“Ecuador has become a Failed state“. With these words, former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa denounced the murder of Fernando Villavicencio, candidate for the Presidency of the South American country, shot dead just ten days before the elections. At the exit of a meeting in the center of Quito, the capital, Villavicencio was shot several times, causing his death.

Journalist by profession, Fernando Alcibiades Villavicencio Valencia He was born on October 11, 1963 in Alausí (Ecuador) and his life has passed between communication and trade unionismbefore entering politics. With a degree in Journalism and Social Communication from the Universidad Cooperativa de Colombia, in 1995 he founded the indigenous Pachakutik Plurinational Unity Movement (MUPP-18), whose purpose is to represent the interests of the indigenous movement independently, without being linked to any party. In 1996 he worked at Petroecuador as a journalist and later as a trade unionist, although he ended up being fired during the government of Jamil Mahuad.

For a while, he combined his work as a journalist for ‘El Universo’ and the magazine ‘Vanguardia’ and as a leader of the Coordinadora de Movimientos Sociales. Villavicencio was the founder of the Research Portal, through which denounced cases of corruption in which different politicians were involved, although this portal has been harshly questioned for its impartiality and Villavicencio himself, described as a “mercenary”.

The persecution of Villavicencio against Rafael Correa

After the 2010 political crisis in Ecuador, which was born as a police protest against a salary reform and which Correa defined as an attempted coup, Villavicencio accused the then president of being the main person responsible for the armed incursion into the Police Hospital, which resulted in a dozen of deaths. Villavicencio’s lawsuit was dismissed and the journalist was ordered to pay compensation of more than 44,000 dollars to former President Correa and sentenced to 18 months in prison.

Shortly after, Villavicencio published ‘The Chevron file’, a report in which he exposed a possible conflict of interest between the Government and the oil company, which is why he was investigated for alleged espionage against the now former president. In 2014, and without having served his sentence, Villavicencio fled and hid in indigenous territory from Ecuador. Sheltered by the Sarayaku community, in the Ecuadorian jungle of Puyo, Villavicencio hid along with Cléver Jiménez and Carlos Figueroa, the other two people who were convicted of slander against Correa.

His leap into politics and more than one death threat

In 2017, he tried to present himself as a candidate for the Alianza por el Cambio elections, although the Ecuadorian Electoral Board prevented him from doing so after the politician Gustavo Baroja challenged his candidacy due to his affiliation with the MUPP-18. After this he was forced to request asylum in Perualthough in 2018 he was able to return to Ecuador after being declared innocent.

The following year, he denounced the existence of an alleged use of special intelligence expenses for the security of Julian Assange and also that of an alleged pact between the Correa government and the person responsible for the WikiLeaks leak so that documents would not come to light. on corruption during the Executive of Rafael Correa.

In 2021, Villavicencio became an assembly member for Alianza Honesty. In 2022 he was the victim of an attack, when two people shot four times at his family home. Days before, Villavicencio had denounced the alleged links of “correísmo” with drug trafficking and organized crime in Ecuador.

Weeks before his murder, Villavicencio had denounced having been victim of death threats, by the leader of Los Choneros, José Adolfo Macías Villama, alias ‘Fito’. Los Choneros is an Ecuadorian gang linked to drug trafficking and with a close relationship with the Mexican Sinaloa cartel. “A leader from Manabí was visited by several emissaries of alias ‘Fito’ to tell him that if I keep mentioning the name ‘Fito’ and Los Choneros, they are going to break me,” Villavicencio said days before he was assassinated. “My decision was continue with the electoral campaign and yesterday another threat occurred, two threats, from a phone whose code is domiciled in Indonesia and which has the profile picture of ‘Fito’,” he added then, according to local press reports.