Through the window you can see the sunrise, today with a dull echo. Memory replicates the sound of those shots over and over.

On Wednesday, Fernando Villavicencio, journalist and activist, candidate for president of Ecuador, was killed.

Social networks demand justice and a firm hand, along with anger and a certain amount of resignation.

In the previous days, I saw how the candidates looked back on the wave of violence and insecurity that we are experiencing, and I was surprised with how calmly and confidently they all say that they have a solution to implement it in a year and a half. After so many elections, there seems to be nothing left but those promises disguised as a glimmer of hope. I feel that we are a country that is used to surviving on promises, in a vicious circle of change proposals, where in the end things never change, because we don’t change ourselves.

Campaign manager Fernanda Villavicencia asks the National Electoral Council to postpone the presidential debate scheduled for Sunday, August 13

Without ideologies, organizations or political parties with solid and clear structures, it is very difficult to maintain continuity with the long-term state project. Thus, in every election, individuals seeking power appear with the shirt that fits them best and a bag of short-term and pre-election promises.

Ecuador will not change like this, it will change when the culture of the people changes.

A few days ago, a video of a politician threatening to kill some people was published, along with phrases charged with enormous violence, and then the same character announced his apologies with the words: “I behaved like any child whose parents were hurt” That’s Culture. Believing that we are all like that.

An FBI delegation will arrive in the country because of the assassination of candidate Fernando Villavicencio, President Guillermo Lasso announced

The culture is also that nothing happens after that video, and these acts are normalized.

Culture has to do with the way of thinking and acting, with defining common values ​​that enable us to build a better society. Agree on what kind of country we want and commit to working towards it. But such speech is very unsexy for an election campaign.

Culture has to do with the way of thinking and acting, with defining common values ​​that allow us to build…

A clean slate works better. The Messiah who comes to reveal himself as a savior in this state that has proven to be ungovernable, because there is no agreement, because private interests prevail.

So all that remains is to investigate and denounce, as Villavicencio did, with a different kind of hope.

Yesterday that Fernando was killed. I remember him telling me one day that when he was barely 10 years old, he had to emigrate to the city because of the rural crisis of the late 1960s and combine his studies with work in restaurants, mechanics and couriers. His escape was poetry, especially sad poets, among them the Salvadoran Roque Dalton. A poet and activist who was accidentally killed for thinking differently.

Today, in this quiet dawn, I leave here, in memory of Fernando, a few lines from Dalton’s poem, Hour of Ashes: “When I die, only my palpable morning joy will be remembered, my banner without the right to fatigue, the concrete truth I spread from of fire, the fist I made in unison with the roar of the stone that hope demanded. (OR)