Ecuador declared a state of emergency Thursday and asked the FBI to help probe the Presidential candidate shot dead after rally in Ecuador whose death has highlighted the once-peaceful nation’s decline into a violent hotbed of drug trafficking and organized crime.
Fernando Villavicencio, a 59-year-old journalist and prominent anti-corruption crusader, was gunned down as he left a campaign rally in the capital Quito on Wednesday night.
President Guillermo Lasso declared a two-month state of emergency, and wrote on social media that he had “requested the support of the FBI” with the investigation into the murder.
He said the United States Federal Bureau of Investigation had “accepted our request and in the next few hours a delegation will arrive in the country.”
Shocked citizens expressed their frustration with the burgeoning violence in the South American country, which has seen its murder rate soar as drug gangs wage bloody turf wars.
Housewife Ruth Flores, 65, said people were “outraged” by the murder of a man she saw as “the hope for honesty in our country. A candidate who denounced the corruption of narcopolitics.”
She described the situation in the country as “very worrying. You can’t walk peacefully… there is no security.” Villavicencio had complained of receiving threats from Los Choneros, one of the country’s most powerful drug gangs.
“They told me to wear a (bulletproof) vest. I don’t need it. Let the hitmen come! They may bend me but they will never break me,” the politician told a rally earlier this week in Chone, birthplace of the gang.
Electoral officials have additionally reported threats against them ahead of the snap election on August 20. A popular mayor and aspiring lawmaker have also been assassinated in recent weeks.
Villavicencio was shot in a hail of gunfire as he exited the political rally.
The country’s main newspaper, El Universo, reported that Villavicencio was assassinated “hitman-style and with three shots to the head.” His family gathered, weeping and holding each other, as his body was transported from a forensic lab to a funeral home for a private wake.
Sabotage
The attack came a little over a week before a snap election, called by Lasso after he dissolved the opposition-dominated Congress in May to avoid an impeachment trial over alleged corruption.
He is not seeking reelection. Earlier, Lasso blamed the killing on “organized crime.”
“This is a political crime… and we do not doubt that this murder is an attempt to sabotage the electoral process,” said Lasso, who also declared three days of national mourning.
Villavicencio was the second most popular of eight candidates in the presidential race, according to recent opinion polls.
His journalistic investigations exposed a vast graft network which led to former president Rafael Correa being sentenced to eight years in prison.
Correa now lives in exile in Belgium after fleeing to escape the prison term.
A bleak future
Giant posters of Villavicencio were still plastered on the walls of the sports complex where the rally was held, as passersby placed candles and bouquets of white roses outside.
A cyclist, who was too afraid to give her name, put up a banner reading: “The damn narcopoliticians will pay.”
“I see a bleak future because no one has the guts like him to tackle the situation. They are all lukewarm, including the president who disappointed us,” the woman said.
Nine other people were injured in the attack, including a candidate running for the national legislature and three policemen, prosecutors and police officials said. One of the alleged attackers was shot and killed by security personnel.
Six people have been arrested, with Interior Minister Juan Zapata saying they belong to an “organized crime gang.”
The United States condemned the attack, with Secretary of State Antony Blinken offering to “support local authorities to bring the perpetrators of this heinous act to justice.”
The European Union’s foreign policy chief Joseph Borrell said the bloc “stands with Ecuador in its fight against the worsening violence by organized crime.”
United Nations human rights chief Volker Turk said the “appalling killing… underscores the challenges the country and its people face amid the violence.”
Global drug hub
Ecuador is not known to have large plantations of drug crops or laboratories, but its location between major cocaine producers Colombia and Peru and laxer controls, have made it a new nerve center for the global drug trade. Most drugs are shipped abroad via the major port of Guayaquil.
Hundreds have been killed — some dismembered or burned to death — in a gang war that largely played out in the country’s prisons, mainly in Guayaquil, in the battle for control of drug routes.
Guayaquil has also been hit by car bombs and shocking scenes of bodies dangling from bridges.
Highlighting Ecuador’s growing influence in the trade, Dutch authorities said Thursday they had seized over eight tonnes of cocaine discovered in a container carrying bananas from Ecuador, its largest ever seizure of the drug.
In 2022, Ecuador’s murder rate almost doubled compared to the previous year to 25 per 100,000.
