2023-08-12 06:27:50
Murders and attacks once morest people with public profiles are becoming more frequent in Ecuador. (REUTERS/Karen Toro/File Photo)
The assassination perpetrated once morest Fernando Villavicencio, who was running for the Presidency of Ecuador, is one of the highest peaks of violence faced by Ecuador. During the last two years, Ecuadorians have witnessed more than ten prison massacres, hitmen, extortion and other types of crimes. Threats, attacks, and assassinations of politicians, officials, and journalists have become frequent.
The National Police in its assessment of drug trafficking in the country, published in July of this year, noted that “the struggle for power of the illicit economies has instituted a culture of violence, reflected in the operational modes and disputes between local organizations.” Police figures indicated that, on average, 8 out of 10 violent deaths in Guayaquil, Durán and Samborondón, cities with access to the country’s most important ports through which drugs are shipped abroad, are related to drug trafficking.
In addition, violence is also present in prisons. The prisons are not under state control but are run by local gangs that, despite the fact that their leaders are incarcerated, operate behind bars. The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights as well as the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights have urged the Ecuadorian government to regain control of prisons and to reform the penal code with a less punitive approach.
Violent deaths in Ecuador doubled in the last year. (REUTERS/Santiago Arcos)
The Police have also warned that the alliances of local gangs with cartels and foreign mafias have affected the local criminal culture. Three transnational criminal groups operate in Ecuador: the Mexican Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generación cartels, as well as the Balkan mafia.
In the midst of this scenario, there have been intimidations, threats and murders once morest public figures. Only this year there have been five assassinations of politicians, three of public servants. In addition, five journalists left the country because they received threats linked to mafias and groups related to drug trafficking.
This is a recount of the most important cases of the last year that demonstrate the increase in drug violence and organized crime in the country.
Fernando Villavicencio was an Ecuadorian politician, journalist and trade unionist. (Rodrigo Buendía/La Nacion Via Zu / Dpa)
The assassination shocked Ecuador and the world. The politician who aspired to reach Carondelet in the upcoming elections on August 20 was leaving a campaign event when hitmen fired at him. Villavicencio, 59, was shot three times in the head, which ended his life. The murder happened on August 9 in Quito, the capital of the country.
Investigations into this case are still ongoing. However, the Police carried out two operations during the night of August 9 and early on the 10th and managed to capture six suspects, all Colombian nationals. One of the suspects who was apprehended at the crime scene died.
Villavicencio was a trade unionist, journalist and politician. During his life, he carried out more than 200 investigations that revealed acts of corruption of Ecuadorian and regional politicians. For example, his work called Arroz Verde, carried out together with his friend, the journalist Christian Zurita, was key to the opening of the process that resulted in the conviction of former president Rafael Correa and other correísmo officials. Villavicencio investigated the plot of Álex Saab, alleged figurehead of Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro, in which he also linked former Colombian senator Piedad Córdoba. Likewise, he denounced irregularities in the payments of the debt that Ecuador maintains with China and in the construction of a hydroelectric plant by a Chinese company.
Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was shot dead following holding a rally in Quito on Wednesday, several national media reported.
During the presidential campaign, Villavicencio denounced the threats he received from Los Choneros and their leader, alias Fito. This mega criminal group has been linked to the Sinaloa cartel. Los Choneros are one of the oldest criminal groups in the country and, according to the police, they operate logistically with foreign mafias for drug trafficking.
Villavicencio’s widow, Verónica Sarauz, in various statements said she suspected that correísmo may be behind her husband’s crime, since “they have ties to criminal gangs in this country. Gangs that have taken over entire provinces, drug gangs.”
He was one of the most popular mayors in the country. Agustín Intriago, 38, led the Municipality of Manta, in Manabí, a coastal town in Ecuador where gangs related to drug trafficking operate. On July 23, while Intriago was taking a tour of one of the city’s neighborhoods, he was assassinated by hitmen.
The mayor of the coastal city of Manta, Agustín Intriago, assassinated on Sunday, July 24, 2023.
Intriago had already denounced that he was the victim of threats for which he had police custody. The mayor’s security agents responded to the attack and managed to detain the driver of the vehicle. The shooter fled.
The city of Manta is located 260 kilometers southwest of the capital, in the province of Manabí. According to information from the authorities, it has been detected that the coasts of Manabí are routes for drug traffickers who move large drug shipments to destinations in other parts of America and Europe, mainly. On a tour of one of the fishing villages in this province, Infobae showed that artisanal fishermen try to survive among robberies, extortion and the dangerous temptation to traffic.
