Death Channel: the deposit that accumulates corpses in the open and reflects the violence in Ecuador

Resident of the Nueva Prosperina neighborhood in Canal da Morte, Ecuador
Marcos Pin/AFP
When someone disappears, family members usually go to hospitals, the morgue and the police. But, in a district of Ecuador dominated by organized crime violence, the search is also taking place in the Canal of Death, where dozens of bodies were found.
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Georgina Bermeo was lying face down, with dirty clothes and surrounded by weeds when her relatives found her body, in May, in the open-air body dump in the northwest of Guayaquil.
The canal, more than 45 kilometers long extension, cuts through Nueva Prosperina, considered the most violent district of Ecuador's main port city.
Built more than a decade ago for agricultural irrigation, the site began to be used to dump bodies after the pandemic, according to residents, and became filled with contaminated water.
A dirt road runs alongside the canal, amidst rubbish, emaciated dogs and vultures. The place has no public lighting or security cameras. According to residents, armed men on motorcycles control access.
Georgina, 38, and her husband, José Cedeño, 43, were robbed and then shot. His body was also thrown into the canal.
"Our only sin is that we are black," Georgina's sister told AFP, who asked not to be identified for fear of criminal groups.
The woman stated that she did not report the crime because, according to her, "the police are in the hands of criminals."
In 2025, Ecuador recorded an average of one homicide per hour, according to official data.
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"We live in fear, with the doors locked, and there is no way to open them because death visits us," said Juan Ordóñez, a community leader who has lived in the region for 40 years and has seen bodies piled up in the floodgates at the end of the canal.
Since 2023, forensic police have removed more than 100 bodies from the canal. Some victims were inside bags. Others, naked. In November, agents found a ditch with nine heads, arms and torsos.
"It's a place to throw bodies. They execute them there or higher up, and they are carried away by the current," said Lieutenant Christian Echeverría, from the unit that investigates violent deaths.
The officer said he lost count of how many bodies were collected in the channel during the three years he worked in Guayaquil, a strategic port used by criminal organizations to send cocaine to the United States and Europe.
In a report released in March, the United Nations Committee to Combat Enforced Disappearances (CED) reported that it had received reports of at least 51 cases of disappearances allegedly committed by state agents since 2024.
Reports of abuses committed by police and military personnel increased during President Daniel Noboa's strategy to combat organized crime, supported by the United States.
In power since 2023, Noboa rules under an almost permanent state of exception. Still, violence persists in the country and in Guayaquil, a city of almost 3 million inhabitants that recorded more than 900 homicides between January and May, according to official data.
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