ECUADOR: Dark clouds over elections
Thank you for reading LatinNews' chosen article from the Latin American Weekly Report, produced since 1967. The full report can be accessed here: Latin American Weekly Report - 27 July 2023
With the general elections of 20 August just three weeks away, Ecuador has had a terrible week with at least three crises running in parallel: one, a murderous prison uprising; two, violent attacks on politicians; and three, renewed concerns over threats to journalists.
The worst crisis in terms of loss of life was a coordinated prison rebellion which erupted at six penitentiaries on 23 July and which over the next three days left 31 prisoners dead, 14 wounded, and 137 prison guards taken hostage. The hostages were eventually released by 26 July. The government declared a state of exception across the entire prison system, totalling 35 establishments. The deaths were concentrated in the Penitenciaría del Litoral in Guayaquil, the capital of Guayas province, which has been the site of Ecuador’s worst prison violence in recent years.
The latest violence at the prison appears to have been driven by tensions between two rival criminal gangs, Los Tiguerones and Los Lobos – part of a wider gang war in the prison system which since 2020 has led to the murder of over 450 inmates, according to local media. The latest outbreak of violence again highlighted how President Guillermo Lasso’s repeated promises of stronger prison management have rung hollow.
When the security forces were able to regain control of the prison, they found large stashes of weaponry including pistols, rifles, two Uzi machine guns, and even a grenade launcher, according to the national prisons authority (SNAI). There were also other items supposedly banned from the prison, including power tools, around 100 mobile phones, radio equipment, and thousands of dollars in cash. The Ecuadorean NGO Comité Permanente de Defensa por los Derechos Humanos (CDH) said the latest events showed the “obvious incapacity” of the prison service to control the prisons.
Another major worry for President Lasso is the growing fear that the election campaign is turning violent. On 23 July, Agustín Intriago, mayor of the port city of Manta in Manabí province, was shot dead as he inspected local drainage works. A young female bystander was also killed in the attack. One of two suspects has been arrested. Intriago was a popular mayor (he was re-elected last February for Mejor Ciudad, a local political party, with 61% of the vote). Manta is a major port, often used by rival drug-trafficking organisations shipping Colombian cocaine out via the Pacific Ocean. The government responded by declaring a state of exception and curfew in the provinces of Manabí and Los Ríos, as well as in Durán canton in Guayas province.
Seven days earlier, on 16 July, Rider Sánchez, a candidate for the national legislature for the centrist Actuemos coalition, was shot dead by four men in Quininde, Esmeraldas province. The interior ministry later said the aim of the attackers had been to steal his car and that they had no known political or personal links to their victim. Whether candidates are being singled out for their political allegiances, or whether they are simply victims of a general rise in criminality, there is a negative impact on both voter sentiment and democratic stability.
In a third development, journalists Andersson Boscán and Mónica Velásquez, a husband-and-wife team from digital news site La Posta, said on 25 July that they were leaving the country after receiving death threats. Both had been involved in the investigation into corruption in state companies which led to a congressional attempt to impeach Lasso [WR-23-03], which in turn sparked Lasso’s decision in May to trigger the snap general elections that will be held in August.
While stopping short of accusing the president directly, Boscán and Velásquez said responsibility for “what might happen” to them should rest with Lasso. They said they had been followed and were receiving threats with increasing frequency coming from “different armed gangs and persons linked to criminal activity”. They claimed there is “a total absence of guarantees for the exercise of journalism in Ecuador”. La Posta also accused Lasso of slandering its journalists through his previous description of them as “media terrorists” and by accusing them of money laundering.
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State of exception
Under the state of exception, which will run for 60 days, a curfew has been imposed between 10pm and 5am across the entirety of Manabí and Los Ríos provinces and in Durán canton. Additional military and police have been deployed to these areas, the rights to freedom of assembly and freedom of movement have been suspended, and security personnel will not require a warrant to enter people’s homes. A separate state of exception across the national prison network will enable the security forces to work alongside prison guards to maintain order in penitentiaries.
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