2023-08-12 04:00:00
In 2021 it was an assault by retired soldiers on the house of the president of Haiti to assassinate him. In 2023, hitmen from a motorcycle ended the life of an aspirant to power in Ecuador. In two years, Colombian gunmen have exacerbated the crises in other countries in the Americas with bullets.
Ecuadorian Fernando Villavicencio, 59, had just gotten into his truck at the end of a political rally on Wednesday when the attackers opened fire. Three bullets entered through a window and hit his head, according to witnesses.
Former assemblyman and journalist dedicated to scrutinizing corruption networks, the centrist candidate died 11 days before the August 20 elections.
One of the alleged assassins died following an exchange of bullets with the security team and six others were captured. According to the police, they are all Colombian nationals. In a raid they found a rifle, a machine gun, grenades and hundreds of ammunition.
Some of the detainees were seen stained with blood, in a photograph similar to those released by the Haitian authorities in July 2021.
Then there were 17 ex-soldiers who entered the personal residence of President Jovenel Moise and killed him in front of his wife.
SABOTAGE
Located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two main cocaine producers, Ecuador experienced the first assassination of a presidential candidate in its history within days of electing the successor to Guillermo Lasso.
Investigations point to the genesis of violence with the entry of cocaine mainly through the Colombian-Ecuadorian border, which then leaves from the Pacific towards the United States and Europe.
Colombian guerrillas and criminals have also entered Ecuador through that door with their modus operandi of terror.
Mantilla explains that gangs in Ecuador dedicated to drug trafficking “acquired their power from working with Colombian organizations and later became independent” and strengthened.
On Thursday, the Minister of the Interior, Juan Zapata, referred to the detainees simply as “foreigners”, although he assured that they are “members of a criminal group” that assassinated Villavicencio in an “attempt to sabotage” the elections.
It has not yet been clarified who ordered the assassination of the politician, who had said he was the target of threats from the Los Choneros drug gang. Lasso blames organized crime. Alleged members of the Los Lobos organization claimed responsibility for the incident in a video that might not be verified.
As revealed by the Colombian press, those captured have a criminal record in their country.
Some had already been convicted of arms manufacturing and trafficking. Others have a history of theft, drug trafficking, homicide or domestic violence, according to an investigation by the newscast Noticias Caracol.
SICARIAL MODEL
For Mantilla, the homicide that horrified Ecuador, added to the assassination of the president of Haiti in 2021, shows “the specialization that Colombian crime has had in the use of violence”, product of the six-decade armed conflict between guerrillas, paramilitaries, drug traffickers and the public force, whose members are coveted throughout the world for their experience.
Before Moise’s death, the presence of retired Colombian soldiers in Yemen, Syria, Iraq, Afghanistan or the United Arab Emirates was known.
There they protected constructions for controversial security firms such as the dissolved American Blackwater. Some call them mercenaries.
At present, the 17 detainees in Haiti remain behind bars without the masterminds of the assassination being known. Another tried to escape, but was captured in Jamaica and extradited to the United States.
Moise’s death aggravated the social crisis in the impoverished Caribbean country, also mired in gang violence.
The Venezuelan president, Nicolás Maduro, drew attention to the relationship between the two events.
“Unfortunately, these criminal gangs of hit men follow that Colombian model of political assassinations, of hit men, outside the borders,” he said in a message of encouragement to Ecuador.
The Colombian president, Gustavo Petro, assured when he came to power, in August 2022, that his nation had a “responsibility” for the death of Moise, but has remained silent in the case of Villavicencio.
1691835958
#Assassinations #Haiti #Ecuador #tentacles #Colombians #daily #list
