Six Colombian men were arrested Thursday in connection with a deadly shooting in Ecuador's capital Quito on Wednesday that killed presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio after a campaign rally.
Although he was not a front-runner in the campaign, his assassination in broad daylight less than two weeks before the special presidential election underscores the tremendous challenge Ecuador's next leader will face in any attempt to rein in gangs and criminals. cartels, whose activities have claimed thousands of lives.
An arrest report to which the AP agency was able to access reveals that the men were captured when they were hiding in a house in Quito. Law enforcement officers, according to the report, seized four shotguns, a 5.56mm rifle, ammunition and three grenades, as well as a vehicle and a motorcycle.
Ecuador's Interior Minister Juan Zapata described the assassination as a "political crime of a terrorist nature" aimed at sabotaging the August 20 elections.
The police report does not say whether the Colombians are members of a criminal group. But Zapata, who confirmed the arrests of some foreigners without giving their nationalities, said the suspects were linked to organized crime.
Villavicencio, 59, had reported before his murder that he had been threatened by affiliates of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel, one of the large number of international organized crime groups now operating in Ecuador. The assassinated politician assured that his campaign represented a threat to those groups.
“The Ecuadorian people are crying and Ecuador is mortally wounded,” said Patricio Zuquilanda, Villavicencio's campaign adviser.
With some 400 miles of Pacific coastline, shipping ports and some key exports, international traffickers have turned Ecuador from a minor player in the drug trade to a major regional hub for cocaine smuggling.
An escalating struggle for power and territory since the pandemic has seen drug cartels battle each other and recruit local gangs and even children, sparking unprecedented violence.
"Ecuador has the geographic misfortune of being between Colombia and Peru, the two largest cocaine producers in the world, and behind all this there is a certain degree of institutional weakness in the judiciary, police and military," said Cynthia Arnson, a researcher at the Wilson Center based in Washington and an expert in Latin America.
Arnson added that the killings demonstrate that "criminal actors most likely connected to organized crime in Ecuador feel they can act with impunity, even going so far as to assassinate an anti-corruption political candidate."
The country's National Police recorded 3,568 violent deaths in the first six months of this year, many more than the 2,042 reported during the same period in 2022. That year ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the highest number in the country's history and the double the total in 2021.
Last month, the mayor of the port city of Manta was shot dead. President Guillermo Lasso then declared a state of emergency covering two provinces and the country's prison system in an effort to stop the violence.
Video of the political rally posted on social media shows Villavicencio leaving surrounded by security guards. He is then seen getting into a white van before gunshots are heard, followed by screaming and commotion around the van.
Zuquilanda said Villavicencio had received at least three death threats before the shooting and reported them to authorities, which resulted in an arrest.
President Lasso said that the candidate's assassins threw a grenade into the street to cover his escape, but it did not explode. Police later destroyed the grenade with a controlled explosion. The president declared three days of national mourning and a state of emergency that implies the deployment of additional military personnel throughout the country.
Villavicencio, one of the eight candidates for the presidency, was the candidate of the Let's Build Ecuador Movement. In his final speech before he was assassinated, Villavicencio promised a crowd that he would fight corruption, including among police forces, and jail more criminals. “Here I am showing my face. I am not afraid of them, ”Villavicencio said before his death, naming the detained crime boss José Adolfo Macías, alias“ Fito ”.
Villavicencio's security detail included police officers and private security guards.
Villavicencio was a freelance journalist who investigated corruption in previous governments before entering politics as an anti-corruption activist. He was one of the most critical voices in the country with the government of President Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
The murdered candidate, who was married and survived by five children, filed many legal complaints against high-ranking members of the Correa government, including the former president himself. He was sentenced to 18 months in prison for defamation for his criticism of Correa and fled to indigenous territory in Ecuador, later receiving asylum in neighboring Peru.
One of Villavicencio's investigations led to criminal prosecution and an eight-year prison sentence on corruption charges against Correa. The former president, who moved to Belgium in 2017, was sentenced in absentia in April 2020.
Edison Romo, a former military intelligence colonel, said the anti-corruption allegations made Villavicencio "a threat to international criminal organizations."
Arnson claims that Villavicencio's murder could have a chilling effect on the upcoming elections. “It is a message to Ecuadorian society as a whole that those who try to confront this type of corruption and illegality can pay with their lives,” she says.
