Lorena Villavicencio, sister of slain presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, embraces her husband outdoors the morgue the place her brother’s physique is being held, in Quito, Ecuador, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023.

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Lorena Villavicencio, sister of slain presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, embraces her husband outdoors the morgue the place her brother’s physique is being held, in Quito, Ecuador, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023.

Carlos Noriega/AP

QUITO, Ecuador — Ecuador’s transformation into a significant drug trafficking hub and the following three-year surge of violence is weighing on the nation following the killing of a presidential candidate whose life’s work was to struggle crime and corruption.

Six Colombian males have been arrested Thursday in reference to the deadly taking pictures of Fernando Villavicencio a day earlier within the capital, Quito. He was not a front-runner within the race, however his assassination in broad daylight lower than two weeks earlier than the particular presidential election underscored the problem Ecuador’s subsequent chief will face in any try to curb gangs and cartels whose actions have claimed hundreds of lives.

A report of the lads’s arrest reviewed by The Associated Press confirmed the lads have been captured hiding in a home in Quito. Law enforcement officers, based on the report, seized 4 shotguns, a 5.56-mm rifle, ammunition and three grenades in addition to a automobile and one motorbike.

Ecuador’s Interior Minister Juan Zapata described the killing as a “political crime of a terrorist nature” aimed toward sabotaging the Aug. 20 election. The police report would not say whether or not the Colombians are members of a legal group. But Zapata, who confirmed the arrests of some foreigners with out giving their nationalities, mentioned the suspects have been linked to organized crime.

Villavicencio, 59, had mentioned he was threatened by associates of Mexico’s Sinaloa cartel, one in every of a slew of worldwide organized crime teams that now function in Ecuador. He mentioned his marketing campaign represented a menace to such teams.

“The Ecuadorian people are crying, and Ecuador is mortally wounded,” mentioned Patricio Zuquilanda, Villavicencio’s marketing campaign adviser.

Supporters of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio cry outdoors the hospital the place he was taken after he was shot to demise whereas at a marketing campaign rally in Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023.

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Supporters of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio cry outdoors the hospital the place he was taken after he was shot to demise whereas at a marketing campaign rally in Quito, Ecuador, Wednesday, Aug. 9, 2023.

Juan Diego Montenegro/AP

With nearly 400 miles (640 kilometers) of Pacific coast, transport ports and a few key exports, Ecuador has been turned by worldwide traffickers from a minor participant within the drug enterprise into a giant regional hub for the smuggling of cocaine.

An intensifying battle over energy and territory because the pandemic has seen drug cartels battle amongst themselves and enlist native gangs and even recruit kids, leaving Ecuadorians reeling from unprecedented violence.

“Ecuador has the geographical misfortune of being sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, the two largest cocaine producers in the world, and underlying it all is a certain degree of institutional weakness in the judiciary, police and military,” mentioned Cynthia Arnson, a distinguished fellow on the Washington-based Wilson Center and an knowledgeable in Latin America.

She added the killing reveals “criminal actors most likely connected to organized crime in Ecuador feel that they can act with impunity, going as far as to assassinate an anti-corruption political candidate.”

The nation’s National Police tallied 3,568 violent deaths within the first six months of this 12 months, excess of the two,042 reported throughout the identical interval in 2022. That 12 months ended with 4,600 violent deaths, the nation’s highest in historical past and double the entire in 2021.

Wearing a bulletproof vest, Andrea Gonzalez, the operating mate of slain presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, arrives for a press convention in Quito, Ecuador, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023.

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Wearing a bulletproof vest, Andrea Gonzalez, the operating mate of slain presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, arrives for a press convention in Quito, Ecuador, Thursday, Aug. 10, 2023.

Carlos Noriega/AP

Just final month, the mayor of the port metropolis of Manta was shot to demise. President Guillermo Lasso then declared a state of emergency masking two provinces and the nation’s jail system in an effort to stem the violence.

Video of the political rally posted on social media reveals Villavicencio leaving surrounded by guards. He is then seen getting right into a white pickup truck earlier than gunshots are heard, adopted by screams and commotion across the truck.

Zuquilanda mentioned Villavicencio had acquired at the least three demise threats earlier than the taking pictures and reported them to authorities, leading to one detention.

Lasso mentioned the candidate’s killers threw a grenade into the road to cowl their flight, but it surely didn’t explode. Police later destroyed the grenade with a managed explosion.

Lasso declared three days of nationwide mourning and a state of emergency that entails deploying extra army personnel all through the nation.

Villavicencio, one in every of eight candidates operating for president, was the candidate of the Build Ecuador Movement. In his ultimate speech earlier than he was killed, Villavicencio promised a roaring crowd that he would struggle corruption, together with amongst police forces, and imprison extra criminals.

“Here I am showing my face. I’m not scared of them,” Villavicencio mentioned in an announcement earlier than his demise, naming detained crime boss José Adolfo Macías by his alias, “Fito.”

People ready for buses in Guayaquil, a port metropolis south of Quito that has been the epicenter of gang violence, expressed shock over Villavicencio’s killing.

“It shows that the violence in the country is increasing,” pharmacist Leidy Aguirre, 28, mentioned. “Politicians supposedly have more security than citizens and this shows that not even they are safe.”

Villavicencio’s safety element included cops and personal safety guards.

Elsewhere, individuals went about their lives by taking out of doors train courses and day by day walks as a result of they’re resigned to reside amid the violence. Among them was Marjorie Lino, who lamented the hazard as she walked with a buddy alongside the principle street that results in one of many nation’s most violent neighborhoods.

“To us as women, our husbands tell us not to go out here, but it doesn’t matter (because) when one is going to die, one dies even at the door of one’s house,” Lino, a 38-year-old housewife, mentioned. She doesn’t imagine that any of the presidential candidates will be capable of finish the violence.

Villavicencio was an impartial journalist who investigated corruption in earlier governments earlier than getting into politics as an anti-graft campaigner. He was one of many nation’s most important voices of the 2007-2017 authorities of President Rafael Correa.

Villavicencio, who was married and is survived by 5 kids, filed many judicial complaints towards high-ranking members of the Correa authorities, together with towards the ex-president himself. He was sentenced to 18 months in jail for defamation over his criticisms of Correa, and fled to Indigenous territory in Ecuador, later receiving asylum in neighboring Peru.

One of Villavicencio’s investigations led to legal proceedings and an eight-year jail sentence on corruption fees towards Correa. The former president, who moved to Belgium in 2017, was sentenced in absentia in April 2020.

Edison Romo, a former army intelligence colonel, mentioned the anti-corruption complaints made Villavicencio “a threat to international criminal organizations.”

The nation has confronted a sequence of political upheavals lately. A snap election was referred to as after Lasso, a conservative former banker, dissolved the National Assembly by decree in May, in a transfer to keep away from being impeached over allegations that he did not intervene to finish a defective contract between the state-owned oil transport firm and a personal tanker firm.

Authorities mentioned that at the least 9 others have been injured in Wednesday’s taking pictures, together with a congressional candidate.

Arnson mentioned the killing of Villavicencio might have a chilling impact within the upcoming election.

“It’s a message to Ecuadorian society as a whole that those who attempt to stand up to this kind of corruption and and illegality can pay with their lives,” she mentioned.