The brutal violence of these days in Ecuador , which included the takeover of a television channel, car bombs and kidnapping of police officers, a crisis that forced Daniel Noboa's government to declare a "state of exception" and curfew , has as its origin the abrupt growth of drug trafficking cartels.

Last August, Ecuador found itself in the crosshairs of the world's main anti-drug agencies when authorities in the Dutch port of Rotterdam discovered almost 9 tons of pure cocaine in a shipment of bananas that came from the South American country.

The enormous amount of drugs transported in a single shipment revealed to investigators that Ecuadorian drug trafficking gangs, in alliance with Mexico's major cartels , were operating on a much larger scale.

In parallel, shipments of narcotics were found in ports in Spain, Germany and Italy.

Port of Rotterdam