Ecuador assassination marks dramatic turning point for once-secure nation

The 12 shots fired on Wednesday evening, killing an Ecuadorian presidential candidate as he exited a campaign event, marked a dramatic turning point for a nation that a few years ago seemed an island of security in a violent region.

A video of the moments just before the killing of the candidate, Fernando Villavicencio, began circulating online even before his death had been confirmed.

For many Ecuadorians, the shots echoed with a bleak message: their nation was forever changed.

“I feel that it represents a total loss of control for the government,” said Ingrid Ríos, a political scientist in the city of Guayaquil, “and for the citizens, as well.”

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Ecuador, a country of 18 million on South America’s western coast, has survived authoritarian governments, financial crises, mass protests and at least one presidential kidnapping. It has never, however, been shaken by the kind of drug-related warfare that has plagued neighbouring Colombia, unleashing violence that has killed thousands, corroded democracy and turned citizens against one another.

Until now.

Villavicencio, who had worked as a journalist, activist and legislator, was the most outspoken about the link between organised crime and government officials among all the candidates for this month’s election.

Hours after his killing, Ecuadorian president Guillermo Lasso declared a state of emergency, suspending some civil liberties, he said, to help him deal with growing crime. On Thursday, interior minister Juan Zapat said that six suspects arrested in connection with Villavicencio’s killing were all Colombian, adding a new dimension to a storyline that already seemed to be imported from another place.

In the past five years, the narco-trafficking industry has gained extraordinary power in Ecuador, as foreign drug cartels have joined forces with local prison and street gangs. In just a few years, they have transformed entire swathes of the country, extorting businesses, recruiting young people, infiltrating the government and killing those who investigate them.

The similarities to the problems that plagued Colombia in the 1980s and 1990s, as drug lords assumed control of broad parts of the country and infiltrated the government, have become almost impossible for Ecuadorians to ignore.

Some have compared Villavicencio’s killing with that of Luis Carlos Galán, a Colombian presidential candidate gunned down on the campaign trail in 1989. Like Villavicencio, Galán was a harsh critic of drug gangs. His death still reverberates in Colombia as a symbol of the dangers of speaking out against criminal power and of the inability of the state to protect its citizens.

More broadly, Colombia is still grappling with the effects of the drug-trafficking industry, which continues to hold sway over the electoral process and is responsible for the deaths and displacement of thousands of people each year.

On Thursday, mourners gathered outside a morgue in the capital, Quito, where Villavicencio’s body was being held. The air filled with desperate cries.

“They’ve stolen our hero,” said Irina Tejada (48), a teacher, who wept as she spoke. Then, addressing allegedly corrupt politicians, she asked: “Why don’t they side with our people, not with those criminal narcos?”

Villavicencio (59), gained prominence as an opponent of correísmo, the leftist movement of former president Rafael Correa, who served from 2007 to 2017 and still holds political power in Ecuador.

In the days before the assassination, Villavicencio had appeared on television, saying that he had received threats from members of a criminal group called Los Choneros. In an initial threat, he said, representatives of a Choneros leader named Fito visited a member of his team “to tell them that if I keep mentioning Fito’s name, mentioning the Choneros, they’re going to break me. That’s how it was. And my decision was to continue with the electoral campaign.”

Villavicencio’s killing casts a pall on an already-contentious presidential election, which will go on as planned. Luisa González, a Correa-backed candidate, leads the polls.

Yet, because Villavicencio was such a harsh critic of Correa, some Ecuadorians have begun to blame correísta candidates for his death, despite a lack of evidence of their involvement.

“Not a single vote for correísmo,” one woman chanted outside the morgue.

Other voters said they were turning toward Jan Topic, a candidate and former French Foreign Legion soldier whose focus has been taking a hard line on security. Topic has been mirroring the promises of El Salvador’s president, Nayib Bukele, whose tough stance on gangs has helped drive down violence, despite claims of civil rights violations.

Germán Martínez, who was at the morgue where Villavicencio’s body lay, said that after the killing, he had decided to switch his vote to Topic.

“Where are we, as Ecuadorians?” he asked. “We can’t remain with our heads low. We need to fight criminals. We need a strong hand.” – This article originally appeared in the New York Times