The July 24th murder of Agustín Itriago, mayor of Manta, Ecuador—the nation’s 4th largest city––and the recent assassinations of Fernando Villavicencio, a candidate for president of Ecuador on Aug. 9th and Pedro Briones, a leader of the Revolución Ciudadana political party on Aug, 14th are evidence of a web of selective assassinations involving criminal gangs and drug traffickers throughout the nation.
After Ecuador’s former President Rafael Correa (2007-2017) left power, the presidents who succeeded him initiated a process of social instability. Lenin Moreno, who governed Ecuador from 2017 to 2021, and the current president, the banker Guillermo Lasso, dismantled all the anti-neoliberal and anti-militarist scaffolding that Correa had established during his mandate.
Correa’s policies had managed to include Afro Ecuadorians in public policies in a South America nation with the fourth largest African presence in Latin America.
Yuliana Ortiz Ruano is an art teacher, writer and poet from the island of Limones, in the famed Afro Ecuadorian province of Esmeraldas. She recently spoke of how the situation in Esmeraldas was worsening because of the presence of multiple forms of violence in this territory that used to be so harmonious.
There have been murders in the streets, clashes between armed gangs, and even the use of car bombs. The murders of the young mayor of Manta, Villavicencio, and now Briones creates a climate of widespread terror as the nation heads toward elections Sunday, Aug. 20th. Ortiz Ruano expressed that she had become so concerned by public violence that she had moved to the city of Guayaquil, a city that has its own share of violence. In Guayaquil, public security is tenuous; this is a place where “Black lives do not matter,” she concluded.
Former Afro Ecuadorian Assemblymember Jose Pepe Chala points to the May 17 dissolution of the National Assembly by President Lasso, via the constitutional instrument known as “Muerte Cruzada” (Cross Death), which allowed him to free himself from impeachment proceedings for his crimes against public administration.
Governmental management has been absent in Ecuador for a little more than six years, during which insecurity and general instability worsened, massive crimes took place in prisons, and murders in the streets, in the style of sicariato (hired assassinations), became routine.
Following the terrifying Aug. 9 assassinations of Villavicencio after a campaign rally in Quito and now Briones in the San Mateo parish in Esmeraldas, President Lasso issued a decree declaring a two-month state of emergency. Yet the National Electoral Commission says elections are still scheduled to take place Aug. 20, 2023.
Voting is mandatory in Ecuador. Citizens who fail to vote are fined up to $9,000. The August 20 elections are a vote for members of the National Assembly and the first round of the presidential election. If a presidential run-off is required, it will take place Oct. 15.