2023-08-15 22:36:59
It is Ecuador, but it seems like the Colombia of the years of Pablo Escobar, the drug trafficker who threatened and killed, who sent messages to those who were persecuting his mafia network to the point of telling them that he would raise their dead and kill them again. It is Ecuador, which until 2018 seemed not to be on the world map, because it was a country where nothing happened.
The assassination a few days ago of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, candidate of the Movimiento Construye party and who had denounced having suffered numerous threats from the mafia, was followed on Monday by the assassination of another political leader. This is Pedro Briones, from the Revolución Ciudadana formation, precisely a man loyal to former President Rafael Correa -currently in exile-, who is accused of being behind the death of Villavicencio. The journalist repeatedly pointed to Correa as the cause of all the evils that had sickened the Ecuadorian people.
Related News
As if it were a settling of scores, just five days later, a man faithful to the ideas of correísmo was killed with a couple of shots in the town of Esmeraldas, a port city where the drug trafficking mafia imposes its power. Two hit men on a motorcycle shot him when he was returning to his house and then fled.
Esmeraldas is a dangerous place. In these extraordinary elections, the first fatality was Rider Sánchez, candidate of the Let’s Act coalition for the National Assembly for the constituency of that city. He was shot multiple times while riding in his car. Former Ecuadorian soccer player Frickson Erazo also suffered gang violence at the beginning of the year, when he ran for mayor of the municipality. His house registered two attacks with explosives and his vehicle ended up engulfed in flames.
in context
13.4 million citizens are summoned this Sunday for the presidential elections.
“Turn outrage into courage” Gloria Valencia, mother of Fernando Villavicencio, asked Ecuadorians on Tuesday to turn their “indignation into courage” and vote for the party of her murdered son.
7 Ecuadorian politicians have been assassinated this year by criminal groups.
Judges and prosecutors in the crosshairs Two prosecutors and a judge have also been riddled with gunfire in the past year, along with three prison wardens, two of whom managed to survive being shot.
The country lives in an environment of fear. And the candidates to govern the nation know that the situation is highly dangerous. There is a wave of fear and violence. The end of the electoral campaign is announced armored. Ecuador has passively experienced how in recent years drug trafficking has gained control in the regions less controlled by the Police. And the prevailing feeling is that the mafias are trying to give a definitive ‘narco-coup’ to the State; impose their power on any aspirant to command the country before the polls open this Sunday and thus avoid any intention of the new Executive to implement plans to improve security. Anyone who fights or tries to end his business is sentenced to die.
For the elections, and after the assassination of Villavicencio, there are seven official candidates left, although it is expected that today the electoral commission will certify Christian Zurita as head of the board of Movimiento Construye, as a substitute for the deceased journalist. Jan Topic, from his party called For a country without fear, continues to proclaim his fight against the drug cartels, which from prison continue to dominate crime in the Latin American country. At this time, Ecuador has a population of 31,189 prisoners. It is a figure lower than that of 2020, when 38,146 inmates were counted, but the power of the mafias has not been reduced.
Albanian and Italian mafias
Floral arrangements placed outside the site where presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated, in Quito. AFP
The latest example was offered on Monday by the hundreds of inmates who rioted in the prison where ‘Fito’ was staying, the leader of Los Choneros who threatened the life of the murdered candidate. The prisoner has been transferred to another maximum security prison, among other reasons, to try to cut off his connections with the outside world. Apart from the local micro-cartels, a dozen gangs that normally settle their differences with bullets in the middle of the street or with bombs, the large Albanian and Italian mafias operate in the country, which control part of the cocaine business and its exit by sea to the United States. United and Europe.
With 18 million inhabitants, Ecuador has had governments of all kinds and it is also true that it has survived financial crises, massive protests and even a presidential kidnapping. But he had never had to live in a state of emergency, nor had he had to suspend some civil liberties to try to control the high crime rate in the country. Since Villavicencio’s murder, Lasso has applied the emergency regime and thousands of soldiers and police patrol the streets of the main cities and check vehicles and buildings in search of gang members and weapons.
#mafias #delve #narcocoup #State #Ecuador #political #assassination