Alina has a master’s degree and extensive professional training. Even the international recognition that contributes to her career as an expert in Spanish and journalism. Once, at a very young age, he wanted to fly and joined an airline crew to fulfill that dream. Then she wanted to do research, and established herself as an investigative journalist. And with all that accumulated experience, one day he decided to teach and shared his knowledge at several universities, for the benefit of the profession.

But last Tuesday, during an unusual live broadcast forced by budding criminals who wanted to make a manifesto and show off their violent power, Alina was on the ground, gun pointed, where she hosts one of the daily news shows. nationally. Terrified, together with her co-workers, she begged for sanity among the thugs and the police, not to start a massacre with the explosives and ammunition they were brandishing, to let them leave alive and see their children again. After minutes that felt like hours, she and her colleagues managed to leave, shocked.

This is Ecuador where we live. Another way.

Where the bad guys take to the streets to spread terror and the good guys, desperate, have to hide in their homes to avoid being harassed, detained or hit by a stray bullet, as happened to Diego, that father and artist who, desperate, tried to pick up your son from school and take him to safety. He never succeeded.

When did we lose?

The recent Tuesday, the 9th, was the most desperate day this city has experienced since those days in March 2020, when the outbreak of the pandemic caused sudden deaths in the streets of Guayaquil and hundreds more at the doors of hospitals that could no longer provide supplies, causing a general stupor. Already seen.

Now the virus of violence and terror could once again force the population into self-isolation, afraid to even look out the window, as in the worst days of COVID.

live in fear

What to do when you face fear?

“Internal state of war”, announced the new government. “Mafia as military targets” was a complementary order. This means that in urban areas, in our cities, streets, neighborhoods and parks, a fight can happen at any moment that puts us all in danger.

A situation that is difficult to digest, but not to understand, despite the saying that “warned war does not kill”. Warned and warned again, because this social chaos did not arise suddenly, neither yesterday, nor last week. It is the product of the deterioration of national security that began to take the form of social measures from 2008, from Montecristi, in that Constituent Assembly and other actions taken by the Government of the time, which, invoking sovereignty, eliminated the fight against drugs presence of the Base de Blanket; promoted “universal citizenship” that allowed many to settle in the country; or gave legal form to the disbandment of elite police units.

At least fifteen years of maceration required the evil we are experiencing now. Paradoxically, it is fifteen months that the current government has to restrain him. Citizens demand that it be so. (OR)