Late Aug. 9, presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio of the Movimiento Construye (MC25) party was assassinated as he left a meeting in the upscale neighborhood of Iñaquito in Quito, Ecuador. Villavicencio was shot as he entered a vehicle, surrounded by supporters; several people near him were also injured in the shooting, and an alleged perpetrator was killed. While prosecutors initially said the suspect was shot as Villavicencio’s bodyguards returned fire, video of the incident appears to show the suspect being badly beaten by the crowd as Villavicencio is hurried to the hospital. The following day, authorities announced they had arrested six additional people with ties to an undisclosed criminal organization. Colombian authorities stated that all six of the suspects were Colombian citizens.
The assassination of Villavicencio, a former investigative journalist with a reputation for reporting on corruption and who had campaigned on an anti-crime platform, raises serious concerns about the ability of the government to counter the power of several rapidly growing drug-trafficking organizations (DTOs) and stem the wave of violence that has overtaken the country in recent years. This significant uptick in violence began with the December 2020 killing of the leader of the Choneros, one of Ecuador’s largest DTOs, and continues to this day, as his death triggered the fragmentation of the Choneros into several splinter factions, including the Tigerones and Lobos. The tensions following the emergence of these factions have contributed to a rapid increase in homicides as they attempt to wrest control over black markets from their rivals.
While these battles largely represent DTOs’ attempts to access and control the port of Guayaquil, the nature of drug trafficking across the country is undergoing a major change. Until recently, the cocaine trafficked from the port was produced almost entirely in Colombia and Peru, with Ecuadoran DTOs effectively acting as mere middlemen facilitating the movement of cocaine from other groups onto ships in the port. This middleman function, however, has recently changed, and coca and its derivatives produced in Colombia are increasingly being brought to clandestine laboratories in northern Ecuador to be refined into cocaine hydrochloride, the end-product that drug users illegally consume. While Ecuadoran authorities have recently found and destroyed several such labs, their presence in dense jungle areas in the north of the country makes them exceedingly difficult to discover, and others certainly exist. The control Ecuadoran criminal groups have over these labs has given the organizations a degree of power within the drug trade that was nearly unthinkable just a few years ago when they were largely uninvolved in cocaine production.
The struggle for power between these groups has sometimes led to the targeting of local politicians. In February, a group of armed men killed a mayoral candidate in Puerto López, and in May, the mayor of Durán was nearly killed on his first day in office when a group ambushed his vehicle. Similarly, in July, the mayor of Manta was shot and killed, and even the day after Villavicencio’s killing, a group of men opened fire with a pellet gun on a vehicle carrying a candidate for the National Assembly, perhaps a warning to the candidate that she could also be assassinated.
While DTOs are likely responsible for all these incidents, precisely which groups have carried them out remains unknown. After Villavicencio’s assassination, a video circulated online showing several heavily armed men claiming responsibility for the killing on behalf of the Lobos. In the video, the men say that the Lobos have donated millions of dollars to the campaign funds of various candidates, and they expect the candidates to fulfill their promises to the criminal group. They also threaten the life of yet another presidential candidate, telling him he must begin to live up to his commitments to the Lobos or face the same fate as Villavicencio.
The claims in the video, however, cannot be accepted at face value, as the Lobos or another group pretending to be them could potentially have a myriad of incentives to make a false claim of responsibility while suggesting that Villavicencio and other candidates were involved in corruption. Furthermore, the video was followed up by a second recording showing different men who claimed to be members of the Lobos saying that their organization had nothing to do with the attack and that the first video was made to frame the group. This second video may be true; shortly before his death, Villavicencio claimed that the Choneros, who are rivals of the Lobos, threatened his life.
Further complicating the security situation in the country, as well as the investigation into Villavicencio’s assassination, is the fact that international criminal groups are also heavily involved in the war between rival Ecuadoran DTOs. The Choneros, for example, are supported by Mexico’s Sinaloa Cartel (Cártel de Sinaloa), one of the largest DTOs, and the Tiguerones and Lobos have ties to Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel (Cártel de Jalisco Nueva Generación, CJNG).
Colombian groups are also involved in the fighting: the Choneros are in a strategic alliance with the Oliver Sinisterra Front (Frente Oliver Sinisterra, FOS), a dissident branch of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia, FARC) that refused to lay down its arms with the rest of the FARC guerrilla group. In contrast, the Urías Rondón Mobile Column (Columna Móvil Urías Rondón, CMUR), a separate dissident FARC group, supports the Tiguerones. The fact that all the suspects arrested in connection to the assassination are Colombian citizens may suggest that one of these partnerships with Colombian criminal groups was influential in the planning and execution of the attack.
How the assassination will change the course of the elections remains to be seen. However, protests against the assassination, some of which blamed other candidates for the killing, have already occurred, and the military has said it will deploy to provide additional security throughout the country until the elections have concluded. What is certain is that voters will be very focused on the country’s worsening security. The assassination of Villavicencio, who was killed despite being a presidential candidate with a high degree of personal protection, is emblematic of the degree to which criminal groups can operate with impunity in the country.
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