José Luis Cevallos and José Armando Cevallos

On 14 October 2026 José Luis began to feel unwell, with vomiting and urinary tract problems. The family at first suspected a viral illness, but as his condition worsened he was taken to hospital. According to the family friend Fernando Carrillo, who was with them in Colombia and spoke to Y Ahora Sonsoles, José Luis suffered a cardiorespiratory arrest and was stabilised, but a short time later José Armando suffered a heart attack, and both brothers died. They died in the early hours of 15 October 2026, aged 27, in a hospital in Zipaquirá, north of Bogotá, according to El Universo and the Ecuadorian foreign ministry; some outlets placed the hospital in Cali.

Their brother Damián Cevallos told the radio station La Voz de Milagro that the family received the news at about 3 a.m. The twins' team confirmed the deaths in a statement on their Instagram account the same day. Carrillo said a doctor had mentioned a possible kidney infection, but no official cause of death had been made public, and Colombia's National Institute of Legal Medicine was carrying out autopsies.

Ecuador's Ministry of Foreign Affairs instructed its consulate general in Bogotá to assist the family with the medico-legal procedures and repatriation. The family said it would cover the costs with the help of friends, and the brothers were to be taken home to Milagro to be laid to rest.

José Luis and José Armando Cevallos Herrera were born on 8 September 1999 in Milagro, in Ecuador's Guayas province. They were joined at the abdomen and pelvis and shared organs including the liver and intestine, as well as a single pair of legs, although each had his own heart. Doctors gave the family a limited life expectancy for them. Surgical separation was evaluated when they were children, but the risks were judged too high and the family decided against it.

The family lived in the Las Piñas area of Milagro, and the boys had an older brother, Damián. Their story was followed by the Ecuadorian press from their earliest years. In January 2008 the government of the time gave the family a house. A year later, interviewed by the newspaper Extra while in the third grade and earning excellent marks, José Armando said he wanted to be a policeman to put thieves in prison and José Luis said he wanted to be a doctor. In March 2009 the National Police named them honorary police officers.

They were supporters of Barcelona SC, and in 2009 the club's goalkeeper Máximo Banguera gave them his gloves. Their first communion in 2011 was widely televised; their godfather was Lenín Moreno, then Vice President of Ecuador. Their fifteenth birthday was celebrated with a formal party in Milagro.

As teenagers the brothers turned to music and tried their hand at urban styles, recording a first single, Ella es soltera, with York el Travieso, a singer from Milagro. A newspaper headline about their rehearsals summed up the project as sharing a body and a flow.

In 2019, aged 19, they went through one of the most serious health crises of their lives: an intestinal problem, a severe ulcer and pneumonia kept them in hospital for about three months, during which they underwent surgery. Once recovering, they said they wanted to study law and defend the rights of people with disabilities, and that they did not want to wait for a degree before starting campaigns to help others. José Armando described it as their way of repaying what people had done for them.

Over the following years they became content creators, sharing everyday scenes, jokes and conversations with followers on TikTok and Instagram, where they posted as the Siameses del Ecuador. International reports said they had more than 800,000 followers on TikTok and about 61,000 on Instagram. They also appeared on television programmes, including the Spanish show Y Ahora Sonsoles, which helped make their story known outside Ecuador.

The brothers had distinct personalities and dreams of their own, and those who knew them stressed that their lives were never reduced to the condition they were born with. Unable to stand, they moved around from childhood on a small wheeled board. The possibility of walking remained one of their great hopes. In April 2026 they travelled to Colombia for rehabilitation therapy aimed at improving their mobility, and a relative said an operation was being planned. On 13 October 2026 they shared a video of themselves practising balance exercises, with José Armando saying they were keeping firm with their exercises for the dream of being able to walk.

For almost three decades the Cevallos brothers grew up in front of the Ecuadorian public, from school interviews and televised family milestones to their music and their online videos. They used that attention to speak openly and with good humour about disability, and to argue for the inclusion of people with disabilities. Their team's farewell statement recalled the phrase that always represented them: where there is a will there is a way, and disability is no obstacle to being happy. Their deaths were reported across Latin America, Spain, Brazil, the United Kingdom and the United States.