"Ecuador at war - The gradual penetration of organized crime", is a work written in the narrative-journalistic genre, which addresses the insertion of narco-criminal activities in the Andean nation. It marks the dates, actors and events that are decisive for understanding the current crisis of insecurity and violence, in which the country is currently immersed. The text follows a methodological framework, proposed by American authors Stier and Richards (1987) in their text “Strategic Decision Making in Organized Crime Control: The Need for a Broadened Perspective”, to better study the phenomenon of organized crime. It establishes three phases in which Transnational Organized Crime groups penetrate States: the predatory phase, the parasitic phase and the symbiotic phase. The book grounds these phases in the historical and conjunctural reality of Ecuador. Thus, the predatory phase, in Ecuador, would have begun at the end of the 80s and continued until the mid-2000s. In this stage, among others, the birth of the first criminal gangs, the political instability of the 90s, the first wave of migration and the dollarization of the Ecuadorian economy. The parasitic period, on the other hand, would have started from the mid-2000s to 2018 and events such as the apparent relations of the Colombian guerrilla with Ecuadorian political actors are analyzed; the departure and real impact of the US Manta Base; the new security regulatory framework and the public policies adopted on the matter. The symbiotic phase would have started in 2018 and would be present until today. It studies the first terrorist attacks carried out by Colombian dissidents on the northern Ecuadorian border; Covid and the geometric escalation of violence; prison massacres, as a sign of state weakness; the symbiosis, total? expressed through the cases of León de Troya and Metastasis; as well as the declaration of internal armed conflict. The work ends with strategic proposals to confront the progressive penetration of organized crime. In this context, the book constitutes a contribution to the phenomenological and comprehensive understanding of organized crime, its penetration into the Ecuadorian State and its devastating effects on the social, political and economic life of the country.