“Ecuador was afraid to become Venezuela and now it looks like the Colombia of the 1980s”

Violence was a topic on Ecuador’s election agenda, but Wednesday’s assassination of candidate Fernando Villavicencio marks a turning point and is now coloring the entire presidential campaign leading up to the August 20 election.

Villavicencio was shot dead after a rally in Quito just before he got into his truck.

Of all the possible electoral scenarios analysts predicted, this one did not materialize in the pools, despite the exponential increase in violence or Villavicencio’s own speechwho claimed that the country a “narcostate” and publicly claimed to have received death threats from “criminal groups”.

“Villavicencio’s frontality has targeted many involved in organized crime and its major corporations through the state,” Luis Córdova, director of the Research, Order, Conflict and Violence program at the Central University of Mexico, told BBC Mundo. . Ecuador.

According to him, there is a logical order the escalation of violence. If in 2021 the murder rate there was 13 per 100,000 inhabitants, in 2022 that will have risen to 22.6 and due to the trend that the country is experiencing, it is expected to reach 40 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2023.

Although, of course, Wednesday’s isn’t just any murder. comes with message.

“This murder is a political message of disturbance, of fear,” said Pedro Donoso, political analyst and general manager of the consulting firm Icare Inteligencia Comunicacional.

And for Córdova, it “shows not only the influence of drug trafficking, but also of criminal economiesmuch more diverse in the country”.

But while this message is now heard loud and clear, it’s not the first time it’s been heard.

‘Criminals don’t operate alone’

The one in Villavicencio is the last of a series of attacks on politicians of the country that, according to Donoso, began in 2020 with the murder of Patrick Mendozacandidate in the following year’s parliamentary elections.

2023 will be bloodier. In May they attacked Luis Chonillo, mayor of Duran. And just a few weeks ago, they killed Augustine Intriagomayor of Manta, the country’s most valued politician and, according to analysts, with a political projection into the future.

“On the first kill (of Mendoza) I remember thinking the country was out of control. We said we were going to become Venezuela and this no longer applies because We are already the Colombia of the 80s and 90s″, notes Donoso.

The expert refers to the recurring fear message from some political sectors that Ecuador could plunge into a crisis as deep as the one Venezuela has been going through for years, something that has been repeated in election campaigns in many other countries.

On the other hand, according to Donoso, the current violence is similar to what Colombia experienced at the hands of drug traffickers 40 years ago.

The country escalated violently on July 23, when Intriago was shot dead.

“We have not given the murder of the mayor of Manta the political importance it deserves. It is the murder of a representative of the state. That should have told us that we had lost every levelthe papers”.

They are the loudest echoes of a nationwide problem, with a particular reverberation on the coast and a strong focus on Guayaquilthe main harbor and with tentacles on different scales.

“Criminals do not operate alone, they do it together with security agents at all levels,” accuses Luis Córdova.

For this expert security analyst, Villavicencio’s murder is “the product of the clumsy and foolish war on drugs, in which public security continues to be militarized, the infiltration of drug traffickers into state security forces, judges, prosecutors…”.

The factors of the drug

The growing importance of criminal gangs in connection with drug trafficking in Ecuador is due to several factors.

One is the change in the “geopolitics of cocaine” after the 2016 peace agreements in Colombia, which, together with the lack of a common policy with Ecuador in this area, “cause guerrilla fighters and the FARC to enter Ecuador,” says Córdova.

For the analyst, another factor is the institutional and police degradation“the decline of power, the instrumentalization of state security forces and that this allowed extortion networks to privilege certain drug trafficking organizations in exchange for information.”

Between 2013 and 2017, a band known as The Chonerosbut the assassination of its leader, Jorge Luis Zambrano González, alias “Rasquiña”, led to an atomization of the criminal gangs, which influenced the expansion of violence.

“Another reason is the policy of disinvestment and dismantling of the state, where, for example, the budget for prisons is reduced, and this increases violence,” notes Córdova.

“We’re in a murderous ecosystem that facilitates this escalation of criminal violence. There can be no peaceful coexistence in society if state resources are not used for inclusion.”

And finally, he points out that there is currently “an absurd formula in the war on drugs and these gangs, but the streams of black money moving drug traffickers are not being cut off. And if this is not cut, nothing will be solved”.

The consequences in the campaign

Experts agree that it is still early to know how the assassination of one of the candidates will affect the presidential campaign.

“They used to ask me what could radically change everything and I didn’t have the ability to visualize an event like this. But It is certainly a turning point. and the surveys that were until now are useless. This really disrupts everything,” says Donoso.

“Violence is a big voter that is not on the ballot,” he says.

So far, the polls have shown a high degree of indecisiveness, 40%, which can lean to one side of the political spectrum or the other depending on the latest events.

According to the surveys conducted so far, the candidate of the movement of former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) was at the head, Luisa Gonzalez (Citizen Revolution Movement), followed by Otto Shoneholznerwho was vice president in the government of Lenín Moreno, the indigenous candidate Yaku Perezthe late Villavicencio and John subjectbusinessman.

“An act of violence like this in Quito, where they had not experienced acts of violence at this level before, could instill fear in the middle class and reinforce Bukelisten’s proposals because it could position voters to believe that he is an accomplice. candidate. whoever has to win the presidency remains,” says Córdova.

And he alludes to Topic, an outsider of this competition who has given a speech about insecurity in the style of the President of El Salvador, Nayib Bukele.

Analysts are not so clear How can it benefit or harm González.

“Revolución Ciudadana can cleverly build a framing (framework for political messages) where they say that ‘this [la violencia] Correísmo did not happen to us”, Donoso notes.

But he also points out that there is another scenario in which this event could harm them: “Because Fernando Villavicencio was the most radical anticorreísmo.”

We will also have to wait for the candidate to replace Villavicencio, his speech and what he is aiming for.

a scary message

After Villavicencio’s assassination, comparisons arose with that of the presidential candidate Luis Carlos Galan in Colombia in 1989. A vote was called for at his funeral Cesar Gaviriawho later became the winner.

“There are undoubtedly parallels. It also happened during Felipe Calderón’s (Mexico) six-year tenure, when assassinations of politicians increased stratospherically. And there is a logic in this kind of political assassination: that of preventing or causing a change in politics, in values, in the perception of the electorate,” says Córdova.

For Donoso, there is a clear challenge with this “disastrous fact”: understanding the multidimensionality of violence in Ecuador, understood as the decline of society.

Ecuador’s social fabric is broken and violence is the path it takes, because the state does not manage social tensions. That’s where the violence comes in.”

President William Lasso proclaimed 3 days of mourning for the murder of Villavicencio, but kept the date of August 20 for the elections.

Donoso believes that the campaign should not stop: “The reaction of the State it can’t be the standstill. This cannot change the course of democracy. To do this is to agree with the violent”.