The candidate for legislator, for the Avanza-SUMA alliance that promotes the candidacy of former Vice President Otto Sonnenholzner for the Presidency, died following being shot three times while driving in his car in Quinindé, Esmeraldas.
Rider Sánchez, politician assassinated in Ecuador
Although the motives for the crime are still being investigated, the first hypotheses would indicate that it was a common act of violence. However, in Esmeraldas, the province located on the northern border of Ecuador, the highest rates of deaths per 100,000 inhabitants of the country are maintained and it is the place of operations of drug trafficking and guerrilla groups. This jurisdiction is the gateway for cocaine from the clandestine laboratories of Colombia to the ports of Ecuador.
According to Police data, Esmeraldas has “a rate of 63.03 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants; manifesting problems such as social inequality with high levels of poverty, which is aggravated due to its geographical location which has a land and maritime border with the productive enclaves of Nariño and Putumayo, which concentrate 62% of the coca production in Colombia”.
In February 2023, Ecuadorians elected municipal authorities. The electoral campaign of the candidates for local positions had more than a dozen attacks on politicians or their close circles and there was also the murder of the mayoral candidates Omar Menéndez and Julio César Farachio.
Omar Menéndez was shot one day before the February 2023 elections.
Julio César Farachio was taking a tour as part of his campaign events when a hitman shot him and ended his life. Farachio was seeking the mayoralty of Salinas in a partisan alliance made up of the Sociedad Patriotica, Mover and Unidad Popular parties. The assassination took place in January of this year, 15 days before the elections. Farachio, 45, practiced as a lawyer in cases of traffic violations, criminal and labor cases. He had no criminal record, but he did have nine pending legal proceedings with creditors.
The mayoral candidate for the coastal city of Puerto López, in the province of Manabí, Omar Menéndez was assassinated one day before the elections. Menéndez belonged to the Revolución Ciudadana movement, close to former President Rafael Correa. During the campaign, Menéndez had denounced a persecution once morest his family business linked to the telecommunications sector.
In January of this year, Javier Pincay, who was the winner and is now the mayor of Portoviejo, also in Manabí, was attacked while he was a candidate by hit men and was shot three times while on a political tour. Although he survived, the candidate was in critical condition. One day following the assassination attempt, an explosive detonated near one of the vehicles that Pincay used to tour the city. According to local media, near the explosion, the attackers left pamphlets with the message: “Javier Pincay, I told you, you don’t play with drug dealers’ money.”
One of the two pamphlets threatening one of the candidates for mayor of Portoviejo, Manabí, Ecuador.
On May 15, one day following taking office, the mayor of Durán, Luis Chonillo, was the victim of an armed attack while on his way to the Municipality. Five people were injured, including two police officers who were serving as security. Chonillo managed to survive.
On August 10, less than 24 hours following the assassination of Villavicencio, two subjects aboard a motorcycle shot at the candidate for legislator for a left-wing coalition, Estefany Puente, who was accompanied by two people: her father and a campaign partner. The attack occurred in the El Club de Leones sector of the 24 de Mayo parish, in the province of Los Ríos, on the Ecuadorian coast. The shots only grazed the candidate’s arm.
The administrative director of the Teodoro Maldonado Carbo hospital of the Ecuadorian Institute of Social Security (IESS), Nathaly López, was riddled with bullets on the night of Tuesday, March 28 in Guayaquil. The 35-year-old woman was driving in her car following the workday when she was intercepted by subjects who were traveling on a motorcycle and who fired multiple times at her vehicle. According to WLaRadio, on March 6 of this year, the official López asked the hospital’s Human Talent coordinator to execute the disciplinary regime to punish those responsible for the shortage of medicines.
The murder of Nathaly López, who was working as the administrative director of a hospital in Guayaquil, was the third attack in March 2023 once morest public officials.
When López was assassinated, the Andean parliamentarian, Cristina Reyes, wrote on her social networks that López “is one more victim of the mafia entrenched in the Health System.” During the most critical months of the coronavirus pandemic in 2020, the Teodoro Maldonado Carbo hospital was the scene of serious allegations of corruption in the public hospital system that included overpriced purchases. Some of those involved in this plot have links to drug trafficking and organized crime.
On April 13 of this year, three prison officers were killed by hitmen. This triple murder is part of a series of organized crime attacks once morest the staff of the Comprehensive Care Service, the entity in charge of the country’s prisons. Earlier, in March 2023, the directors of the Guayaquil and Esmeraldas women’s prisons were victims of armed attacks but managed to survive.
