Men walk through a lush plan­ta­tion be­tween Ecuador ’s balmy Pa­cif­ic coast and its ma­jes­tic An­des, lop­ping hun­dreds of bunch­es of green ba­nanas from groan­ing plants twice their height.

Work­ers haul the bunch­es to an as­sem­bly line, where the ba­nanas are washed, weighed and plas­tered with stick­ers for Eu­ro­pean buy­ers. Own­er Franklin Tor­res is mon­i­tor­ing all ac­tiv­i­ty on a re­cent morn­ing to make sure the fruit meets in­ter­na­tion­al beau­ty stan­dards — and ever more im­por­tant, is packed for ship­ment free of co­caine.

Tor­res is hy­per­vig­i­lant be­cause Ecuador is in­creas­ing­ly at the con­flu­ence of two glob­al trades: ba­nanas and co­caine.

The South Amer­i­can coun­try is the world’s largest ex­porter of ba­nanas, ship­ping about 6.5 mil­lion met­ric tons (7.2 tons) a year by sea. It is al­so wedged be­tween the world’s largest co­caine pro­duc­ers, Pe­ru and Colom­bia, and drug traf­fick­ers find con­tain­ers filled with ba­nanas the per­fect ve­hi­cle to smug­gle their prod­uct.

Drug traf­fick­ers’ in­fil­tra­tion of the in­dus­try that is re­spon­si­ble for about 30% of the world’s ba­nanas has con­tributed to un­prece­dent­ed vi­o­lence across this once-peace­ful na­tion. Shoot­ings, homi­cides, kid­nap­pings and ex­tor­tions have be­come part of dai­ly life, par­tic­u­lar­ly in the Pa­cif­ic port city and ba­nana-ship­ping hub of Guayaquil.

“This is every­one’s re­spon­si­bil­i­ty: the per­son who trans­ports it, the per­son who buys it, the per­son who con­sumes it,” ven­dor Dalia Chang, 59, a life­long res­i­dent of Guayaquil, said of the co­caine trade. “They all share re­spon­si­bil­i­ty. They have ru­ined our coun­try.”

The coun­try, which is not a ma­jor co­caine pro­duc­er, was es­pe­cial­ly rat­tled when a pres­i­den­tial can­di­date known for his tough stance on or­ga­nized crime and cor­rup­tion — Fer­na­do Villav­i­cen­cio — was fa­tal­ly shot at the end of an Aug. 9 cam­paign ral­ly. He had ac­cused the Ecuado­ri­an Los Choneros gang and its im­pris­oned leader, whom he linked to Mex­i­co’s Sinaloa car­tel, of threat­en­ing him and his cam­paign team days be­fore the as­sas­si­na­tion.

In ad­di­tion to its prox­im­i­ty to co­caine pro­duc­tion, car­tels from Mex­i­co, Colom­bia and the Balka­ns have set­tled in Ecuador be­cause it us­es the U.S. dol­lar and has weak laws and in­sti­tu­tions, along with a net­work of long-es­tab­lished gangs like Los Choneros that are ea­ger for work.

Au­thor­i­ties say Ecuador al­so gained promi­nence in the glob­al co­caine trade af­ter po­lit­i­cal changes in Colom­bia last decade. Co­ca bush fields in Colom­bia have been mov­ing clos­er to the bor­der with Ecuador due to the breakup of crim­i­nal groups af­ter the 2016 de­mo­bi­liza­tion of the rebel group Rev­o­lu­tion­ary Armed Forces of Colom­bia, bet­ter-known by their Span­ish acronym FARC.

A record 2,304 met­ric tons of co­caine was man­u­fac­tured in 2021 around the world, most­ly in Colom­bia, Pe­ru and Bo­livia. That year, near­ly a third of the co­caine seized by cus­toms au­thor­i­ties in West­ern and Cen­tral Eu­rope came from Ecuador, dou­ble the amount re­port­ed in 2018, ac­cord­ing to a Unit­ed Na­tions re­port cit­ing da­ta from the World Cus­toms Or­ga­ni­za­tion. Large drug busts have be­come more fre­quent and with­in the past month, Eu­ro­pean au­thor­i­ties have made record-set­ting busts af­ter in­spect­ing con­tain­ers car­ry­ing ba­nanas from Ecuador.

Au­thor­i­ties on Aug. 25 an­nounced Spain’s biggest co­caine haul yet: 9.5 met­ric tons hid­den among card­board box­es of ba­nanas from Ecuador in a re­frig­er­at­ed con­tain­er. Dutch of­fi­cials al­so made their coun­try’s largest-ever co­caine seizure last month — near­ly 8 met­ric tons — in a con­tain­er of Ecuado­ri­an ba­nanas. Au­thor­i­ties in Greece and Italy al­so an­nounced seizures of co­caine hid­den in Ecuado­ri­an ba­nanas this year.

Ba­nanas head­ed to Eu­rope are boxed at plan­ta­tions, loaded in­to trucks that take them to mas­sive ware­hous­es in and around Guayaquil and trans­ferred to mar­itime con­tain­ers dri­ven to an area port.

Then the ships head north­east to the Pana­ma Canal, cross to the Caribbean Sea, and go east across the At­lantic.

