The Ghost of the State Liquor Monopoly

In the 1960s, the roads between Baños and Riobamba were the scene of a forgotten war. Shootings and deaths were routine as hidden distilleries, mule trains and armed liquor enforcers shaped a conflict created by prohibition.

The writer’s maternal grandfather was the chief state liquor enforcer in Chimborazo. A paternal great-uncle was the area’s most famous smuggler. One represented the law, the other evasion. Both existed because the Ecuadorian state had turned sugar cane into a crime.

The two worlds met at the writer’s parents’ wedding. Armed enforcers in dark suits and smugglers in felt hats gathered in the same church, revolvers at their waists. Yet no one was killed that night. The guests even drank contraband liquor, the local aguardiente made in Baños de Agua Santa and carried by mule to Riobamba before being distributed elsewhere in Ecuador.

When alcohol was legalized, the liquor enforcers disappeared, as did the smugglers. The clandestine aguardiente entered shops and supermarkets, while the state stopped spending millions on bullets and salaries for a force that, the article says, shot first and asked questions later. Taxes replaced the illegal trade, and the violence faded because the market lost its criminal incentive.

The article says that lesson has been forgotten. Today, it argues, laboratories process coca leaves in remote parts of the country, containers replace mule trains, and national and international elite units spend millions intercepting cocaine shipments leaving Ecuador’s coast for the United States and Europe. The bill, it concludes, is paid by everyone.