“They said they were going to break me”: candidate Fernando Villavicencio denounced threats from the Sinaloa Cartel

The Ecuadorian presidential candidate shot to death on Wednesday, Fernando Villavicencio, had denounced the threats from a criminal group a few weeks earlier. The Ecuadorian politician told the media that Los Choneros, a local armed wing of the Sinaloa Cartel, had warned him that they would attack him and his campaign group if they continued to refer to them. “What it does is confirm that, indeed, our campaign proposal seriously affects these criminal structures. And here I am, showing my face. I’m not afraid of them. For 20 years I have gambled in this country against these criminal structures, and I reiterate: I am not afraid of them, ”he said in the images posted on the internet.

Villavicencio’s murder took place this Wednesday afternoon, after a campaign event in Quito, the Ecuadorian capital. The Ecuadorian politician was a member of the Assembly until its dissolution and presided over the Oversight Commission before heading the Movimiento Construye candidacy. Most of the polls placed him in fourth or fifth position among the eight candidates to succeed Guillermo Lasso. Up to now, the elections continue to be scheduled for August 20, 11 days from now. Villavicencio presented himself as a battering ram against corruption under the slogan It’s time for the brave.

The country is suffocated by an unprecedented wave of crime and insecurity, a situation that had led the candidate to maintain a fierce discourse against criminal groups. In several of his public interventions, he reiterated a phrase: “The time for threats is over.” “In a year and a half we are going to subdue drug trafficking. I’m not afraid of them (…) The only thing they can do is kill me, and with that we liberate an entire town. I am not afraid of death, because I have already defeated it, ”he exclaimed before his followers at the beginning of July.

Villavicencio came to affirm in other acts that he had been recommended to take some precautions due to the threats. “They told me to wear a (bulletproof) vest. Here I am, sweaty shirt, damn it. You are my bulletproof vest, I don’t need it! You are from a brave people, and I am brave like you, ”he shouted excitedly. And he continued: “Here I am. They said they were going to break me (…) Let the drug lords come, come. Let the hitmen come. The time for threats is over.”

In the video broadcast on networks in which he denounced the threats, one name stood out: Alias ​​Fito, the leader of Los Choneros. The criminal group, one of the most powerful in the country, originated in the 1990s, in the coastal city of Manta. He currently operates for the Sinaloa Cartel with cocaine trafficking. And it is facing other groups such as Los Lobos, the Tiguerones and the Chone Killers, three gangs that carry out logistics operations for the trafficking of this narcotic for the Jalisco Nueva Generación Cartel (CJNG).

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