The rise and fall of El Negro Willy, the prison-guard mafia boss of Ecuador

The first sign that armed gang members had invaded a TV station in Guayaquil came when two masked youths appeared in the corner of the screen during a live news broadcast.

Soon the assailants swarmed the set, waving shotguns and revolvers at the terrified presenters, journalists, and crew. Viewers were left in disbelief as the gunmen brandished explosives and threatened to blow up the studio.

“We’re on air, so you know that you can’t play with the mafia,” one of the attackers could be heard saying.

It was January 9, 2024, a day etched into Ecuadorian criminal lore. Criminal gangs were sowing chaos across the country with a series of brazen, seemingly coordinated assaults in prisons and on the streets that would leave at least 10 dead, including two police officers. 

There was no attack more brazen than the assault on the live broadcast. One cameraman was shot in the leg, and the attackers broke another’s arm. Employees were seen huddled together on the floor. And, as gunmen threatened to open fire on their hostages, someone was heard yelling, “Don’t shoot!” 

The channel was live for at least 15 minutes before the signal was cut. During that time, the masked assailants could be seen making two hand signals used by one of Ecuador’s most notorious gangs, the Tiguerones, or the Tigers. The first involves making a pistol shape with the thumb and the index and middle figures. The thumb represents “God,” the index finger “peace” and the middle finger “freedom” – a reference to the Tiguerones’ motto Dios, paz y libertad, a play on “God, homeland and freedom,” a slogan frequently used by the Ecuadorian military.

The second gesture involves all four fingers. The middle and ring fingers are folded over, while the index and little figures are stretched out to make the shape of a “W” in a mark of respect for their leader, the founder of the Tiguerones, William Joffre Alcívar Bautista, alias “El Negro Willy” – Black Willy – or, more often, simply “Willy.” 

It was a display of power and intimidation. But for those leading the assault, it was also a one-way mission. After half an hour, security forces stormed the studio, capturing 13 people, two of them aged just 15 and 17. 

According to prosecutors, when they then interviewed the suspects and checked their phones, they were able to confirm what the hand gestures suggested: This was a Tiguerones operation, and it had been ordered directly by Willy himself. 

Like many of the country’s organized crime structures, the Tiguerones’ origins lie within the prison system. But unlike his allies and enemies, Willy began not as an inmate, but as a guard, a cog in the corruption machine that facilitated the criminal takeover of Ecuador’s prison system.

For his followers, who often refer to him as their Emperador, or Emperor, his rise from guard to one of Ecuador’s top mafia bosses has made him a criminal icon. But as the Tiguerones’ violence has spilled out of the prisons and onto the streets, it has changed the face of his hometown, shattering communities while drawing a generation of youths into a deadly life of crime with empty promises that they too can escape a life of poverty.

In October 2024, Willy was arrested in Spain. Police photos show him in handcuffs and full Lakers’ basketball uniform, seemingly laughing at his captors. But even this glimpse of the reality behind the myth is unlikely to put a stop to those fighting and killing in his name.

“We all want to be Willy,” said a member of the Tiguerones who spoke to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity. “If someone like him can climb to the top, we all can.”

The Poverty Trap 

Willy was born in 1989. He grew up in Esmeraldas, a Pacific coast city near Ecuador’s northwestern border with Colombia that is rich in Afro-Ecuadorian culture but plagued by underdevelopment and high unemployment. His criminal career, however, took off in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest city.

Like many Afro-Ecuadorians facing limited education and job prospects, Willy settled in Cooperativa Independencia II, a densely populated area of the Isla Trinitaria district, a social worker familiar with the neighborhood, who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons, told InSight Crime. The area became known as “Nigeria,” a reference to its large Black population and a symbol of the racism and social exclusion they endure. 

Cooperativa Independencia II is a landscape of extreme poverty, defined by precarious housing and a lack of basic infrastructure. Makeshift homes made from tin and wood stand beside swampy areas prone to flooding. Residents face frequent power outages and limited access to clean water. Jobs are few and far between. 

Police patrol cooperativa Independencia II. Credit: James Bargent, 2024

At the time Willy moved there, many residents found themselves trapped in the same cycle of desperation they had tried to flee. The neighborhood became a breeding ground for petty crime, fuelled by drug addiction.

“Neighbors turned on neighbors. The desire and desperation for a fix broke the social fabric of the community. It was every man for himself,” said the social worker. “Willy was one of the clever ones. He sold the stuff rather than consumed it.”

