Los Choneros
Ecuadorian criminal organization
Los Choneros (Spanish pronunciation: [los tʃoˈneɾos]) is an organized crime syndicate and a Terrorist organization that first emerged in Manabí Province, Ecuador. The gang is involved in organized crime, including drug trafficking, extortion, and robbery, many crimes being carried out through prisons with the help of corrupt officials. Los Choneros work with groups in Colombia, Peru, and Mexico, in order to traffic drugs like cocaine into the United States.
History
The Los Choneros originated in the city of Chone and Manta in the Manabí province of Ecuador in the 1990s. Jorge Bismarck Véliz España, also known as “Teniente España,” was the original leader, and later, leadership was passed to Rasquiña and José Adolfo Macías Villamar, also known as “Fito.” España was killed in a conflict between the Choneros and a rival gang by the name of the Queseros.
Carlos Jesús Cedeño Vera, known alternatively as El Rojo or El Quesero, the head of the Los Queseros gang, had a fight with Bismark at a party and ordered his murder. In the assassination attempt, Bismark and his daughter were wounded, and his wife was killed. Bismark, the Choneros future leader Jorge Luis Zambrano, and a Choneros hitman, murdered Cadeño Vera's brother and son, Jhonny Verdy Cedeño Vera and Cristhian Jonathan Cedeño Briones. In the ensuing war, the Queseros were exterminated. Several members of the Choneros survived, allowing them to continue with their criminal activities.
Begin with the source’s own compact description: “Los Choneros” is ecuadorian criminal organization. The dossier treats that line as a proposition to test through Choneros, Ecuadorian and criminal, not as a finished interpretation.
Why this record matters
The phrase “ecuadorian criminal organization” supplies a clear boundary for inquiry. It also exposes the unanswered questions: who defined that boundary, when it became stable and which sources sit outside it.
Chronology, provenance and viewpoint should be read together before a broad social or political interpretation is accepted. The source revision retrieved here is dated Sep 23, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q64683234. None of the 1 selected statements returned an explicit reference.
Official terminology may obscure informal participation, dissent or communities documented only indirectly. The lead is largely declarative, so disagreement and counter-evidence require a deliberate search beyond the opening account. Authority statements aid reconciliation but still require their own references, qualifiers and ranks to be checked.
How to read it
Compare institutional narratives with records created by participants and affected communities. Dates and formal titles are useful anchors, but not substitutes for context.
- Event chronology
- Institutional context
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Contemporary correspondence, government or organizational records, oral histories and cited historical scholarship.
Three-step research path
- Establish the record: confirm the title “Los Choneros”, its source revision and the description used here.
- Expand the search: follow Los Choneros primary sources, Los Choneros archive and Choneros research across catalogues and specialist indexes.
- Test the account: compare the strongest cited source with the responsible institution’s current record and note any disagreement.
Questions for further research
- Which source most directly establishes the central claim about “Los Choneros”?
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- Who created the surviving record, and for what administrative purpose?
Search terms from this dossier
This entry incorporates text from “Los Choneros” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.