How Ecuador’s Neighbors Unleashed Drug Violence on Its Soil

When Europe’s busiest port recently announced the discovery of nearly nine tons of cocaine hidden in a shipment of bananas — its biggest-ever seizure of illegal narcotics — it included a detail that was no longer surprising. The shipment had come not from Colombia or Peru, Latin America’s largest cocaine producers, but from Ecuador, the small nation sandwiched between them.

Ecuador has struggled for years with drug trafficking because of its geographic location, fairly porous borders…