His campaign slogan “It’s time for the brave” alluded to his proposal to fight corruption and organized crime, if he reached the government, purging the security forces.
He had also previously reported threats to his family when shots were fired at his family’s residence in Quito in September of last year.
WHAT IS KNOWN ABOUT THOSE RESPONSIBLE FOR THE ATTACK?
The Prosecutor’s Office reported on Wednesday night, after the murder, that six people were arrested in raids in Quito. On Thursday it was confirmed that the six were of Colombian nationality.
A suspect, apprehended after an exchange of shots with the security forces, later died after being transferred to judicial premises.
The identities of none of those allegedly involved were not released. The Ecuadorian authorities did not provide any information on the lines of investigation or the motives. President Lasso said shortly after the attack that organized crime was behind the attack, though he did not provide any details.
The president published on the social network X, formerly called Twitter, that he requested support from the US FBI in the investigation of Villavicencio’s murder and that the federal agency accepted the request “and in the next few hours a delegation will arrive in the country.”
IS IT THE FIRST DEATH OF A FRONT-LINE POLITICIAN?
In the context of violence that has plagued Ecuador in the last three years and that the government attributes to the fight for territory between gangs related to drug trafficking, the assassination of the presidential candidate is the attack on one of the figures with the greatest public exposure to date. . But not the only one.
On July 23, the mayor of the third largest city in the country, Manta, was also shot to death while on a tour of a crowded neighborhood. Agustín Intriago had been re-elected in the last municipal elections last February and enjoyed great popularity precisely because of his open statements and actions in the fight against crime.
Intriago was one of the eight mayors who, due to security analysis, had a police guard.
During the electoral campaign of those municipal elections, there were at least 15 attacks directed at the then candidates, the majority in the coastal provinces of Manabí and Esmeraldas, where the authorities allude that there is a greater presence of drug trafficking gangs.
Among the attacks, the murder of Julio César Farachio, 45, a candidate in Salinas, a town near Guayaquil, was recorded. He was shot by a hitman during an electoral tour.
IS THERE A CONNECTION BETWEEN POLITICS AND ORGANIZED CRIME?
Politicians and authorities have publicly declared their suspicions for alleged links between the political class and organized crime, but only Villavicencio denounced 21 mayoral candidates in January of this year before the Prosecutor’s Office for alleged links to drug trafficking and claimed to have provided information on financing. who supported the accusation.
The then assemblyman asserted that a large part of Ecuador’s political organizations “are contaminated with resources from criminal structures linked to illegal mining, drug trafficking and corruption.” He said that they do not act in isolation but “are part of the same criminal structure.”
However, no sentence or judicial consequence has been released after the complaint filed.
WHEN AND WHY DID VIOLENCE RISE IN ECUADOR?
Government authorities attribute the violence that began in the prisons, with a simultaneous bloody riot in three prisons in 2021 that left 79 inmates murdered, to the death a year before of Jorge Zambrano, alias “Rasquiña”, leader of the Choneros. His disappearance left a power vacuum that several criminal groups dispute.
Since then, there have been more than a dozen clashes in prisons with 400 prisoners killed. Violence took to the streets, where kidnappings, murders, assassinations, robberies and extortion grew, plunging the population into a climate of fear and lack of protection.
So far in 2023, some 3,600 violent deaths have been registered, while 2022 closed with the highest number in the history of Ecuador with 4,600. It was already double that in 2021, when 2,300 were registered. This escalation contrasts with the figures for 2020, 1,011 murders, and for 2019, with 890.
Drug seizure levels have also increased since 2020 when 128 tons of illegal substances were seized. In 2021, the figure rose to 210 and after a drop to 201 tons in 2022, by 2023 anti-narcotics authorities have said that 122.5 tons of drugs have been seized.
WHAT IS THE CONNECTION WITH MEXICAN CARTELS?
For years, Ecuador has maintained the discourse of being only a transit country on the international drug route, being a neighbor of two large producers, Peru and Colombia.
However, in the last three years violence has skyrocketed in the country with certain attacks such as deaths by hit men, dismemberments or explosions usually attributed to international drug trafficking gangs. In 2022, two bodies appeared hanging and beheaded on the outskirts of Guayaquil.
These actions, both in the streets and within the prison system, have been attributed by the government to the struggle for control of the territory and the distribution of drugs between local gangs, such as the Choneros, the Lobos or the Tiguerones. Authorities link the former to the Mexican Sinaloa cartel and the latter to the Jalisco Nueva Generación cartel.
GOVERNMENT ACTIONS?
Villavicencio’s assassination occurred less than two weeks after a sequence of attacks that led the government to decree a state of emergency in two provinces, Manabí and Los Ríos, and another for the prison system that would allow the military to be mobilized to resume control. prison control.
On Wednesday, President Lasso issued a new exception decree lasting 60 days, this time for the entire national territory.
Since May 2021, when the president came to power, 19 states of emergency have been decreed in a still unsuccessful attempt by the government to stop the wave of violence.
Some of the declarations were national in nature and others focused on the most dangerous areas, especially in the coastal region and in Guayaquil, the city with the highest death rate and where the largest and most dangerous prison in the country is located.
So far in government, three ministers have passed through the Interior portfolio: Alexandra Vela, Patricio Carrillo and Juan Zapata, who is currently in office.
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Associated Press writer Gabriela Molina in Quito contributed to this report.
FOUNTAIN: Associated Press
