The Gaspar de Villarroel de Quito sector, in the financial heart of the capital of Ecuador, woke up this Thursday paralyzed by fear. Several merchants chose not to open, while others tried to continue with their routine after the authorities removed the yellow tapes and the police investigations division collected the 64 casings that were fired on the afternoon of August 9 at the gates of the Anderson school. . There, candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on Wednesday afternoon in an attack that for minutes turned the neighborhood into a war zone and plunged the country into consternation with less than 10 days to go before the August 20 elections. The attack evidences the wave of terror suffered by Ecuadorians, a brutal attack by organized crime that, according to President Guillermo Lasso, represents a challenge to the rule of law and “an attempt to sabotage the electoral process.” The electoral campaign has stopped, but it will continue, even in the midst of the state of emergency decreed by the president. Meanwhile, the country seeks to recover from a tragic afternoon.
“I woke up shocked, very sad,” says Passy Cevallos, trying to hold back her tears, who had been waiting in front of the morgue, located north of Quito, with another group of citizens who were demanding justice. “They killed our president!” cried a group of supporters of Villavicencio, who used to accompany the candidate on his tours. The attack occurred just days after another against the mayor of the coastal city of Manta, Agustín Intriago. “We cannot talk about security. We are helpless, without being able to do something ”, they continued.
In the capital, which is not overwhelmed by the usual traffic, silence and indignation reign, like the one expressed by Luis Fernández, Villavicencio’s lawyer. “This is a State crime,” he affirms, explaining that “he was not given adequate protection when the same police certified that he had a high risk, of 97%, of an attempt on his life.” The lawyer points out that the threats occurred from the moment he announced his candidacy. “Wherever he went, there were always bomb threats. They had to be removed immediately from the places”, adds Fernández, who acknowledges that they did not make them public so as not to hinder the campaign. In any case, he insists, “they were real and state officials knew about each one.” Villavicencio himself publicly denounced, even hours before he was assassinated, intimidation that he attributed to a group linked to the Mexican Sinaloa cartel.
The 59-year-old politician and journalist by profession, was assassinated in the vehicle that the State had provided for his transfer, a white double-cab van that lacked armor. Police Commander Fausto Salinas explained that the applicant did have an armored vehicle that he owned. In that car he traveled on Wednesday morning to attend a political meeting in Guayaquil, but later he boarded a plane to Quito and used the transportation provided by the authorities.
In that truck, which did not have the security conditions to resist an attack, he made the planned tours of Quito with a police escort. He did not have tactical protection, however, the police command assured in a press conference that the candidate had a triple security ring. During the appearance, chaired by the Minister of the Interior, Juan Zapata, it was not clarified what went wrong in the security scheme or the motive for the crime. The officials did not admit questions and dedicated the eight minutes of intervention to the six people arrested, of Colombian nationality and with criminal records. The suspects had been arrested a month ago, but the judge did not order preventive detention, but gave them the option of appearing periodically in court. They never did.
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The Villavicencio hitman, who died shortly after the attack in a confrontation with security forces, had also been arrested in June for illegally carrying a weapon, but was released. According to Salinas, they all belonged to organized crime groups that operate in the country, without going into details.
Villavicencio had referred in recent days to a group called Los Choneros. And in one of his last interviews, he had accused the authorities of not doing enough to contain the worst wave of violence that Ecuador has suffered in its recent history. He spoke, more specifically, of the threats from a criminal nicknamed Fito, who had sent him intimidating messages. “If I keep mentioning the name of Fito and mentioning the Choneros, they are going to break me,” he had warned. However, he refused to back down: “Here I am showing my face, I’m not afraid of them.”
Los Choneros is a group of drug traffickers whose origins date back to the late 1990s in the coastal city of Manta. After years of growth, it has become one of the most powerful criminal organizations in Ecuador and currently works for the powerful Sinaloa cartel (Mexico) in cocaine trafficking. His adversaries include Los Lobos, Tiguerones and Chone Killers, three gangs that carry out logistics operations for the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel, also Mexican and the most prominent in the North American country.
Apart from the realization of who was responsible for the attack, what is a fact is that Ecuador is experiencing an electoral campaign on maximum alert. President Lasso described what happened as a “political crime.” After declaring three days of national mourning and a state of emergency for 60 days, Lasso was blunt about the need to continue with the ongoing electoral process. His argument: suspending the elections would mean delivering a victory to crime. “We are not going to hand over power and democratic institutions to organized crime,” he emphasized. Thus, the candidates are preparing to resume the campaign and compete at the polls on August 20.
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