In 2010, Ecuador’s government, led by then President Rafael Correa, launched a series of social housing projects aimed at improving living conditions for the country’s poor. Among these projects was Socio Vivienda, a large-scale housing initiative that offered low-income families the chance to move from informal settlements into newly built, state-subsidized homes in the north of Guayaquil. The program promised better infrastructure, safer streets, and a path out of the cycles of poverty that plagued districts like Isla Trinitaria.

Willy was one of the thousands that moved to Socio Vivienda as part of this ambitious plan, according to the social worker and a founding resident of Socio Vivienda, who also moved there from Isla Trinitaria, and who also asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. The physical conditions were a step up from the wooden shacks of Cooperativa Independencia II, but the housing project converted into yet another hotbed for crime and violence and soon became one of Guayaquil’s most dangerous neighborhoods. The bright lights of the city, its sprawling ports and bustling economy still had little to offer the Afro-Ecuadorian community that had arrived from Esmeraldas.

“History repeated itself,” said the Socio Vivienda resident. “Yes, we had nicer houses, but without jobs, there was nothing to do. Everything became about drugs.”

Willy was one of the lucky ones. In 2012, he landed a job working as a prison guard, first in the prison known as La Regional and then later in Ecuador’s biggest prison, Litoral. Often referred to simply as “La Peni,” Litoral would become Willy’s gateway into the underworld.

Breaking into the Prisons

Willy’s time as a guard began at the start of what the Correa government had promised would be the construction of a new, humane and progressive prison system. La Regional and Litoral were part of the first phase of this project: the construction of mega-prisons to ease chronic overcrowding. But much like in Socio Vivienda, Correa’s bold plans barely progressed past the construction of physical infrastructure. And like in Socio Vivienda, the new facilities were soon overrun by organized crime.

Guards like Willy played a key role in the emerging dynamic. While some were coerced into cooperating with gangs, many others saw opportunity. Underresourced and outnumbered, they were in no position to submit the gangs to their authority, but they had enough leverage to ensure they benefited from the booming criminal economies that were taking shape within the vacuum left by the state in the prisons.

“In every wing there was a different gang, and the guards would go and collect their daily dues from them,” said a local leader of the Ñetas gang who did a spell in prison over this time, and who spoke to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity. “If [the boss of] a wing wanted to intimidate the guards, the guards would talk to their superiors, who would order a change in the leaders. That wing would automatically be taken over by someone else with resources.” 

They called it “buying the wing.”  

Willy was quick to capitalize, working with wing leaders throughout the prison. An imprisoned gang boss close to the leadership of the Choneros told InSight Crime that Willy soon began smuggling contraband into prison.

“He started bringing in telephones, chargers, and SIM cards. Then he started with guns,” said the source.

Prosecutors also alleged that, under Willy’s watch, prison guards paid inmates to smuggle drugs back into the facility after court hearings. The guards allegedly offered up to $75 per bag of cocaine, which prisoners were expected to swallow, then defecate out once they’d returned to their cell blocks. A police witness in the case claimed it was common knowledge that by that point Willy had links to organized crime and money laundering.

Soon, he had his own wing within the prison, according to the Ñetas leader. 

“He gave them drugs, everything. That’s how he became strong and made a name for himself,” he said.

The Socio Vivienda resident remembered how, flush with cash, Willy began to make a name for himself in the neighborhood as well. She described how he expanded from drug dealing into cellular phone theft and extortion, and howhe started dressing in more expensive clothes, and wearing fancy watches and designer tennis shoes.

“It was obvious he’d come into money,” she said.

Known for his frequent parties, Willy’s wealth caught the attention of local teenagers. 

“He preyed on the young and vulnerable,” the resident added. “Those without jobs, with absent parents. He’d lure them in with alcohol, women, and cash.”

In return, these young recruits were tasked with selling or transporting drugs. Those who refused faced Willy’s violent temper.  

“He’d scream at the kids in the street. Sometimes he’d hit them. He wanted everyone to see,” she said.

Soon, he was both respected and feared.

“He was powerful. It was easier to just stay away from him and turn a blind eye,” she added.

The Prodigal Gangster

It was while working his rackets in Guayaquil’s prisons that Willy made contact with Jorge Luis Zambrano González, alias “Rasquiña” or “JL.” Rasquiña was leader of the Choneros and one of the architects of the model of organized crime that would come to dominate Ecuador’s prisons and its streets.

