Assassination of Villavicencio in Ecuador, a repeat crime of 21st century socialism, who is next?

(Interamerican Institute for Democracy) In Ecuador, Presidential Candidate Fernando Villavicencio has been murdered. To kill anyone who threatens its impunity is a reiterated practice of the transnational organized crime’s dictatorial system whose political brand is 21st Century Socialism. Villavicencio is the most recent victim with whom they repeat their methodology that, in this century killed; activist Oswaldo Payá in Cuba, prosecutor Alberto Nisman in Argentina, General Jorge Gabela in Ecuador, General Raul Baduel in Venezuela, and others. It is a clear and present threat to defenders of freedom and democracy in the Americas. The question now is, who is next?

The assassination of Fernando Villavicencio perpetrated by hitmen, is a political crime carried out by the organized crime who wields political power and uses narcotics’ trafficking as one of its weapons of financial power and criminal control. The distinction between narcotics’ trafficking and political power has disappeared or is -at best- extremely blurry in the “narco-States” that 21st Century Socialism has turned Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua, and at one time Ecuador with Rafael Correa.

Narco-State is “the country whose political institutions are influenced in a very significative manner by the power and wealth of narcotics’ trafficking, whose leaders are simultaneously government officials and active members of the production and/or trafficking networks of illicit narcotic drugs, sheltered by their vested legal empowerment.” The government of a narco-State is comprised, or has been infiltrated by, those who sponsor, promote, protect, defend, participate and/or benefit from narcotics’ trafficking.

History proves that since the decade of the sixties of the past century, Cuba’s dictatorship through Fidel Castro and Ernesto “Che” Guevara proclaimed “narcotics’ trafficking as a weapon in the fight against imperialism.” Cuba was the first narco-State of the region with the partnership of dictator Castro with narcotics’ traffickers Pablo Escobar from Colombia and Roberto Suarez from Bolivia that produced the execution by a firing squad of General Arnaldo Ochoa, Colonel Antonio de la Guardia and others, in an attempt to coverup Castro.

During Rafael Correa’s government, Ecuador was a narco-State. This was proven by “Operation Phoenix” or “The Bombardment of Angostura” an attack by Colombian forces on 1 March of 2008 in the area of Angostura near Santa Rosa de Manamaru, Sucumbíos province of Ecuador, that killed 22 guerrilla members of the Colombian Revolutionary Armed Forces (FARC), including one of its Commanders AKA Raul Reyes, who were operating from Ecuadorean territory. This group was located because “Raul Reyes used a satellite-phone on 27 February to answer a call from Hugo Chavez” president of the narco-State of Venezuela.

President Lenin Moreno returned Ecuador to democracy with the restitution of all its essential components and started the dismantling of the narco-State, a process that has been somewhat weakened in Ecuador’s current administration. Resuming the fight against narcotics’ trafficking was an effective task of Moreno, who they attempted to topple in October of 2019. Correa had dismantled the anti-narcotics base at Manta and had stopped existing international cooperation.

The most important and courageous opposition to Correa and his 21st Century Socialism dictatorship was Fernando Villavicencio who was persecuted and exiled and who had identified, documented, and had demonstrated Ecuador’s condition as a narco-State, the existing corruption along with the violation of human rights that was institutionalized by Correa, as a replication of Cuban methods of State-terrorism.

Villavicencio’s presidential candidacy is the firmest stance to prevent the reinstallation of a narco-State in Ecuador and is a certificate of “no impunity” for Rafael Correa who has been lawfully sentenced to eight years of jail. Villavicencio was the obstacle to prevent other pro-Correa candidates and beneficiaries of 21st Century Socialism dictatorships to take Ecuador’s government to “rehabilitate” the fugitive, thus repeating Lula’s model who recently went from jail to the presidency of Brazil.

To prevent Ecuador from again becoming a 21st Century Socialism’s narco-State, to preclude Rafael Correa’s impunity, to recover the agenda towards the return to democracy started by President Moreno, are issues that Villavicencio’s murder has turned into “a national agenda” that any of the democratic candidates that is elected must now fulfill.

Twenty-First Century Socialism -or Castrochavism- is the political façade of transnational organized crime that seeks to present criminals as politicians and turn into politics crimes such as; narcotics’ trafficking, State-terrorism, international terrorism, corruption, human trafficking, enslavement, torture, attacks against international peace and security and more. It is the substitution of democracy by violence, a situation in which a political adversary has been turned into an enemy who can be eliminated.

The direct authors of Villavicencio’s assassination are only instruments. The “intellectual authors” of the crime, those who instigate, advice, order the commission of the crime, those who avail themselves of other persons to commit the crime, as defined in Article 42.2 of the Comprehensive Organic Criminal Code of Ecuador, is what is important. Everything points to members of 21st Century Socialism as the authors. Who benefits from the crime?

The death of Fernando Villavicencio shows the risks that fighters for freedom and democracy now endure, fighters who have enemies that kill and publicly threaten political leaders, such as Maria Corina Machado in Venezuela, Patricia Bullrich in Argentina and also threaten journalists, civic, union, and political leaders, men, and women of the civil resistance in Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia, and Nicaragua. The looming question now, while dictatorships continue wielding power is; who is next?

*Attorney & Political Scientist. Director of the Interamerican Institute for Democracy.

Translation from Spanish by Edgar L. Terrazas