As cartels and crime syndicates flock to Ecuador for cocaine trade profits, its murder rate has soared, with a TV station assault the crescendo of a week of bloodshed

Political upheaval and street protests, gun battles and floods. José Luis Calderón has seen it all during his 23 years as one of Guayaquil’s top television journalists. Never had the Ecuadorean reporter been the story himself.

That changed just after lunch last Tuesday when the 47-year-old reporter heard shouts and the sound of people running in the corridors of TC Televisión, the channel where he works. “At first … we thought it was a fight,” he remembered. But as the yelling intensified, it became clear it was not.

Calderón had been in the newsroom next to the channel’s studio when the pandemonium began. Sensing something was badly wrong, he bolted into the bathroom with two female workmates and called his brother-in-law. “I just told him: ‘I don’t know what’s happening …… but we’re in an emergency situation. Please call 911. I’m trapped. I’m hiding … My colleagues are in pieces.’”