“Willy was nobody. But he attached himself to JL, following him around doing favors, and that’s when JL took him under his wing,” said the gang boss.

Rasquiña and his gang, the Choneros, were at that time building a criminal federation within Ecuador’s prisons, with the objective of amassing power and controlling resources. But their ambitions did not end with the prisons, or even with Guayaquil, where their gang networks were making inroads. 

“JL wanted all of Ecuador, not just a single city,” the gang boss said.

Willy’s ties to Esmeraldas offered them an entry point into one of Ecuador’s most criminally strategic territories, a crucial transit and dispatch point for international traffickers that borders the Colombian region of Nariño, one of the top cocaine-producing regions in the world.  

“JL was looking for people that were gangsters or that had connections to gangs to take them out of poverty and make them traffickers and rich,” said the gang boss.  

Soon after they met, Rasquiña convinced Willy to leverage his connections in Esmeraldas. These included Willy’s younger brother, Alex Iván Alcívar Bautista, or “Ronco,” and their other brother, Luis Ernesto Alcívar Bautista, or “Puya.”

The Tiguerones, as they became known, quickly became a family affair. They brought cousins and uncles into the fold. Even Willy’s father – who was once a community leader who helped young men kick their drug addictions via vocational and educational programs – allegedly turned to extortion. 

In the 2010s, Esmeraldas was divided into territories controlled by small criminal clans that ran local drug sales, according to a human rights activist in Esmeraldas who asked to remain anonymous for security reasons. These groups managed their own businesses, avoiding conflict and fostering a relatively peaceful coexistence within the underworld. 

“There were several cliques, gangs, and small groups spread across different areas,” the human rights activist said. “They didn’t directly function as organized crime groups, but rather had members who were involved in criminal activities.”

At the top of the local criminal pyramid was César Vernaza, alias “El Empresario,” the Businessman. The Esmeraldas underworld had been dominated by Vernaza and his Templados gang for around a decade. Vernaza was known for selling drugs and running a prominent nightclub and brothel. He was reportedly also a key ally of Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel, helping them move cocaine from the Colombian border through Esmeraldas to Mexico and Central America.

As his alias suggested, Vernaza was more businessman than warrior, and he allegedly maintained a degree of equilibrium in the Esmeraldas underworld.

“Vernaza exerted a sort of constraint over Esmeraldas,” said another community leader, who also requested anonymity out of fears for their safety. 

Vernaza also knew Rasquiña. The pair had served time together and had escaped from Guayaquil’s maximum security prison, La Roca, along with 16 others in 2013. But as Rasquiña consolidated his power inside prison and expanded his criminal empire in Esmeraldas, Vernaza would face a stark choice. 

Getting Down to Business

On December 16, 2017, Willy and his cousin allegedly abducted a 54-year-old man outside his home in Esmeraldas. His body was found a day later. It was the beginning of what the human rights activists called a “purge.” 

“It was systematic elimination of leaders of criminal organizations,” the activist said, referring to efforts by Willy to remove his rivals.

But everything was not going as planned. Within a day of the murder, the police arrested Willy after stopping him in one of the cars allegedly used in the kidnapping, and he was remanded in pretrial detention. 

By the end of the year, all three Alcívar brothers were all behind bars. Puya was sentenced to 34 years for the murder of a 22-year-old man after an alleged dispute involving his girlfriend in a nightclub. Ronco, meanwhile, was convicted of robbery and organized crime and sentenced to 88 months, after he was arrested attempting to steal $2,000 from a man on his way to deposit the money in a bank.

For Willy, however, prison was a blessing. Inside, he solidified his connections and leadership, including with Rasquiña, who Willy kept in contact with via video calls, the imprisoned gang boss told InSight Crime. And soon, the Tiguerones began to emerge as a formidable force both inside and outside prison, especially in Esmeraldas.

In the end, his stay in prison was brief. Willy was released in late May 2018, after a judge ruled there was insufficient evidence in the case to determine who pulled the trigger in the death of the 54-year-old man, and got his job back as a prison guard in Litoral.  

Back in Esmeraldas, Willy’s Tiguerones grew, building influence through a combination of intimidation, extortion, and the recruitment of vulnerable youth. They brought with them a new form of organized crime, one based on violence and control over the community. The human rights activist told InSight Crime that they controlled who entered and who left areas under their purview under the guise of providing “security” for the community. 

Their influence spread. And, after a few years, there was but one major holdout: Vernaza. And in February 2020, he was shot by assailants inside a restaurant he owned in the north of the city. No one was charged with the killing, but on the streets, the Tiguerones claimed credit, according to several local social leaders – a version of events that was also echoed by the imprisoned gang boss.

