An Ecuadorian presidential candidate who has been outspoken about ties between organized crime and government officials was assassinated Wednesday night at a political rally in the capital, days before voting began in an election dominated by concerns over drug-related violence.
Candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a former journalist, was killed outside a high school in Quito after speaking to young supporters. One suspect was killed in the ensuing gunfight, and nine other people were shot, officials said.
“When he walked out the door, he was met with gunfire,” Carlos Figueroa, who worked for Mr. Villavicencio’s campaign and was at the rally, said of the candidate. “There was nothing to do, because they were shot in the head.”
Mr. Villavicencio, 59, is voting near the middle of an eight-person race. He is one of the most vocal candidates on the issue of crime and state corruption.
It was the first assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador and came less than a month after the mayor of Manta, a port city, was fatally shot during a public demonstration. Ecuador, once a relatively safe country, has been consumed by narco-trafficking-related violence over the past five years.
“Angry and shocked by the killing,” President Guillermo Lasso wrote on social media platform X, formerly known as Twitter, late Wednesday, blaming the death on “organized crime.”
The national prosecutor’s office said on the same platform that a suspect was shot and captured amid a shootout with security forces, and died a short time later. The office later said authorities had conducted raids and detained six people in connection with the murder.
The nine other people shot included two police officers and a candidate for a seat in the National Assembly, according to the prosecutor’s office. There was no immediate information on the condition of the nine people; It was unclear as of late Wednesday night if any of them had died.
The killing is a major blow to a country already suffering from deep economic, social and political turmoil.
“Electorally speaking, this year is the most violent in our history,” said Arianna Tanca, an Ecuadorean political scientist. “I think what will change is the way we think about politics. I think from now on it will be a high-risk profession.
Ecuador, on the western edge of South America, witnessed an extraordinary transformation between 2005 and 2015 as millions of people rose out of poverty, riding the wave of an oil boom whose profits were poured into education, health care health and other social programs.
But recently, the country has been dominated by an increasingly powerful narco-trafficking industry. Foreign drug mafias have joined forces with local prison and street gangs, unleashing a wave of violence unlike anything in the country’s recent history. Killing rates are at record levels.
Today, the violence is often gruesome and public, aimed at instilling fear and control: There are regular reports of car bombings, beheadings and children being shot outside their schools.
Exacerbating the situation, Mr. Lasso dissolved the country’s opposition-led National Assembly in May, a drastic move he took as he faced impeachment proceedings over embezzlement accusations.
The move, which is allowed under the Constitution, means that new elections for the president and representatives of the legislature will be held. The vote in which Mr. Villavicencio must compete is scheduled for August 20; a second round of voting will be held in October if no candidate wins a clear victory.
At a news conference early Thursday, Mr. Lasso declared a 60-day, nationwide state of emergency, a measure that involves restricting some civil liberties, and he said security forces would be deployed across the country. . Such emergency declarations, meant for exceptional circumstances, have become more common in recent years, but have done little to stem Ecuador’s rising violence.
Mr. Lasso insisted, however, that the election would go ahead as scheduled. “This is a political crime, terrorism,” he said. “And there is no doubt that this assassination was an attempt to sabotage the electoral process. It is no coincidence that this happened a few days before the first round of polling.”
Mr. Villavicencio, who has worked as a journalist, activist and legislator, gained notoriety as an opponent of correísmo, the leftist movement of former President Rafael Correa, who served from 2007 to 2017 and still holds the main political power in Ecuador. A presidential candidate with Mr. Correa’s support, Luisa González, is leading the polls.
Mr. Villavicencio has written frequently about alleged corruption in the Correa government, which has made him the subject of legal prosecution and death threats. He briefly sought political asylum in Peru.
In 2017, Mr. Villavicencio successfully ran for a seat in the National Assembly, where he served until the legislature was dissolved by Mr. Lasso.
Mr. Correa, writing on the X platform late Wednesday, lamented the death of Mr. Villavicencio. “Ecuador has become a failed state,” he wrote. “My condolences to his family and to all families of victims of violence.”
Grace Jaramillo, an Ecuadorean professor of political science at the University of British Columbia who attended university with Mr. Villavicencio, recalled running against him in an election for student body president. He ran as a Trotskyist, and he represented a party called Democracy in Our House; both lost, to a student representing the Chinese Communist Party.
“He was really a fighter all the time and very good at arguments,” said Ms. Jaramillo. “An arguer, a challenger. He used to love lively discussions.”
After university, he said, Mr. Villavicencio became a union leader at Petroecuador, the country’s national oil company. Shortly after Mr. Correa came to power, he began writing about government corruption as a political journalist.
said Ms. Jaramillo that he met with him at the time to give him advice. His house was raided, and he has no money to fight the charges filed against him, he said.
“He was downtraded. He felt oppressed and diminished,” she added.
But a few weeks ago, when she saw him on a trip to Quito, he was “really hopeful and enthusiastic,” Ms. Jaramillo. “He is convinced that he can make it to the second round” of the presidential election.
His death, he said, will be “a lasting reminder of how hard it is to fight corruption and be safe at the same time.”
Andrés R. Martínez contributed reporting from Seoul.