JOHN YANG: It wasn't that long ago that Ecuador was a beacon of stability in a region known for political unrest and drug trafficking.

But it's become one of Latin America's most violent countries, with increasing violence and murders.

As Ali Rogin reports, many Ecuadorians are turning to their young political outsider president to turn things around.

ALI ROGIN: Ecuador is in a state of war.

That was what 36-year old President Daniel Noboa said in January as he declared a state of internal armed conflict against his country's drug cartels.

In the past year, the small south American nation saw the assassination of a presidential candidate, the escape of numerous gang members from prison, including the leader of one of the country's most powerful drug cartels, and a brazen armed takeover of a local TV station during a live broadcast.

President Noboa came under an international scrutiny after armed police raided the Mexican embassy in the capital Quito earlier this month.

They arrested a former Ecuadorian vice president who sought asylum in the embassy after being indicted on corruption charges.

En noboas mano dura, or strong hand, got even stronger last week after voters approved a referendum increasing his authority.

They include measures allowing him to deploy the military against gangs more easily, extradite accused criminals, and lengthen prison sentences for convicted drug traffickers.

Carolina Jimenez Sandoval is president of the Washington office on Latin America, a research organization which advocates for human rights in the region.

Carolina, welcome back to PBS News Weekend.

Thank you so much.

Why is gang violence in Ecuador right now spiraling so far out of control?

CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL, Washington Office on Latin America: Well, more than gun violence, I would say, is organized crime violence.

Unfortunately, in the last few years, the Ecuador as a country has started to play a different role in the international drug trade.

We need to think about the country's geographic location.

It is basically a sandwich between Colombia and Peru, and these are the world's largest coca growers and cocaine producers.

For many years, Ecuador has been a transit country for drug trade.

But the control of the drug trade was done mainly from Colombia by the FARC, the rebel group.

Once this guerrilla group demobilized, when Colombia signed a peace agreement in 2016, there was a major vacuum.

Who will control this very profitable business, illegal business.

And that's when we started seeing Ecuador becoming more and more violent.

And as you know, Mexican cartels, Colombian cartels, and even Albanian cartel entered the country forcefully.

To feel that vacuum left by the former FARC group, we have seen, really a tough war in which cartels fight each other and they also fight the government.

And unfortunately, you know, normal citizens are paying the consequences.

ALI ROGIN: And a lot of the government's efforts to quell this violence has taken place around and inside the prisons.

So let's talk about the role that the prison system in Ecuador is playing in the proliferation of violence and also in efforts to try to reduce it.

CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: I think the first thing we need to acknowledge is that the prison system in Ecuador has been in crisis for many years.

And if you take the numbers given by Human Rights Watch, since 2021, at least 400 people have been killed in prisons across Ecuador.

So this number is really alarming.

But the truth is that prisons have also become the center of operation of major cartels.

They use prisons not only to organize their business, but also to recruit new members.

So despite efforts from the government to control the penitentiary system, it is very clear that organized crime has the upper hand in prisons.

Unfortunately, you know, the mano dura that you were speaking about earlier, the iron fist policies of the government often increase violence in prison.

They don't really reduce ill treat mineral torture and many other things that are happening to detainees.

ALI ROGIN: So let's talk a little bit more about that mano dura policy.

How is it playing out in Ecuador right now?

CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: It is the all and felt strategy of militarizing citizen security.

We have seen this strategy being implemented in different Latin American countries.

Mexico is perhaps the best example.

And basically President Naboa, after the referendum, now has much more power to maintain the military in the streets.

The military will be carrying security operations together with the police.

And what tends to happen in these cases is that the military, who are created to play a very different role, not a role of the civilian police plays, usually provide short term gains.

The military are not prepared to deal with organized crime, are not prepared to substitute civilian police.

And human rights violations in this type of strategies are always at the forefront of the military work.

And Mexico is perhaps one of the best examples we have seen.

ALI ROGIN: What about the United States role here?

How is what's happening in Ecuador affecting the international drug trade as it relates to the United States?

And is the United States helping at all to address these issues?

CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: When we saw a major spike of violence in January this year, and the president of Ecuador declared at a state of emergency, almost immediately after this happened, a high level delegation of American government officials flew to Quito, and we saw the south commander, General Laura Richardson, promised that military aid was going to be part of the U.S. policy towards Ecuador and everything from, you know, providing military equipment to FBI advisors.

So there is a package in the making.

Of course, it is important to have a strategy against the drug trade, but we certainly hope that the U.S. will not focus exclusively on supporting a military approach.

It is necessary to professionalize the police to support an independent and functional judicial system, to support civil society in the free press, which is more important than ever when this crisis happened.

And honestly, we don't think this is going to change if the current global prohibition regime of, you know, around drug policy continues to be fueling the violence that it has fueled for so many years.

So unless we have a real conversation about reforms to the global policy related to drugs, I'm afraid that we will continue to see the violence that Latin America has seen for over five decades now.

ALI ROGIN: Carolina Jimenez Sandoval, the president of the Washington office on Latin America, thank you so much for joining us.

CAROLINA JIMENEZ SANDOVAL: Thank you for having me.