Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was killed at a political rally on Wednesday evening ahead of Ecuador’s August 20 snap presidential elections. A former journalist, Villavicencio was outspoken about combating corruption and organized crime. He was gunned down after speaking to a group of young supporters outside a high school in the capital city of Quito. According to officials, nine other people were shot and the suspected gunman was killed. Six other suspects, all Colombian nationals, were arrested. President Guillermo Lasso attributed the killing to “organized crime” and declared a 60-day state of emergency, later calling on the FBI for help. “This is a political crime that has a terrorist character and we do not doubt that it is an attempt to sabotage the electoral process," said Lasso. Villavivencio was polling in fourth or fifth place among the eight candidates, and was the most vocal about connections between government officials and criminal organizations. His political slogan was “Es tiempo de valientes”—it’s time for the brave. Ecuador has recently faced a surge in drug trafficking and violent crime. Less than a month ago, the mayor of the port city of Manta, Agustín Intriago, was shot dead while inspecting public works. Rider Sánchez, a parliamentary candidate, was assassinated in mid-July in the coastal province of Esmeraldas. While street violence was previously concentrated among gang members, public acts of extortion and intimidation now increasingly involve beheadings, car bombs, and children killed outside their schools. “Electorally speaking, this year is the most violent in our history,” Ecuadorian political scientist Arianna Tanca told The New York Times. “I think that what is going to change is the way we conceive of politics. I think that from now on it becomes a high-risk profession.” In a video statement, Leonidas Iza, leader of the powerful Indigenous movement CONAIE, said: “We cannot allow hate and revenge to be mechanisms for political gain and winning votes. But worse yet we also cannot allow the bullets of organized crime to define the electoral process.” According to an analysis by Pedro Labayen Herrera for the Center for Economic and Policy Research (CEPR), Luisa González of the Revolución Ciudadana movement and her fellow candidates will be “the most politically disadvantaged” by Villavicenio’s killing. CONAIE’s Iza held President Lasso directly responsible for the country’s spiraling violence, citing the government’s dismantling of the state, “ineptitude,” and the “infiltration of the mafia” in security forces. “Mr. Lasso has brought us to a failed state,” Iza said. “Violence comes from the elites, not from the people,” he added, “and we must confront it with strength, unity, and will.” CONAIE has not backed any candidate in the presidential election. In a recent piece for Ojalá, journalist Kimberley Brown reports that the government narrative of criminal groups fighting over drug supply chains is only part of the story of the country's worsening security situation. “Rather,” she writes, “large-scale impunity and corruption, along with a weakened state and social fabric, are major factors that have led Ecuador to this point.” Ecuador was celebrated as recently as 2018 for having one of the lowest crime rates in Latin America. But violent deaths have sky-rocketed in recent years following a series of prison riots, surges in drug and weapons trafficking along the coast and Ecuador’s borders with Colombia and Peru, the intensification of illegal mining and extractivist activities in the Amazon, increasing militarization, and austerity measures first implemented by the neoliberal government of Lenín Moreno and continued by Lasso. Speaking to Ojalá, Maria Fernanda Noboa Gonzalez, Ecuador coordinator for the Network of Women Specialized in Security and Defense in Latin America and the Caribbean, points to the institutionalization of corruption and impunity as a major contributing factor in the country’s worsening security situation. They constitute “two windows that were opened, allowing organized crime to enter,” she said. In April, Lasso authorized civilians to carry firearms in the name of self defense, reversing gun control measures introduced 12 years earlier. CONAIE condemned the move as promoting a “bloodbath,” arguing that easier access to guns would only spur “more violence, criminality, and murders.” Many saw the gun measures as an attempt to distract from the impeachment process then unfolding against the president. In May, Lasso dissolved the legislature through a never-before-used constitutional clause known as the “muerte cruzada” in response to the impeachment proceedings alleging his involvement in the embezzlement of public funds. The mechanism triggered snap elections, which will be held on August 20. If no single candidate wins an outright victory in the first round, a second vote will be held in October. Officials elected in the upcoming elections will only serve for the remainder of the current term, until May of 2025. |
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