Another City of God, a Guayaquil favela that incubates violence

Now it’s a port terrified of drug crime on the streets and in prisons, but less noisy violence has already taken root in the mountains. Guayaquilin a slum with a biblical name and less known than others in Latin America.

Mount Sinai is a hillock of 55 irregular settlements behind a thriving Ecuadorian port, caught in a bloody spiral that has resulted in 861 murders this year. 32.5% all cases registered in the country.

in 9300 hectares (100 km2) of hillside, according to the municipal census, half a million people live without basic services. Guayaquil (2.8 million inhabitants).

Only in God’s city they squeeze 40 000 the poor in unfinished thatched or prefabricated houses so cramped that bathrooms are outside the buildings.

Evangelical Protestants were the first to settle in this place, who gave it its name. God’s citythe same one from the famous Brazilian favela, which was depicted in the cinema in 2002.

Here, “every house has a septic tank. We tried to put cement poles for electricity, four poles on the street cost us $200,” he says. Marisol Chavez.

40-year-old head of the district, Chavez lives in a room with two beds pushed together and plush toys to soften the view. Until recently, he survived off informal sales and his partner’s sporadic work as a bricklayer, but with the recent birth of a child, he has devoted himself to his care.

“We have almost nothing and we suffer a lot” in God’s citycut.

Chavez She arrived on the hill in 2019 after being expelled from another illegal settlement. Here “there was nothing, pure undergrowth, earth, there were only small trees with thorns that pricked you,” he recalls.

overcrowding in housing Guayaquil (14.6%) exceeds the national average (9.6%), according to the statistical office (INEC). The poverty rate (20.1%) in the main port is also higher than in the rest of the country (16.7%).

– “Instill” the poor fellow –

Born of an invasion 22 years ago God’s city It also has no drinking water. Tanker trucks rise on open roads. tank 55 gallons costs 0.75 cents. dollars, while in the wealthy sector lace a cubic meter of drinking water (264 gallons) costs 0.72 cents.

Poverty, overcrowding, lack of basic services and violence are what UN Habitat calls the “poverty trap” from which it is difficult to get out.

“We live in a trap, leaving my house, I’m going to pay rent and there is no money,” he says. Rose Obandowho came here 15 years ago.

Criminal gangs extended their hands to the overcrowded Mount Sinai. “Housing is guarded,” the sign says.

Neighbors say the phrase is a chilling warning to “those who owe money to Los Choneros,” one of 26 criminal organizations operating in Ecuador.

Gang members extort money or “graft” communities to keep them safe, but that’s really the price they have to pay for their lives. In a few days they will be going from house to house charging “two dollars,” one of the leaders of the faction warned them, according to one of the residents who booked it.

Gangs use young people as cheap labor. They are “a hundred times more likely to get caught in the drug trade,” he says. Cesar CardenasDirector of the Public Services Observatory Guayaquil.

– No project –

Before the first incursions, Monte Sinai was private and public land, where the drug dealer also built his farm, says architect and urban planner Rosa Rada.

With the construction of the Perimeter Road, which connects the industrial area with the port, the hill began to “urbanize” in 1984.

To get to the center GuayaquilResidents of Ciudad de Dios have to walk about half an hour to the nearest road and use public transport, which can take up to an hour and a half.

Schools are also far away. During the pandemic, children received some form of activity on blackboards and tables set up in dusty yards.

according to the ministry Urban development and housing construction, third of the surface Guayaquil it is irregularly populated by rural migrants, who were swindled in many cases by land traders. Local authorities plan to legalize 8,000 homes as part of a gradual regularization plan.

Without housing, “there is no life project and (cannot) plan for the future,” says the head of the observatory. In the City of God, hardly anyone touches the sky with their hands.

(AFP)