has been farming his whole life, also fear the prison would bring significant changes to their way of life, limit their harvest and increase security risks.

Most expressed concerns about threats to their safety after Noboa announced that the new prison was designed to “isolate the most highly dangerous offenders”.

Renato Rivera, director of the non-profit organisation Ecuadorian Organised Crime Observatory (OECO), says it is clear that Ecuador’s prison system needs modernisation and new capacity to meet rising pressure to jail more offenders to combat the crime wave.

By the end of last year, Ecuador’s 36 prisons were filled to 13.5% above their capacity of 27,556 places .

Related: ‘Leave the gold in the ground’: Ecuador’s forest guardians mobilise against illegal mining in Amazon

Arrests have risen since January, when Noboa declared the country in a state of conflict with 22 armed groups. Nearly 5,000 people were arrested in the first month of a crackdown inspired by El Salvador’s hardline policies against gang violence.

But Rivera says the country needs more than just new infrastructure, as the prison system lacks public policies. “The construction requires new guidelines, security protocols, guidelines of international rules [UN-endorsed principles known as the Nelson Mandela Rules ], as well as social rehabilitation strategies,” he says.

However, Noboa’s administration has not publicly announced any such prison reforms.

In his announcement earlier this year, the president promised to build two maximum-security prisons, with the second planned for near the small town of Archidona in Ecuador’s northern Amazon rainforest, another fragile ecosystem.

Though construction has not yet begun, local communities have already begun protesting .

As Ecuador faces another presidential election next year, with Noboa running for re-election, the president will try to push through both prison projects as quickly as possible, Jaramillo predicts.

Meanwhile, Bajada de Changuy is planning to file a lawsuit soon that would force the government to stop construction.

“One feels helpless in the face of state abuses,” Cabrera says. “But not enough to just cross my arms.”