The brutal murder of a young nurse in Quito, who was dismembered after she was killed, reaches the highest levels of horror. It is to be hoped that the act will be punished most severely, and not that, using the subterfuges created by the insane legislation that reigns in our country, they will go free and avoid punishment. The fact that murderers attack the corpse of their victim in order to divide it into pieces has become common throughout the world. Such cases are known in Spain and other European countries, and they are incredibly frequent in Mexico and Argentina. They are no longer rare in Ecuador, especially if we consider decapitators, whose broken heads appear on roads and fields in many provinces. This savage behavior is spreading and becoming frequent, not only does it not diminish the importance of each event, but it multiplies its threat and hatred, because it warns us that we are all exposed to this crime that is spreading like a diabolical epidemic.

The dismembered body of a woman appeared in Quito

In the five decades that I lived in the 20th century, I remember only one case in Quito that shook the then Franciscan city when a headless and dismembered trunk was abandoned right in the Plaza de San Francisco. But it cannot be said that such an abnormal procedure has appeared in modern times, in which, for some, “sin and corruption are as widespread as ever.” Let’s just think that during the Colony, the limbs and heads were amputated for most of those convicted for various crimes, after the execution with the garrote (which consisted of a form of hanging), the remains of which were laid in the entrance roads to the city as a grim lesson. This happened, among many others, to the patriotic couple Rosa Zárate and Nicolás de la Peña. There is no crime that was not once committed by the state.

Mexican prosecutors found more than 30 dismembered and frozen bodies in houses in the state of Veracruz

This relationship between brutal legal practice and sadistic criminal methods is no coincidence. The purpose of both is to show the strength that is capable of crossing any ethical and moral barrier. His goal is to terrorize those who oppose his purpose, this goes for criminal states, big mafias and even the lone criminal who also sends a message to his likely victims: if you resist, you will end up in pieces. Perhaps the current wave has its origins in the bloody practice established by drug-trafficking mafias. They are proto-governments who want to display unparalleled power, “without limits”, so that the authority of the State fades before them and finally breaks. If cruel brutality multiplies and becomes a habit, the most insignificant abuser believes that he is “authorized” to fragment the remains of his victim, because exposed to the prevailing butchery barbarism, any other procedure will seem weak and insufficient. Violence is always a spiral, a vortex, which never stops growing and deepening. It seems that the only way to stop it was to restore the state’s monopoly on the use of force, within the framework of the law, with determined leaders fully aware of their legitimacy. (OR)