An Ecuadorian judge was gunned down in broad daylight as she drove to a gym in the southwestern city of Machala, the latest casualty in a war between the state and the cocaine cartels that have turned this small Andean nation into one of the deadliest places in Latin America.

Lady Gissela Pachar Huanga, a judge in the criminal judicial unit, was shot dead on May 11, 2026, while traveling by car through the capital of El Oro province, which borders Peru. Her two assigned bodyguards were not with her at the time, according to local police. A police source told AFP on Tuesday that Pachar had received threats and was killed in retaliation for the release of gang members.

The killing landed like a hammer on Ecuador’s beleaguered judiciary. In a statement released Monday, Ecuador’s Judicial Council condemned the attack as a “serious attack against justice and the rule of law in Ecuador” and demanded a full investigation.

A Protective Detail That Wasn’t There

Pachar had been flagged as a target. The Council of the Judiciary confirmed that protective measures had been assigned to her, but acknowledged a critical failure on the day she died.

“It should be noted that the judge had previously been assigned protective measures; however, these measures were not in place at the time of the attack,” the council said in a translated statement.

The gap between the threats Pachar faced and the security she received underscores a problem prosecutors and judges across Ecuador have raised for years: assigned protection often exists more on paper than on the street. By the time her car reached its destination, the judge was dead and the gunmen were gone.

The Ecuadorian Judges’ Association condemned the murder on Tuesday, writing on social media: “Without independent judges, there is no justice.”

Sixteen Killed Since 2022

Pachar’s death is not an outlier. At least 16 judges or prosecutors have been killed in Ecuador since 2022, according to Human Rights Watch. Last October, a gunman riding a motorbike shot down a judge as he walked his children to school, a brazen attack that briefly shocked the country before it slipped into the steady drumbeat of cartel violence.

The geography explains much of the bloodshed. Around 70 percent of the cocaine produced by Colombia and Peru — the world’s largest and second-largest producers — is shipped through Ecuador’s ports and Pacific coastline. That makes the country’s courts, prisons and prosecutors’ offices high-value targets for the trafficking organizations that depend on a corrupted or terrorized justice system to keep their product moving.

Pachar was killed during a state of emergency that had been declared specifically to combat organized crime — a fact that has not been lost on critics of the government’s strategy.

Noboa’s Hard-Line Bet

President Daniel Noboa, one of President Trump’s staunchest allies on the continent, has staked his presidency on confronting the cartels since taking power in November 2023. He has deployed soldiers on the streets and inside prisons, launched dramatic raids on drug strongholds, and declared frequent states of emergency. Human rights groups have fiercely criticized the tactics, warning of abuses by security forces operating with expanded powers.

The results, however, have not matched the rhetoric. Homicides have climbed despite the crackdown, reaching a record 9,216 violent deaths last year. The state of emergency under which Pachar was killed was supposed to suppress exactly the kind of contract-style assassination that ended her life.

American Commandos on the Ground

The deteriorating security picture has drawn Washington deeper into Ecuador’s fight. In early March, the United States and Ecuador launched joint military operations against organizations designated as terrorist groups. American commandos recently joined Ecuadorian troops in Operation Lanza Marina, a mission targeting a compound believed to serve as a staging ground for high-speed boats linked to Los Choneros, one of the country’s most violent gangs.

Two U.S. officials, speaking on the condition of anonymity because they were not authorized to discuss the operation publicly, said American forces worked in advisory roles, accompanying their Ecuadorian counterparts as they moved against the site. The mission is part of a broader effort to disrupt maritime trafficking routes that have made Ecuador’s coast a launchpad for cocaine bound north.

Whether that escalation can protect figures like Pachar is another question. The judge’s killers chose a moment when she was alone, unguarded and predictable in her routine — the kind of intelligence the cartels gather with ease in a country where corruption inside institutions remains widespread.

The Judicial Council’s statement made clear what is at stake beyond a single life. The judiciary, it warned, cannot function under intimidation or violence, and protecting its officers is fundamental to guaranteeing access to justice and the democratic order. In Machala on Monday, the gunmen offered their own response to that argument.