Political assassinations, banana tycoons, and the Albanian mafia.

A conversation about Ecuador's elections.

Aug 27, 2023

It’s been another crazy news week, especially given the death of the infamous Wagner Group leader, so skip to the What I’m Reading section if you want to get straight to the news.

Ecuador held elections on August 20, mere weeks after a presidential candidate was gunned down on the campaign trail. Left-wing candidate Luisa González, a protege of former President Rafael Correa, won the most votes. But she didn’t garner enough support to avoid a runoff against Daniel Noboa, a young businessman and heir to a banana industry fortune. The next round of elections will be held in October.

I spoke with Canadian freelance journalist Kimberley Brown, who has been based in Ecuador for nearly a decade, about Ecuador's elections and current political climate.

This interview has been edited for length and clarity.

Cristina: What do we know about Luisa González and her policy proposals?

Kimberley: Her proposals are a continuation of what we saw under Correa, which is to strengthen government institutions and ministries, invest in social systems, and put more money into infrastructure and schools and hospitals.

They also want to tackle security, which was one of the main topics during this election, because the security situation in the country has deteriorated.

To do that, their main proposal is to strengthen jobs. They also want to tackle the security situation head-on by purging corruption within the justice system.

In addition to continuing a lot of the economic policies that were implemented under Correa, González is also a little controversial on social policies. She’s been outspoken against abortion.

Ecuador recently decriminalized abortion in cases of rape, and she was outspoken against that. Many left-wing thinkers and voters have a hard time consolidating with the Correaista party because of their stance on social issues.

Cristina: The other candidate is a 35-year-old pro-business figure, Noboa. What do we know about him? Is he well-known to the electorate?

Kimberley: He was voted into the national assembly in the last elections in 2021, so he has a couple of years of politics under his belt on the national scene.

Before that, he was a businessman and worked with his father, a banana tycoon.

The fact that he came in second came as a surprise to a lot of political analysts. Reuters had an article a few days before the election discussing the top five candidates, and he wasn’t even on the list.

Cristina: How did he end up in second place?

Kimberley: I think a lot of it was due to how he composed himself in the debates. There was only one televised debate with all seven candidates, and that was the Sunday before the election.

Noboa stuck to the questions and answered in a straightforward way. He didn’t bicker with anybody. He showed himself as a political figure, not just his father’s son (his father, Alvaro, ran for president three times but never won).

He was also campaigning a lot in rural areas where there are a lot of campesinos. That’s where a lot of his vote came from.

In his campaign, he promoted job creation and tax incentives for new businesses and promised to crack down on tax evasion.

So even though we’re in the midst of a security crisis, cracking down on corruption and tax evasion and providing opportunities to get ahead are also important issues in the country, and they gave him a leg up.

Cristina: One of the candidates, Fernando Villavicencio, was assassinated on the campaign trail shortly before the election. He was a former journalist who spoke out against corruption. Do we know why he was targeted?

Kimberley: There are a lot of conspiracies around who might have paid off which group to assassinate him.

The official discourse is that he received death threats from Los Lobos and Los Choneros. He had publicly denounced the threats and told the police he was receiving threats, mainly from Los Lobos.

A lot of candidates have been presenting themselves as tough on crime and tough on narco-crime in particular. But Villavicencio actually named specific people and particular groups.

People assume that’s why he was directly targeted. But there are a lot of questions about his death. His security did a very bad job of protecting him.

Some people were arrested who we can assume were paid to do a job. There’s an open investigation, and the FBI has been helping with that. They’re trying to find out who the mastermind is.

Cristina: Do you have a sense of how popular he was? Would he have been among the top two candidates if he had lived?

Kimberley: He wasn’t polling very high. In the days leading up to his death, the polls showed he was gaining popularity. He had been going onto the streets more.

The mayor of Manta had been killed a couple of weeks earlier, so some of the other candidates hadn’t been going onto the streets or into neighborhoods to campaign as much.

But Villavicencio was maybe in fourth place. I didn’t take him seriously as someone who would make it to the second round.

Cristina: I saw videos of candidates voting in bulletproof vests and helmets. What is the atmosphere like now?

Kimberley: In Quito, it’s relatively calm compared to other areas of the country. Quito has always been this way, although statistics show that theft and murders have also increased here in recent years.

You can sense that people don’t walk around at night as much. Sometimes, you see people closing shops early. People try to get on with their lives, but there's a definite sense of people living with increased fear and tension.

That’s partly why Villavicencio’s death was so shocking, because it happened in the capital.

Up until recently, the more extreme violence has stayed mainly on the coast, to the point that it’s been normalized, at least in the news.

Cristina: This election was held because current President Guillermo Lasso was going to be impeached, and he chose to dissolve the parliament and call snap elections instead. What was that about? What was going on behind the scenes?

