Coastal tourism has been hard-hit by violence but it’s been ‘totally destroyed’ in El Oro Province

By Gil Ramos

Before the Covid-19 pandemic, the beaches at Jambelí and Bajo Alto and the malecón at Puerto Bolívar were crowded with weekend tourists. “A few years ago, the area in front of me was crowded with people from Cuenca, Loja and even Guayaquil, but look at it today! It’s empty,” says Juan Verdesoto, surveying the malecón. “We used to have hundreds of people drive over from Cuenca but they don’t come anymore. They’re scared of the violence.”

The beach on Jambelí island on a weekend in 2019. Today it’s empty.

According to Verdesoto, the presence of criminal gangs, primarily Los Lobos, has devastated the tourism industry in all of El Oro Province. “Before the gangs arrived, we had seven or eight nice restaurants on the malecón that would be full on Saturday and Sunday. Today there is one and it’s empty,” he said.

Ecuador tourism officials report that tourism numbers, as counted by hotel occupancy and restaurant sales, have dropped 35% to 40% in all coastal provinces from pre-pandemic levels. “The industry in locations such as Salinas, Manta and Atacames is doing poorly but some tourists are still coming,” a spokesman for Ecuador’s Tourism Ministry said last week. “There are some locations, however, where tourism has disappeared almost entirely, such as Jambelí and Machala.”

Verdesoto says most of the restaurants and hotels on nearby Jambelí island have closed, with many of the residents leaving in search of work in Machala. “Almost everyone on the island depends on the tourists and now the tourists are gone and there is no way to earn a living.”

As recently as 20 years ago, Verdesoto points out, most Cuencanos who wanted a beach weekend came to Jambelí or Bajo Alto. “These are the closest beaches to Cuenca and it takes half the time to drive here as to Salinas,” he said. “That changed with the new highway from Guayaquil to Salinas, but we still got hundreds of people from Cuenca every weekend. And today? None.”

Before the Covid pandemic and drug gang violence, the malecón at Puerto Bolivar was filled with tourists.

He adds: “Now, they’re afraid to go to any beach, even Salinas, or they fly to the Galapagos.”

Most of the boats that once transported visitors from the docks at Puerto Bolívar to Jambelí sit idle. “We have nothing to do,” says Gustavo Castro, who has worked the three-kilometer route for 25 years. “The business came back after Covid and we had 1,000 or 1,200 customers every weekend but since 2022, when the violence started, it fell off. Today, there are 100 or 200 passengers on the weekend and most of those live on the island.”

The owner of a hostel and a restaurant at the Bajo Alto beach offers a similar assessment. “Ten years ago, we had 3,000 tourists every weekend,” he says. “Today the activity is almost nil,” adding that there were “a few hundred” until earlier in the year when nearby gang battles resulted in seven killings. “That was it. People in Cuenca and Guayaquil heard about it on the news and stopped coming.”

Verdesoto says he is waiting for “real results” from President Daniel Noboa’s campaign against the drug gangs but says he has seen none so far. “We have more police and military here than before, but they are only patrolling the malecón and the bay,” Verdesoto says. “They know where the gang members live and hang out, but they don’t go there. It’s like they don’t want any trouble. The problem is, until there is some trouble and until they go after them, nothing here will change.”

In the meantime, Verdesoto and others who depend on tourism in Puerto Bolivar, Jambelí and Baja Alto will continue to sit idle.