2023-09-09 05:46:23
In Ecuador, which has been shaken by ongoing violence, another politician has been killed a few weeks before the presidential runoff election. The body of city councilor Bolívar Vera from the city of Durán in the southwestern province of Guayas, which has been hit by drug violence, was found covered in blood and tied up in a forest area on Friday, the public prosecutor’s office said on online networks. Accordingly, Vera was shot.
The local politician was reported missing by his colleagues on Thursday. According to a police officer, his body had “multiple gunshots, apparently in the head and chest.”
Just eleven days before the presidential election on August 9th, the promising candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who had made the fight against corruption his most important issue, was shot dead after a campaign event in the capital Quito. The former journalist’s research had put ex-President Correa in the dock. Villavicencio was in second place in the polls before his assassination.
A mayor, a member of parliament and a local leader were also killed during the election campaign.
Ecuador was once considered a comparatively stable, peaceful country between its violent neighbors Colombia and Peru. But in recent years the country itself has become a hub for drug trafficking. Ecuador’s large ports, weak security and corruption increasingly attracted foreign cartels, which had come under increasing pressure in Mexico and Colombia.
Meanwhile, a power struggle between local gangs was taking place in the country’s prisons. 430 people have been killed there since 2021. The Ecuadorian city most affected by the violence is the port city of Guayaquil, also in the province of Guayas.
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