“”It’s not like they hid what they’d done. Instead, they were brazen about it, as if to say, ‘Fear me,’” said the community leader.

A Tale of Two Plagues 

The death of Vernaza unleashed chaos in the city. Assassinations and intimidation became commonplace as the Tiguerones sought to assert dominance through unchecked brutality.

“When you kill people like that, everything becomes crazy,” said the community leader. “And that’s what happened in Esmeraldas. This is when extortion started to emerge, along with the trafficking of minors for criminal purposes. The issue of the forced recruitment of young people started for us then.” 

Prosecutors allege the Tiguerones terrorized the city, particularly through extortion. Residents, businessmen, and even hospital staff were targeted. Phone calls and messages ordered payments of up to $50,000. The callers, often using numbers from Colombia, Peru, and Chile, threatened to kill the victims and their families. The crude modus operandi stretched from top to bottom: Even Willy was accused of making video calls to some of the victims.

Covid-19 further fueled the Tiguerones’ ascent. As families grappled with unemployment, school closures, and instability, the allure of cash through gang involvement became increasingly appealing, drawing more recruits into the Tiguerones ranks. The absence of social safety nets and the collapse of routines during the pandemic created a fertile environment for the gang to strengthen its grip on the community.

“After the start of the pandemic, they began to increase their purchasing power, economic power, and armament power,” said the human rights activist. 

They also increased their cultural power, constructing the Tiguerones’ image by sponsoring rap musicians to write songs about them and producing music videos to mythologize their lifestyle.

“They effectively utilized pop, narco-culture and managed to permeate a youth that was idle and not occupied, and that looked at what could be achieved by belonging to a criminal group as something aspirational,” said the human rights activist.

A youth makes a gang sign in a music video about the Tiguerones. Credit: El Jincho La Gente Fuerte

Willy became the poster boy for these recruiting efforts. Despite his thin, gaunt appearance, murals on prison walls portray him as a figure of strength and defiance, transforming him into an almost mythical character. His skin is depicted as paler, and his eyes are an eerie, piercing blue.

“He set an example. He achieved the unachievable: He escaped a shithole to make something of himself. And he promised us the same,” said the member of the Tiguerones.

But those who followed that vision soon found themselves trapped by the brutal logic of gang life.

“Some do it for power, others for necessity because here in Esmeraldas there are no opportunities. It’s kill or be killed,” a teenage member of the Tiguerones told Insight Crime. 

And while Willy’s symbolic presence spread, he disappeared. After authorities ordered Willy to be placed in pretrial detention for a murder in September 2020, his lawyers said he was no longer in the country. The charges against him would eventually be overturned when a judge ruled the evidence against him was circumstantial. But it made little difference. He was gone. 

“He has been a ghost since 2020, an elusive figure, hardly in contact with anyone beyond his family and a select circle,” said the human rights activist.

Willy’s War 

On December 6, 2020, fighting in Esmeraldas prison left six dead. Behind the violence, the Tiguerones member said, was a move by the Tiguerones to cement their control over the city by taking over what was by that point a key, strategic criminal territory. It was the first sign of what was to come.

Three weeks later, the Choneros’ leader Rasquiña, who had been released from prison earlier that year, was murdered in a shopping mall in the city of Manta. Soon after, the Choneros’ criminal federation began to fall apart. 

For their part, Willy and the Tiguerones joined an alliance of other former Choneros factions headed by a group known as the Lobos. They dubbed themselves the Nueva Generación, or New Generation, were backed by powerful Ecuadorian drug traffickers, and, according to security officials and criminal sources, ran drugs for the Jalisco Cartel New Generation (Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generación – CJNG). 

It was a tumultuous time for organized crime on many levels. By that time, the CJNG was challenging the near monopoly previously held by their rivals the Sinaloa Cartel over trafficking from Ecuador to Mexico and Central America. And former Choneros allies were turning on them en masse. But why Willy turned on the Choneros remains a burning question, even within the underworld.

A Choneros commander, speaking to InSight Crime on condition of anonymity, claimed the Lobos had convinced Willy that the new Choneros leader, José Adolfo Macías Villamar alias “Fito,” had killed Rasquiña to take his place.

“The Lobos sold him a story that wasn’t real,” the source said. 

