Ecuador presidential candidate assassinated after threatening cartels — an ominous omen
Ecuador, the little jewel country of the Andes, has seen a very ugly event — an assassination of a leading presidential candidate eleven days before the election, coming just after he threatened to put cartel drug leaders away.
SHOCKING VIDEO: Ecuador presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who was leading in the polls, has just been assassinated two weeks before an election the 59-year-old was expected to win. Journalists were referring to him as “right-wing” candidate!pic.twitter.com/69wFzCK4DK
— Simon Ateba (@simonateba) August 10, 2023
Ecuador presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio had received threats for calling out narco gangs and graft. “This confirms that our campaign proposal would gravely affect these criminal structures,” he had said. Today gunmen shot him dead. https://t.co/vvCwcMWbjN
— Juan Forero (@WSJForero) August 10, 2023
Woh… Ecuadoran presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio – assassinated today – said he received a threat from a local Sinaloa Cartel boss.
“If I go on referring to him and his structure, they will attack me, try to take my life.” https://t.co/4RbmZFZWLD
— Ioan Grillo (@ioangrillo) August 10, 2023
Worse and worse. Heavily armed gang members pose in a video while one reads out a declaration claiming responsibility for the murder of the Ecuadoran presidential candidate.
The style is very similar to the cartel videos made in Mexico. https://t.co/l1wqtXgPNU
— Ioan Grillo (@ioangrillo) August 10, 2023
Some other background: According to the Washington Post, Fernando Villavicencio, who was assassinated, by some accounts was conservative, though not the only conservative in the multi-candidate race. Polls said he was running second in the presidential race on an anti-corruption platform, while a leftist was leading. A former journalist, Villavicencio incurred the wrath of sleazy far left former president Rafael Correa, a close buddy of the late unlamented Hugo Chavez, who’s now in exile in his wife’s country of Belgium apparently fleeing the long arm of Ecuadorean law for his corruption activities. Correa sued Villavicencio for his exposes of him for libel, but Villavicencio managed to get out of the country before they could jail him. After that, Correa was the one who ended up leaving the country after his term in office expired, and Villavicencio came back to Ecuador run for president.
Drugs, migration and corruption are said to be the top issues in the campaign.
This observation from another journalist is interesting, too — apparently the country has gone downhill fast in a timeframe coinciding with Joe Biden’s opening of the border to all comers:
Not long ago Ecuador was a haven of peace in the Andes. Organised crime has grown there with terrifying speed. Fernando Villavicencio was an anti-corruption campaigner and a democrat. RIP https://t.co/9RF6RpIdc7
— Michael Reid (@michaelreid52) August 10, 2023
And the bad guys plaguing Ecuador are probably numerous, but the biggest baddie is the Sinaloa Cartel of Mexico — the very ones benefitting most from Joe Biden’s open borders and all the “crossing fees” they are collecting from the illegal border crossers into the U.S. We know they have wrought havoc onto Mexico, particularly its north, given the shootouts and shutdowns seen in border cities such as Tijuana and many other cities, and they have reportedly taken over at least some of the ports in Mexico and Ecuador, too for the purposes of smuggling drugs and perhaps people.
Don’t forget that there’s this kind of trouble in Colombia to Ecuador’s northern border as well:
— Monica Showalter (@mmshowalter1) August 6, 2023
Knowing of the FARC-Ecuador links seen in the recent past, it’s a sure thing there is drug cartel activity spillover into Ecuador, from Colombia, too. There have even been reports that the Sinaloa Cartel is wreaking at least some of the havoc in Colombia.
So Joe Biden’s open borders and all the profit that has delivered to Mexico’s drug cartels now shows evidence of not only harming Mexico and the U.S. as drugs and illegal immigrants, including criminals, spill in, it’s also wreaking havoc up and down the hemispheric coast.
In the states, the drugs, of course, fuel the homeless crisis, while the human smuggling fuels the illegals crisis, and the hellish perfect storm that has come of it all as blue cities fully support homeless and illegal immigrant lifestyles.
Now we see entire democratic processes besieged, with more than one country being destabilized by cartels.
Ecuador is stubbornly insisting that the show must go on with the August 20 election, and that means it’s likely that the leftist in the lead will win, although there could be surprises. In general, more leftists in power mean more drugs, more instability, yet unlike typical San Francisco voters, Latin American voters do change their voting patterns with events.
Other than the leftist winning, the other possible scenario is that a strongman-type will get elected instead, following the pattern of Nayib Bukele of El Salvador, who instituted a draconian system of jail-them-all justice which seems to have ended significant crime in that country.
The #Villavicencio assassination will supercharge the conversation in #Ecuador about whether Bukelismo should be imported to deal with security issues. The conversation was already prominent, this is now a match to kindling. https://t.co/0z73dATlhA
— Eric Farnsworth (@ericfarns) August 10, 2023
Mexico has begun to follow that path, militarizing large segments of that country as El Salvador did, even with a leftist at the helm of power.
Ecuador, given its history, is perfectly capable of following that example, too. These systems do make the trains run on time, for awhile at least, but history shows they aren’t entirely sustainable in the long term in Latin America and could rapidly devolve into military corruption and dictatorship as Venezuela did.
Still, they are the only effective thing that’s on offer, given the kinds of problems these countries face.
The scary thing is that if assassination becomes de rigeur, we are going to see a lot more cave-ins and corruption from the leaders of Latin America who do manage to get elected, compromised men, and bought men, in hock to the cartels, and it could be a lot of them. The assassination in Ecuador has got to be scaring a lot of them and some may want to cut secret deals with cartels, as is the practice in Latin America.
As for the U.S. we will get more drugs, more illegals, and more cartel activity moving into the U.S., thanks to Joe Biden’s open borders. It’s a horrific scenario, and all the unintended consequences of Joe Biden leaving the border doors wide open to bring in more Democrat voters. What a terrible picture this is creating — illegals and destabilization in their homelands. What’s more, Joe Biden has zero plan and zero policy for Latin America, and even the Democrats are complaining, so the U.S. is playing no constructive or influential role whatsoever as these events unfold.
Basically, it’s coming back to bite us — and nobody expected it, because nobody in the Biden administration thought this region was important.
Image: Twitter screen shot
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