Ernesto Hernandez Norzagaray *

The murder of Fernando Villavicencio, who was the candidate of the Construye movement to win the presidential elections in Ecuador, is reminiscent of the murders of the Colombian presidential candidates Luis Carlos Galán in 1989 and Carlos Pizarro Leongómez in 1990, and the Mexican Luis Donald Colosio in 1994. All these crimes are allegedly involved drug cartels.

This new murder has raised alarm among all those who want to preserve fragile Latin American democracies. But this already seen It brings us back to a problem that has been threatening the validity of the state and its institutions in some countries of the region for decades with its correlate of violence and death.

Members of the Assembly elected from the Construye movement ask ten questions about the murder of Fernando Villavicencio, which happened almost a month ago

Ecuador, which ten years ago was only a transit point for drugs, has become a country of “storage, processing and distribution”. This entails the configuration of local franchises that suit the interests of the Mexican cartels, which the United States Government considers to be among the most powerful in the world.

In July, DEA Assistant Administrator Georges Papadopoulos released the document. Protecting the United States Homeland: Combating Flows from the Southwest Border. There he realizes the size and power of the Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels through a network of franchises and criminal alliances on a global scale.

As for the Sinaloa cartel, he points out that this organization has more than 26,000 members, associates, helpers and affiliate brokers in about a hundred countries. Meanwhile, Jalisco Nueva Generación has more than 18,800 members and close friends, and also operates in more than 100 countries. These figures contrast with those of the DEA, which operates in only 69 countries and has about 9,000 employees.

Legacy of Villavicencio

In addition, the International Maritime Center for Combating Drug Trafficking, Colombia, prepared in 2021 a map of five drug trafficking routes documenting the passage of drugs between Ecuador and the coast of Mexico. A constant in the territories taken over by organized crime is that, in order to optimize their operations and business, it is increasingly important to get hold of the belts of public institutions and political representation at the three levels of government (federation, state and municipality) to have a kind of retaining wall against the political decisions of unfavorable for their interests.

In order to create a parallel state, these organizations resorted to pressure, intimidation and murder of social leaders as well as political leaders who opposed this process of occupying public institutions.

The uncertainty that currently exists in Ecuador was also experienced in Mexico during the simultaneous elections of 2021, when various organized crime groups became a large voter, especially in the states of the Pacific coast, and violently intervened in the selection of candidates, in the election campaigns and on election day. Nearly a hundred leaders, militants and candidates were killed.

According to The first report on political violence in Mexico in 2021from the civil organization Etellekt, From September 7, 2020 to May 30, 2021, there were 782 attacks on politicians and candidates, and among the recorded attacks, 35 candidates for public office were killed. A total of 89 politicians were killed.

These days, when processes are underway in Mexico to define who will be the presidential candidates of the two major coalitions that will compete in 2024, the problem of cartels and their violence has practically been absent from the public debate. And this despite the fact that most Mexicans consider this issue to be their biggest concern.

In short, the assassinations of the Colombian presidential candidates Galán and Pizarro, as well as of the Mexican Colosio, and now of the Ecuadorian Villavicenci (who, by the way, called on President Andrés Manuel López Obrador to take responsibility for the problem) which his country exports), are consequences that those who dare to challenge the power of narcotics suffer. This is why something more than political declarations and statements is needed to stop this scourge. (OR)

* Ernesto Hernández Norzagaray is a professor at the Autonomous University of Sinaloa. Doctor of political science and sociology from the Complutense University in Madrid. He is a member of the National System of Researchers of Mexico.