Murder in Ecuador imperils democracy
Formerly an oasis of relative prosperity and safety in South America, the oil-exporting nation of Ecuador (population 17.8 million) now finds itself at the brink of political chaos. That is not too strong a phrase to describe the state of affairs after Wednesday’s assassination, in broad daylight, of Fernando Villavicencio, who was running for president in elections scheduled for Aug. 20.
The Biden administration has said all the right things since Villavicencio’s death, condemning the murder and sending FBI personnel to help investigate. Assuming the next government is one Washington can work with — still uncertain — there could be a wider, more aggressive plan of security cooperation to help Ecuador and the United States, which is seeing a surge of Ecuadoran migration to the U.S. southern border.
A member of the national legislature, Villavicencio was a courageous and well-known critic of government corruption and the violent drug mafias that breed it. One or more of Ecuador’s organized crime groups is suspected in Villavicencio’s murder — and in other recent political killings, which were unusual only for the prominence of the victims. Driven by turf wars among the gangs, the country’s murder rate has essentially quintupled in the past half-decade, with victims sometimes blown up by bombs, decapitated or, in some grisly episodes, left hanging from bridges. Coming after the coronavirus pandemic, which hit Ecuador early and hard, the crime wave has sent a surge of Ecuadoran migration to the U.S. southern border.
Already destabilized by partisan disputes that forced President Guillermo Lasso, a pro-U.S. political centrist, to dissolve Congress earlier this year and call the upcoming election for a new president and legislature, Ecuador’s democracy could succumb to the swelling lawlessness in one of two ways: Either the gangs simply render it ungovernable, or the next government imposes a police state to crush them. The latter option cannot be ruled out given the regional popularity of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who has achieved a sudden near-cessation of homicide in his country by rounding up tens of thousands of alleged gang members and imprisoning them without due process. One candidate in Ecuador, political newcomer (and former French Foreign Legionnaire) Jan Topic, is promising to model his policies on Bukele’s.
Yet another risky outcome would be victory for Luisa Gonzalez, the candidate backed by former president Rafael Correa, a pro-Venezuela leftist who curtailed press freedoms while in office; as part of that, he tried to jail Villavicencio. Correa is now living in Belgium after having been convicted in absentia of corruption by an Ecuadoran court three years ago. The presidential race might well be decided only after a runoff between the top two finishers Aug. 20.
The Biden administration should consider helping Ecuador — again, assuming political compatibility — regain control of its prisons, which the gangs have taken over and turned into de facto command centers. The United States, together with its partners in Europe, also needs to step up intelligence-gathering on the transnational groups, originating in Albania, that increasingly compete with Mexican cartels for control of cocaine exports out of Ecuador — much of it bound for Europe.
Organized crime menaces Latin American democracies from the Rio Grande to Tierra del Fuego; if they are to avoid the temptation to respond with authoritarian methods, the United States will have to help them show that lawful ones can work.