Kimberley: There was an investigation in the local media, La Posta, that accused Lasso’s brother-in-law of corruption. Even though he did not work in government, he managed public contracts and was accused of accepting bribes for public contracts.

There were also links between him [Danilo Carrera] and other people in Lasso’s administration with the Albanian mafia.

Lasso was being investigated for knowing about this corruption and not doing anything about it.

He called the snap elections the day after his impeachment trial started. People had expected him to call snap elections, but the timing was a surprise.

Cristina: Why are there Albanian gangs in Ecuador? How did that come about, and what role do they play?

Kimberley: It’s hard to decipher if they’ve been here for years or if they’re new to Ecuador.

But they are the main groups that get cocaine across to Europe, so it wouldn’t surprise me if they had a stronger foothold in Ecuador for a longer time.

You can read more about Albanian gangs in Ecuador here and here and here.

Cristina: Voting in Ecuador is mandatory, and you must pay a fine if you don’t go to the polls. How does that affect political engagement?

Kimberley: It sounds like a good idea. But based on what I’ve seen in the previous elections – and I’ve been here for three elections – I don’t believe that just making it mandatory creates a more informed population.

People end up voting because they don’t want to get fined. Many people can’t afford the fine, so they vote for a familiar face or the last candidate who did something nice for their community.

But many people are apathetic about politics here. A lot of people don’t feel like they can identify with the candidates and their politics.

There are few politicians who haven’t been accused of corruption. Many come from a higher class background, and the average Ecuadorian citizen doesn’t identify with that.

Cristina: Is that also true about left-wing parties, like Correa’s party?

Kimberley: Most people who hate Correa’s party don’t hate it for class reasons. The party has been pretty tainted by corruption scandals.

Correa was in power for ten years at a time when the price of oil was high, commodity prices were high, and when he left office, the country was in debt. He’s been accused of corruption and stealing money. Even if it’s not the case, that’s the main takeaway when people think of his party.

Cristina: The security situation in Ecuador has gotten pretty bad over the last few years. What do you attribute that to?

Kimberley: The last two or three years have been bad, so it’s been recent.

The streets have always been empty at night. You have to watch behind you.

But now it’s a different level. People are noticeably scared walking down the street during the day, especially if a motorcycle crosses your path.

It’s not just pocket theft and people with a knife trying to rob you, which was normal before, but there are many more robberies at gunpoint and people armed with guns. That didn’t happen before at all. And people get shot if they don’t give everything they have to the robbers.

The level of violence on the coast would have been unthinkable a couple of years ago.

I’ve spoken to people in Guayaquil and Esmeraldas, where the violence has been the worst. Those two cities are some of the most dangerous in Latin America right now.

People there say both cities have always had some level of violence, but now it’s off the charts. Now, in Guayaquil, it’s normal for a corpse to be discovered decapitated, with the head in one part of the city and the body in another and the limbs in another place, just unspeakable violence.

There are a lot of explanations for it. Some analysts would say that when Colombia’s government signed a peace agreement with the FARC [the rebel group, the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia] in 2016, one of the effects was that the FARC laid down their weapons.

Well, the FARC had been controlling the borders between Ecuador and Colombia. When they left those areas, it left a vacuum to be filled and made the border area more open.

That’s not the only reason. Security analysts have known that Mexican cartels and Colombian armed groups have been in Ecuador since the early 2000s. But it could have played a small part.

During the pandemic, poverty and unemployment rose, which made people more susceptible to being recruited by armed groups. We’ve also seen a lot of people migrating to the U.S., and it’s indicative of the unraveling of the social fabric here in Ecuador because people don’t have a lot of opportunities.

A lot of people are shocked to see Ecuador go from a place that was a drug transit point to a place that exploded with violence.

Cristina: So it sounds like a lot of the problems have been caused by economics?

Kimberley: Yes, but there were political decisions involved that also worsened the economy. When former [President Lenín] Moreno came to power, he also accepted a $6 billion International Monetary Fund loan, and some of the conditions on that were that he slash social funding and close various government ministries.

Here, you see another way politics directly influences the instability of the government and the destruction of the social fabric itself.

Cristina: What do you think the outcome of the October runoff will be?

Kimberley: It’s hard to know in a place like Ecuador. Politics always surprise me.

But the Correaistas, in this election and the last election, have a habit of campaigning toward their base. That means they have 30% solid support from citizens who will always vote for them.

If they continue in that vein, I don’t see how they will increase the support they need to win. But that’s not to say it won’t happen.

You can check out Kimberley’s website if you want to read more of her work.

