BOGOTA, Colombia (OSV News) ─ While
the murder of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio shocked Ecuador
Aug. 9, the bishops' conference in the South American country expressed its
solidarity with Villavicencio's family and condemned growing rates of violence.
In a statement posted on X, the platform formerly known as Twitter, the bishops
said that they will "join initiatives to recover security" in
Ecuador, where violence waged by drug cartels has pushed up murder rates,
forced thousands of people to migrate and has now jeopardized the credibility
of a presidential election that will be held Aug. 20.
"We
also ratify our commitment to pray and work for peace based on liberty, justice
and truth," the statement read.
Villavicencio was murdered as he left a campaign rally at a school in the
capital city of Quito, and entered a vehicle that was not bulletproof. Police
said the car was shot at 40 times by men on motorcycles.
On the campaign trail, the candidate had spoken out about the growing influence
of drug cartels in the South American country, whose ports on the Pacific Ocean
have become an important transit point for cocaine shipments headed to Asia and
the United States. He also campaigned against corruption.
In the week prior to his assassination, Villavicencio said he had received
death threats from a mafia boss with links to Mexico's Sinaloa Cartel.
Villavicencio, a married father of five and formerly an investigative
journalist, was the centrist candidate and had 7.5% support in polls, placing
him fifth out of eight candidates. He still had a chance for the second-place
outcome, which would have enabled him to participate in the October runoff
vote.
Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso declared three days of national mourning
as well as a state of emergency, which will enable police to search the homes
of suspects without warrants. However Lasso said that the first round of the
elections, on Aug. 20, will take place as planned. Lasso asked the U.S. Federal
Bureau of Investigation for help with the investigation with the FBI confirming
it was assisting, according to Reuters.
Located between Colombia and Peru, Ecuador had long evaded the drug-related
violence that affected its neighbors, but that started to change in 2020, with
the arrival of Mexican drug cartels.
Last year Ecuador's National Police said there were 4,500 homicides in the
nation of 18 million people, up from 990 homicides in 2018. The homicide rate
in the country quadrupled from 5.8 per 100,000 people in 2018 to 26.7 in 2022,
according to data from the Igarape Institute, a public security think tank in
Rio de Janeiro.
To escape the violence, as well as taxes imposed on small businesses by local
gangs, many Ecuadorians have been migrating to the United States. So far this
year 35,000 Ecuadorians have been encountered at the U.S. southern border after
entering without permission, according to the Department for Homeland Security.
Ecuador's capital city of Quito is expected to hold the 2024 International
Eucharistic Congress.
After an audience with Pope Francis in May, where preparations for the congress
and a potential papal visit in 2024 were discussed, the Archbishop Alfredo José
Espinoza Mateus of Quito spoke about his country's situation.
"We are worried because we are seeing that politics is simply understood
as a way to go after private interests, or ideological interests, and not as a
way to seek the common good," Archbishop Espinoza Mateus said.
"The people are very hopeful that (the pope) will come to Quito and that he will bless us and bless the country," he added. "We know that he is praying for Ecuador."
Ecuador's
president dissolved the nation's congress in May as he faced an impeachment
vote, forcing the country to hold a special election for a new president and
Congress in August.
In several statements the bishops' conference also has expressed its concern
over the country's political crisis.
"We have been left exposed to the dealings of mafias and criminal
bands," the bishops' conference said in a statement published May
10, adding that the nation's politics had become a "spectacle that is
making nobody laugh."
- - -
Manuel Rueda writes for OSV News from
Bogota, Colombia.
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