However, the gang boss close to the Choneros leadership claimed Willy broke away to traffic drugs with the CJNG, capitalizing on a connection he had made with a CJNG trafficker he had helped free from prison in Ecuador.

“That is where the direct connection with the CJNG came from,” said the source. “They provided him with arms and drugs, and he stopped moving the Sinaloa drugs for the Choneros and followed the directions of the Jalisco Cartel. They even helped him leave the country.”

“He flipped, he went independent,” he added.

Whether the break from the Choneros was a planned strategy or a reaction to Rasquiña’s murder, it left the newly independent Tiguerones as a rising force in the Ecuadorian underworld. But it also left them at war. And while the brutal massacres taking place in the prisons drew most of the attention, it was on the streets where the most blood was shed.

The rivalry between the Tiguerones and the Choneros’ proxies, the Gánsters turned Esmeraldas into an epicenter of this new mafia war. In 2022, 383 people were murdered in the city, more than four times the number of homicides recorded in 2021, according to figures from Ecuador’s Interior Ministry.

The rivalry fueled both recruitment and extortion as the gangs sought reinforcements and resources. They also tightened their grip on local neighborhoods. The fear generated by these rivalries made residents feel compelled to align with, or at least tolerate the gangs, to avoid becoming targets themselves.

“Organized crime has turned neighborhoods into enemies,” said the community leader. “People from the hills can’t talk to those from the riverbanks, and if they see you talking, they’ll shoot you.”  

By 2023, the Tiguerones had negotiated a truce with the Choneros and their local allies, the Gánsters, but the deal brought no peace to Esmeraldas. The Tiguerones instead launched a campaign to eradicate their former allies, the Lobos, from the region.

“This is a war. Just like the military are soldiers, here too, we are soldiers. We fight for principles: God, peace and freedom. We fight to be free,” said the Tiguerones member. 

Esmeraldas entered a new conflict. Ecuador was about to follow.

Caging the Tigers

In January 2024, an incredible series of events would send the country spiraling yet deeper into crisis. It began on January 7, when the government discovered that Fito, the leader of the Choneros, had escaped from prison. As the government declared a state of emergency in response, the gangs rioted in the prisons, burned cars on the streets, opened fire on police and civilians in the wave of attacks that culminated with the TV station during its live news show. 

An hour after the Tiguerones stormed the studio, the country’s president, Daniel Noboa, published on X (formerly Twitter) a presidential decree declaring the country was in an “internal armed conflict” with 22 “terrorist” groups, among them, the Tiguerones. 

The split-screen left Ecuadorians dizzy. As the Tiguerones were flashing their gang signs on their TVs, the news that the president had decided Ecuador was at war with itself was flashing on their phones. And it left the Tiguerones elevated in the public imagination from a gang to a national security threat.

“Events like the invasion of the TV studio help them [the Tiguerones] establish legitimacy,” Renato Rivera from the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime told InSight Crime. “They’re creating a strategy to achieve symbolic power.”

Police arrest Willy in Spain. Credit: Spanish National Police

But beneath the surface of this ostentatious show of strength lay the seeds of hubris, foreshadowing a descent into chaos. What seemed to be the apex of their influence instead marked a precarious tipping point for the group, as internal rivalries and external pressures began to unravel the very foundations of their organization.

The measure gave him sweeping powers, which the government used to launch a military crackdown in the prisons and on the streets, including a major deployment in Esmeraldas. And for a time, the heightened security measures and aggressive – at times allegedly abusive – law enforcement broke the connections between the prisons and the gang networks, and drove many mid-level commanders on the outside into hiding to evade capture.

The majority of [the leaders of] associations are leaving here because of the police interventions,” said Colonel Juan Carlos Soria Alulema, chief of police for Esmeraldas province. “This gives us a certain sense of calm because it cuts the channels of communication between them and the organizations.”

Tiguerones foot soldiers found themselves abandoned and leaderless, prompting many to seize the opportunity to flee and escape the gang’s grasp. This exodus of foot soldiers not only diminished the Tiguerones’ numbers, it also destabilized their influence over territories. 

Those that remain are struggling to fight back the Lobos’ relentless advances in Esmeraldas. Willy’s arrest in Spain – where, police told the media, he was “living like a prince” – may well accelerate the Tiguerones’ decline. And for some, his allure has begun to fade.

“For me, this is about the interests of the commanders. All of this to have more power,” the teenage member of the Tiguerones said. “In all this war, I’m just another pawn. We are cannon fodder.”

Source: insightcrime.org

Thomas Brown