Ecuador’s terrifying descent into violence and criminality has reached a new low with the assassination in broad daylight of a presidential candidate campaigning on a tough-on-crime and anti-graft platform.
Fernando Villavicencio, a former journalist who had collaborated with the Guardian, was shot and killed in a burst of gunfire on a street in Quito as he left a campaign rally on Wednesday evening. Gunfire broke out as the candidate approached his car, sending supporters screaming and diving for cover.
One suspect in the crime died after a shootout with officers soon after the murder, and six others – reportedly Colombian nationals – have been arrested.
On Thursday, the government said the suspects were all foreign members of organized crime groups, and added that it was pursuing the masterminds of the plot.
The killing has sent shockwaves through the Andean country which is already dealing with a brutal surge in violent crime, as rival drug-trafficking gangs perpetrate prison massacres and brazen attacks in public places, and as murder rates have increased fivefold in as many years.
In a few brief years, Ecuador has gone from being one of the safest countries in Latin America to having one of the highest homicide rates in the region.
Speaking after Villavicencio’s murder, former vice-president Otto Sonnenholzner – another candidate for the presidency – said: “We are dying, drowning in a sea of tears, and we do not deserve to live like this.”
The US government was reported to be sending FBI agents to help Ecuadorian authorities with their investigation. When asked to comment, the state department said: “We stand ready to support local authorities to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice, which is a brazen attack on democracy and the rule of law.”
President Guillermo Lasso said the murder was clearly an attempt to sabotage the 20 August election, but he vowed that voting would go ahead as planned, albeit amid a national state of emergency.
Flanked by cabinet members and electoral authorities, he said: “We agree in the face of the loss of a democrat and a fighter, elections should not be suspended; on the contrary, they should be held and democracy should be strengthened.”
He announced three days of national mourning and a state of emergency, deploying soldiers throughout the country to guard polling stations.
“I want to say to those who want to threaten the state, we will not hand over the power and the democratic institutions to organised crime even though it is disguised as political organisations,” he added.
The brazen assassination marked the latest downward spiral in Ecuador’s crisis as the country’s organised crime gangs – including Mexican cartels and even Balkan mafia factions – battle for control of lucrative cocaine-smuggling routes.
But it also reflected the how crime and politics have become entwined in the country, which sits sandwiched between the world’s two biggest cocaine exporters.
Villavicencio had vowed to root out corruption and expose the links between political players and organized crime.
“My husband was murdered because he was the only one who stood up to the political mafias and drug traffickers in this country,” tweeted his widow, Verónica Sarauz, who was returning to the country from the United States. Villavicencio leaves behind five children.
He had previously reported receiving multiple death threats, including from the jailed leader of the Choneros gang, Jose Adolfo Macías, alias “Fito”, ordering him to stop mentioning his name.
Early on Friday, a video appeared on social media in which black-clad men wearing balaclavas and brandishing assault rifles claimed responsibility for the murder on behalf of a faction called Los Lobos (the Wolves) – rivals of Los Choneros.
But hours later, another video appeared online in which another group of men - this time unmasked and wearing white – claimed they were Los Lobos and denied any a role in the assassination. Neither video could be verified.
Carlos Larrea, a professor at Quito’s Simón Bolívar Andean University, said the murder marked a “huge escalation in the magnitude” of the Ecuadorian crisis, in which armed groups have been accused of unleashing a campaign of terror.
“There is a penetration of illegal groups into the political parties and local governments and this was shown by the assassination of Villavicencio,” he told the Guardian.
Larrea compared Ecuador’s current conditions to the rampant violence experienced by Colombia in the 1980s and Mexico since the 1990s, when organized crime groups – often linked to powerful political interests – waged open warfare against each other and the state.
In the first half of this year, Ecuador has seen 3,500 violent deaths, with nearly half occurring in the largest city, Guayaquil. It has also been the scene of a string of horrific prison riots.
And as the violence has raged, Ecuador’s political system has been largely paralysed by infighting. The current elections were called by President Lasso earlier this year to head off a looming impeachment bid by a hostile congress.
Villavicencio was reported to have had three rings of security, but Larrea said the candidate was always at risk because security forces remain utterly unprepared for the scale of the violence they are facing.
He said: “He was a very vulnerable person. Nobody expected an assassination like this – and nobody was ready for the Ecuadorian state’s absolute incapacity to prevent it.”
Additional reporting by Julian Borger
