Fernando Villavicencio, conservative candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, died at the hands of a gunman who shot him on Wednesday during a rally in Quito.
The polls placed him in the middle of the eight candidates. He had a police escort, like other candidates for the elections on the 20th threatened with death by the drug mafias. Villavicencio, in particular, denounced threats from the Mexican Sinaloa cartel on July 31.
The drug mafias have appropriated the Ecuadorian democracy right on the day of its independence, which was celebrated yesterday.
Former president Rafael Correa, when he lamented the massacre of one of his most important adversaries, declared that “Ecuador is a failed state”.
The acting president, Guillermo Lasso, has decreed 3 days of mourning in memory of Villavicencio and 60 days of state of emergency.
The hitmen had planned the attack well. In addition to the guns, they carried grenades, which they detonated to camouflage their escape. One of them was shot down. Six others were arrested.
Lasso has recognized that it was an attack against the rule of law while he trusts in the deployment of the military to guarantee an orderly vote in the first round on the 20th. The second is scheduled for October 15.
Last year was the most violent in memory. There were 4,500 murders across the country. The rate of violent deaths per 100,000 inhabitants was 25.32, the highest in history. It was also the year in which the police confiscated the most cocaine: 210 tons.
The demand for the drug in the markets of Europe and the United States has skyrocketed. The CrimJust program estimates that in 2021, the latest year for which data is available, global production reached 2,000 tonnes, a record double the amount produced in 2014.
The coca harvests in Colombia and Peru, which are the main producers, have also soared to meet the demand of Europeans and Americans.
Ecuador is a transit country. The drug enters by land and leaves by sea. 300,000 containers pass through the port of Guayaquil every year. The police only manage to check 20% of them.
Violence plagues this city of 3.5 million inhabitants. Car bombs, murders in broad daylight, also of children next to schools, lynchings, beheadings and people hanging from bridges.
Extreme violence terrifies the population. The state of emergency and the presence of the army in the streets is not enough.
As has happened in Mexico and the Central American countries that are also transit points for drugs, the police are very poorly paid. Criminal gangs buy them easily.
Extortion affects police officers just like any other citizen. You have to pay so gangs don’t kill you and you have to look away when they do.
The Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, as well as one of the Balkans known as the Albanians, have allied themselves with street gangs, groups such as Los Tuguerones and Los Choneros, to bring terror to every corner of the big cities.
The prisons are saturated with drug traffickers, but the State has lost control. They rule the mafias, which have turned them into operational bases for illegal businesses.
The Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, an NGO in Guayaquil, has recorded 600 murders in prisons since 2019.
Just five years ago, in 2017, the situation was very different. During his ten-year term, President Rafael Correa used oil profits to fight poverty. Distributive policies boosted health and education. Life improved for millions of Ecuadorians.
The 2016 earthquake, the end of the Correa era due to corruption and the pandemic posed too many obstacles for a democracy in the making.
Ecuador is currently suffering from social and political chaos as a result of the economic crisis and rising inequality. In five years the decline has been enormous. The Government recognizes that only 34% of the population has a regular job. In 2017 it was 50%.
Argentina, Peru and Panama have also suffered from the onslaught of the world economy. The pandemic caused a major decline in economic activity in Latin America. The worst in a century. Despite having only 8% of the world’s population, it had 40% of the deaths from covid.
In Ecuador, the situation has gotten out of hand, as it has also happened in other countries. The Government is at the mercy of macroeconomic currents that it does not control, such as the rise of interest rates in Europe and the United States, which makes it very difficult to service the debt in dollars, or inflation, which has soared due to the war in Ukraine and China’s economic decline.
The drug cartels take advantage of the weakness of the State and the vulnerability of the population to boost their business, especially in the coastal area.
It is difficult to know what Villavicencio would have done if he had come to power. The last conservative governments have not been able to straighten the course of Ecuador. This journalist, a member of parliament in the last legislature, had vehemently denounced corruption and violence.
Villavicencio was 59 years old and had three children. He accused the Administration and various political forces of being allies of drug traffickers. He had promised to fight against them “with the law and with weapons”.
Wednesday’s rally in a school in Quito was announced and police protection was insufficient. The killers were able to plan the coup well. They waited for the event to end before committing the mass murder, in which nine people were injured.
They then released a video in which they attributed the crime to themselves. Hooded men with guns said they belonged to the Los Lobos gang, one of many that make a living from drug trafficking and extortion. They warned that the next on the list of candidates they want to eliminate is Jan Topic, a security expert who, along with Villavicencio, is the one who has spoken out most against the cartels.