Know­ing­ly or not, ba­nana grow­ers, ex­porters, ship­ping cor­po­ra­tions, port op­er­a­tors, pri­vate se­cu­ri­ty com­pa­nies, cus­toms agents, agri­cul­ture of­fi­cials, po­lice, and buy­ers of­fer op­por­tu­ni­ties that drug traf­fick­ers have ex­ploit­ed.

Some traf­fick­ers have cre­at­ed front com­pa­nies to mim­ic le­git­i­mate ba­nana ex­porters, while oth­ers have ac­quired le­git­i­mate busi­ness­es, in­clud­ing plan­ta­tions. They have found com­pa­nies will­ing to be com­plic­it in traf­fick­ing. They al­so have paid off, threat­ened or kid­napped truck dri­vers and oth­er work­ers to help get co­caine in­to ship­ments.

Oth­er traf­fick­ers have cor­rupt­ed or in­tim­i­dat­ed po­lice, cus­toms agents, se­cu­ri­ty guards and port work­ers to as­sist with — or ig­nore — tam­per­ing with con­tain­ers at the ports.

Drug traf­fick­ing has con­tributed to the num­ber of vi­o­lent deaths in Ecuador, which dou­bled from 2021 to 2022, when 4,600 died, the most ever record­ed in a year. The coun­try is on track to break the an­nu­al record again, with 3,568 vi­o­lent deaths tal­lied in the first half of 2023.

In Guayaquil, where mar­itime ship­ping con­tain­ers are part of the land­scape, peo­ple live in fear these days. Pedes­tri­ans don’t dare take their phones out of their pock­ets. Con­ve­nience stores have floor-to-ceil­ing met­al bars that pre­vent cus­tomers from en­ter­ing from the side­walk. Restau­rants that sur­vived the pan­dem­ic close ear­ly.

Along with the rise in homi­cides, the amount of co­caine seized at the coun­try’s ports has in­creased, too, reach­ing 77.4 met­ric tons last year. That is more than three times the amount seized in 2020.

Na­tion­al Po­lice Gen. Pablo Ramírez, Ecuador’s na­tion­al di­rec­tor of an­ti-drug in­ves­ti­ga­tions, at­trib­uted the change to in­creased smug­gling, not bet­ter en­force­ment.

Po­lice da­ta al­so show that of last year’s to­tal, a record 47.5 met­ric tons of co­caine were found in ship­ments of ba­nanas, even though the fruit’s ex­ports dropped 6.4% com­pared to 2021.

No more than 30% of con­tain­ers is cur­rent­ly in­spect­ed at Ecuado­ri­an ports, a process done man­u­al­ly or with drug-sniff­ing dogs. Pres­i­dent Guiller­mo Las­so’s gov­ern­ment says it wants to use scan­ners on en­tire con­tain­ers. Twelve of those ma­chines were sup­posed to be op­er­at­ing al­ready but Ramírez said that has not hap­pened yet.

Ramírez said he ex­pects all ports to have op­er­a­tional scan­ners by mid-2024. He said two ports have test­ed the scan­ners to smooth out in­ter­nal pro­ce­dures and train the peo­ple who will be work­ing with the ma­chines.

The op­er­a­tor of the largest port in Guayaquil, Con­te­con Guayaquil S.A., turned down As­so­ci­at­ed Press re­quests for an in­ter­view and ac­cess to the port to see ex­ist­ing se­cu­ri­ty pro­ce­dures. In re­sponse to writ­ten ques­tions about the mea­sures, spokes­woman Alexan­dra Pacheco said in a state­ment that the op­er­a­tor en­tered in­to an agree­ment with the Na­tion­al Po­lice in 2022 to among oth­er things “re­in­force op­er­a­tions in the port.” She added that the op­er­a­tor plans to spend about $15 mil­lion on the scan­ners.

Jose Hi­dal­go, ex­ec­u­tive di­rec­tor of the As­so­ci­a­tion of Ba­nana Ex­porters of Ecuador, said the in­dus­try faces greater ex­po­sure to traf­fick­ing than oth­er com­mod­i­ty ex­ports be­cause of the vol­ume of con­tain­ers that it us­es.

“It is be­cause of ba­nanas that there are so many ports,” Hi­dal­go said. “It opens routes to oth­er ex­port prod­ucts.”

He ex­plained that ex­porters spend about $100 mil­lion an­nu­al­ly on se­cu­ri­ty mea­sures, which in­clude sur­veil­lance cam­eras at plan­ta­tions, GPS mon­i­tor­ing of trucks and the iden­ti­fi­ca­tion of land routes that re­quire po­lice pa­trols to keep crim­i­nals away.

Nonethe­less, some ex­porters have been ac­cused of be­ing com­plic­it or di­rect­ly in­volved in traf­fick­ing co­caine.

Tor­res, the plan­ta­tion own­er, would like to see that type of ex­porter kicked out of the in­dus­try. But there is no reg­u­la­tion that can be used to re­voke a com­pa­ny’s ba­nana-ex­port­ing per­mis­sion when the busi­ness is tied re­peat­ed­ly to drug traf­fick­ing.

“It both­ers me so much,” Tor­res said. “My peo­ple work with ba­nanas, they don’t work with drugs. It’s a flag­ship prod­uct, the best in the world, and to see it taint­ed like that is un­for­tu­nate.”

GUAYAQUIL, Ecuador (AP) —