In December 2022, Ecuadorian National Police Colonel on passive duty, Santiago Loza, director of the Quito prison, was assassinated on his way to work. Loza performed his duties in a prison that is controlled by the Los Lobos criminal gang, linked to the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel. During Loza’s short administration, several members of Los Lobos were transferred to other prisons, which caused the eleventh prison massacre to take place in the prison where Loza was in charge.
Santiago Loza was going to work when two subjects shot him. (Ecuador Check)
Recently, on July 28, Major Christian Granizo, police chief of the Samborondón district, and Corporal Christian Enríquez, his aide-de-camp, were assassinated. Three subjects on a motorcycle intercepted them when both policemen were having breakfast in a tourist sector. On August 3 of this year, the general director of Planning, Ordering and Land of the Municipality of Durán, Miguel Santos, was assassinated. Just a few weeks before, Luis Chonillo, mayor of that municipality, revealed that all the municipal directors of Durán have received death threats. The murders occurred during the State of Exception that Guillermo Lasso decreed following the last prison massacre on July 23.
In Ecuador there are other cases of violent deaths that have not been clarified and that might be related to organized crime entrenched in politics and public institutions. Some of these are: the assassination of General Jorge Gabela, who denounced the irregular purchase of Indian helicopters; the death of police officer César Coronel Olivo, who reportedly uncovered a trafficking network led by high-ranking police officers. The murders of Quinto Pazmiño, a political adviser to the Ministry of Economy, under the direction of Ricardo Patiño, a leader close to former President Rafael Correa, have also not been solved; and his wife María Chancay. All these deaths occurred between 2007 and 2017, while Correa was in power.
In March 2018, the most tragic episode of Ecuadorian journalism began. Then the journalistic team of the newspaper El Comercio, made up of the journalist Javier Ortega, the photographer Paúl Rivas and the driver Efraín Segarra, was kidnapped by the Oliver Sinisterra front, a dissident of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). Javier, Paúl and Efraín had to report from Mataje, a town located on the Colombian-Ecuadorian border, in Esmeraldas, one of the provinces historically abandoned by the State and taken over by irregular armed groups and organized crime gangs. Two weeks later, on April 13, then-President Lenín Moreno confirmed his assassination.
March 26, 2023 marked the 5th anniversary of the kidnapping and murder of Javier Ortega, Paúl Rivas and Efraín Segarra, a journalistic team from El Comercio of Ecuador.
That would be the first warning for years to come. This 2023, five journalists have left the country to protect their lives.
The first to do so was Karol Noroña. The journalist covered the prison crisis and reported on local gangs. She left the country, on March 24, to a safe destination, since she received direct threats to her life; This was reported on Tuesday by the digital media GK, of which Noroña is a part. For GK, what happened with her reporter is “one more example of the security crisis and the penetration of drug trafficking in the country that affects all sectors of society.” Noroña had contact with one of her sources, who warned her that the leader of a gang was looking for her to kill her.
One month into Noroña’s forced exile, another journalist, whose identity has not been revealed, also left Ecuador. The Journalists Without Chains Foundation indicated that the journalist received threats for eight months. Journalist Lissette Ormaza, from Majestad Televisión, also left Ecuador following an attack she suffered disguised as a traffic accident.
The journalist Andersson Boscán in an appearance before the legislative commission that was investigating the management of public positions that would involve the closest circle of the President of Ecuador. (Monica Velasquez)
The journalists and husbands, Anderson Boscán and Mónica Velasquez from La Posta, who revealed an alleged corruption scheme in the government of Guillermo Lasso, left the country on July 26 because a group linked to the Albanian mafia had arrived in Ecuador with instructions to attack once morest their lives.
According to Fundamedios, a civil society organization that watches over freedom of expression and of the press in Ecuador and the region, between 2007 and July 2023, a total of 3,808 attacks once morest freedom of expression and of the press have been recorded. In its latest annual report, referring to 2022, Fundamedios warns that since 2018 “journalism is one of the objectives of organized crime.” In addition, last year, the organization indicated, there was a record of the murder of journalists Mike Cabrera, Gerardo Delgado and César Vivanco —whose deaths were violent and occurred in circumstances that have not yet been clarified—, as well as the femicide of Johanna Guayguacundo. Added to this are another 7 attacks, 1 disappearance, 4 kidnappings and more than 300 attacks once morest journalists.
Among the most serious cases once morest the press is the unpunished crime of Fausto Valdiviezo, the journalist who investigated the corruption of Rafael Correa. On April 11, 2013, three shots killed the journalist. His case has not yet been clarified, but his family maintains that the government at that time ordered the journalist to be killed. The investigation into the murder of Valdiviezo had contradictory hypotheses and even the Correista authorities tried to link the journalist to drug trafficking.
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