He enters the race seven days before the election and four days after the murder of the man he ran alongside as a running mate. Andrea González’s first public outing as a candidate to lead Ecuador was on the stage of last night’s televised debate in view of the vote on 20 August.
Thirty-six years old, a past as an environmental activist and no previous public office, González takes the place of Fernando Villavicencio, a 59-year-old former journalist and leader of the “Build” party murdered on the street in Quito after a rally in the night between Wednesday and Thursday. The movement has chosen to focus on its ticket partner: «González was part of Villavicencio’s most trusted group and will now take over from him. Millions of Ecuadorians will accompany you on this path», writes Construye’s leadership in a statement.
Millions who will in any case find the name of the dead before their eyes on Sunday: the ballots have already been printed, but the electoral commission has clarified that all the votes for Villavicencio will automatically be assigned to the new candidate.
Paradoxically, among those who will not draw the cross on the name of Villavicencio could be the widow, Veronica Sarauz, who has defined the decision to replace her husband with González as “arbitrary”. But she also launched accusations against the state authorities that they would not have protected him properly: «I demand that answers be given to me. I would not like to think that the security agents have sold the life of the father of my five children.
No evidence to support this thesis has so far emerged. What is certain, however, is that in Ecuador violence is by now an instrument of political struggle on which armed groups rely more and more frequently. Within four days, an aspiring president was killed, a candidate for parliament was saved from an attack and the daughter of the former mayor of the capital was kidnapped and then released.
Snapshots of a country where gangs get rich with cocaine trafficking and erode state power day after day. The reassurances of President Guillermo Lasso – who has not re-elected – are of little value, as he still guaranteed on Saturday that “peace and trust will soon return”. He himself, after the killing of Villavicencio, was forced to invoke the state of emergency which will remain in force until the beginning of October.
Among the first measures, the decision to transfer a drug lord, Adolfo Macìas known as “Fito”, to a maximum security prison, sentenced to 34 years for murder and drug trafficking. Macìas is the leader of Los Choneros, a gang linked to the Sinaloa cartel that had repeatedly threatened Villavicencio with death. To move him a few meters – the cell where he is being held is now located in the same prison complex, in the port city of Guayaqil – 4,000 policemen and soldiers were deployed on Saturday, who during the operation seized firearms, ammunition and explosives. Arsenals that gangs place their members behind bars to eliminate rivals: more than 400 murders have been recorded in the space of a few months.