What I’m writing:

• I wrote a deep dive into the Republican proposals to use the military to combat fentanyl. Nearly all GOP candidates want U.S. border guards to kill suspected traffickers entering the U.S. or to send special forces to invade Mexico to fight cartels. This story is unlocked and free to read.

My weekly news blurbs:

What I’m reading:

• Dmitry Medvedev, the former Russian president and current deputy chair of the country’s security council, hinted that Moscow may annex the Georgian regions of South Ossetia and Abkhazia. In an opinion piece about the Russian invasion of Georgia in 2008, Medvedev said, “The idea of joining Russia is still popular in Abkhazia and South Ossetia” and that “It could quite possibly be implemented if there are good reasons for that.” Reuters has a write-up.

• Ukrainian special forces staged a brief overnight raid inside Russian-annexed Crimea, clashing with Russian forces, Ukraine’s Defense Ministry claimed on Telegram. If the attack occurred, it would demonstrate Ukraine’s growing ability to strike deep behind Russian lines.

• Yevgeny Prigozhin, chief of the paramilitary organization Wagner Group, is presumed dead following a plane crash north of Moscow, Reuters reports. Russian President Vladimir Putin appeared to confirm that Prigozhin died, and called him a “talented person” who “made serious mistakes in life.” Two other Wagner leaders, Dimitry Utkin and Valery Chekalov, also died in the plane crash.

• Prigozhin had just published his first recruitment video since his failed armed rebellion in June, claiming to be “making Russia even greater on all continents, and Africa even more free.”

• Speaking at the Crimean Platform, an international consultation group to improve the international response to the occupation of Crimea, Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky said Ukraine has a clear vision for how to restore democratic life in Crimea when it’s liberated from Russian occupation, the Kyiv Independent reports.

• Serbia joined a Ukraine-led platform on the reintegration of Crimea, signaling a shift away from Russia, a historical ally and its sole natural gas supplier, Reuters reports.

• Over 2,000 children, including orphans, were transported from Russian-occupied areas of Ukraine to Belarus, where they were exposed to pro-Kremlin propaganda at a summer camp, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Three people were killed in a drone attack in Russia’s Belgorod region, Reuters reports.

• Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas’ husband is part-owner of a company that continues trading with Russia, Estonian media reported. According to the reports, Arvo Hallik owns a stake in Stark Logistics, which has continued exports to Russia throughout the war.

• Montenegro, North Macedonia, and Albania responded sharply after Serbian Defence Minister Miloš Vučević said their recognition of Kosovo’s independence would cause a harsh reaction “just like in Ukraine,” Balkan Insight reports.

• Ministers from Western Balkan countries vented their frustration at the sluggish pace of the European Union’s accession process at a seminar chaired by the EU’s foreign policy chief, Josep Borrell, in the Spanish city of Santander. The foreign ministers of Albania and North Macedonia urged the EU to set a deadline for their formal entry into the EU.

• European Commission President Ursula von der Leyen and Council President Charles Michel held a summit with Western Balkan leaders in Athens, Greece, the Associated Press reports.

• Exiled and charged Bulgarian mogul Vassil Bojkov was arrested after announcing that he was flying back to Bulgaria from Dubai, where he was based for the last three years, Balkan Insight reports.

• Slovakia’s President Zuzana Čaputová said the country’s police were not carrying out a coup after several spy chiefs were arrested and charged with “establishing, forming and supporting a criminal group,” Politico Europe reports.

• Germany’s far-right Alternative for Germany (AfD) party is becoming more radical and more popular among German voters and is now the second-strongest political party in the country, the Washington Post reports.

• The Biden administration is in negotiations with Venezuela to exchange an easing of sanctions for a free election, the Hill reports.

• The Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) set an undisclosed “D-Day” for military intervention to restore democracy in Niger if diplomatic efforts fail, Reuters reports.

• Niger’s coup leader Abdourahamane Tchiani claimed he intends to return the country to civilian rule in three years, the BBC reports. ECOWAS rejected the proposal and demanded that the junta “Release [President] Bazoum without preconditions” and restore constitutional order without further delay.

• Border guards in Saudia Arabia killed hundreds of migrants at the Yemeni border, according to a report by Human Rights Watch.

• The BRICS (Brazil, Russia, India, China, and South Africa) are preparing to invite Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Argentina, Iran, Ethiopia, and the United Arab Emirates to join the bloc, the Wall Street Journal reports.

• Protests against Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad are intensifying in government-held Suweida amid widespread anger over cuts to fuel subsidies, the BBC reports.

• The U.S. State Department said it would impose sanctions after accusing China of the forcible assimilation of more than one million Tibetan children in government-run boarding schools, the Wall Street Journal reports. “These coercive policies seek to eliminate Tibet’s distinct linguistic, cultural, and religious traditions among younger generations of Tibetans,” Secretary of State Antony Blinken said.