‘They were kids with guns’: Ecuador’s week of bloodshed and mayhem

As cartels and crime syndicates flock to Ecuador for cocaine trade profits, its murder rate has soared, with a TV station assault the crescendo of a week of chaos

Political upheaval and street protests, gun battles and floods. José Luis Calderón has seen it all during his 23 years as one of Guayaquil’s top television journalists. Never had the Ecuadorean reporter been the story himself.

That changed just after lunch last Tuesday when the 47-year-old reporter heard shouts and the sound of people running in the corridors of TC Televisión, the channel where he works. “At first … we thought it was a fight,” he remembered. But as the yelling intensified, it became clear it was not.