Fernando Villavicencio, Ecuador's conservative presidential candidate, died at the hands of a gunman who shot him during a rally in Quito on Wednesday.
The polls placed him in the middle zone of the eight applicants. He had a police escort, like other candidates for the elections on the 20th who had been threatened with death by the drug mafias. Villavicencio, specifically, denounced on July 31 threats from the Mexican Sinaloa cartel.
The drug mafias took over the Ecuadorian democracy right on the day of its independence, which was celebrated yesterday. Former President Rafael Correa, lamenting the assassination of one of his greatest adversaries, stated that "Ecuador is a failed state." The acting president, Guillermo Lasso, decreed three days of mourning in memory of Villavicencio and 60 of a state of emergency.
The hitmen had the attack well planned. In addition to their pistols, they carried grenades, which they detonated to camouflage their flight. One of them was shot down. Six more were arrested.
Lasso recognized that it was an attack against the rule of law while trusting in the military deployment 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 living 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 that the police seized the most cocaine: 210 tons.
The demand for drugs in the markets of Europe and the United States has skyrocketed. The CrimJust program calculates that in 2021, the last year with data, world production reached 2,000 tons, a record that doubles the amount produced in 2014.
Coca harvests in Colombia and Peru, which are the main producers, have also skyrocketed to meet the demand of Europeans and Americans.
Ecuador is a transit country. The drug enters by land and leaves by sea. Through the port of Guayaquil, 300,000 containers transit each year. The police only manage to review 20%.
Violence plagues this city of 3.5 million inhabitants. Car bombs, murders in broad daylight, also of children next to their schools, lynchings, beheadings and hanging people hang from the bridges.
Extreme violence frightens the population. The state of emergency and the presence of the army in the streets are not enough.
Just as it has happened in Mexico or in the Central American countries that are also a transit point for drugs, the forces of order are very poorly paid. Criminal gangs buy them easily.
Extortion affects the police, just like any other citizen. You have to pay so that the gangs don't kill you and you have to look the other way when they do.
The Mexican cartels of Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación, as well as one from the Balkans known as the Albanians, have allied with street gangs, groups like Los Tuguerones and Los Choneros, to bring terror to any corner of the big cities.
Prisons are saturated with drug traffickers, but the state has lost control over them. The mafias rule, which have turned them into operational bases for their illegal businesses.
The Permanent Committee for the Defense of Human Rights, an NGO from Guayaquil, has recorded 600 murders in prisons since 2019.
Just six years ago, in 2017, the situation was very different. During his ten-year term, President Rafael Correa had harnessed the benefits of oil to combat poverty. Distributive policies promoted 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 to a democracy under construction.
Ecuador today suffers social and political chaos as a result of the economic crisis and the rise in 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 the ravages of the world economy. The pandemic caused a major drop in economic activity in Latin America. The worst in a century. Despite having only 8% of the world population, it had 40% of the deaths from covid.
In Ecuador the situation has gotten out of hand, as has also happened in other countries. The Government is at the mercy of macroeconomic currents that it does not control, such as the rise in interest rates in Europe and the United States, which makes it very difficult to service the debt in dollars, or inflation, which has skyrocketed due to the war in Ukraine and China's economic downturn.
Drug cartels take advantage of the weakness of the State and the vulnerability of the population to boost their business.
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 deputy in the last legislature, had denounced corruption and violence, and had done so vehemently.
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 them "with the law and with arms."
Wednesday's rally at a Quito school had been announced and police protection was insufficient. The assassins were able to plan the hit well. They waited for the act to end to commit the assassination, in which nine people were injured.
Then they released a video in which they attribute the crime. Some hooded men with rifles said they belonged to the Los Lobos gang, one of many that live off drug trafficking and extortion. They warned that the next on their list of candidates to eliminate is Jan Topic, a security expert who, along with Villavicencio, is the one who has positioned himself the most against the cartels.
