What do deep divisions within Pachakutik, Correísmo’s troubled history with the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and of Nature, and the ongoing demonization of Fernando Villavicencio have to do with Ecuador’s recent presidential elections? Linda Etchart reports.
In the run-off to the presidential elections on 13 April 2025, Luisa González’s chances of winning the Presidency for the Revolución Ciudadana Party of former President Rafael Correa were thought to have increased with the endorsement of her candidacy by the Indigenous peoples’ party, Pachakutik, on 30 March.
While González’s list of proposals for a liberal circular economy put forward on 10 April contained many of the same social democratic policies set out by her rival, President Daniel Noboa, some specifically reflected the 25-point agreement reached with Pachakutik. Pachakutik’s demands included desisting from new oil and mining concessions, strengthening bilingual education, maintaining diesel subsidies, and reducing the VAT rate. González also announced that she would not allow any US military or private military company involvement in combating organized crime and narco-trafficking in the country.
Each of the two main candidates had received 44 percent of the vote in the first round, and it was thought that if González were able to add to her second round most of the 539,000 votes received by the Pachakutik candidate, Leonidas Iza, in the first round of the election in November 2023, she would be able to win a majority. It was not to be. So what contributed to a result that was unfavourable to González?
Noboa’s privilege
President Noboa used state resources to promote his campaign, through his privileged access to the media, and to government resources. It was reported that prior to the elections, Noboa had distributed almost US$600 million in benefits for the population, such as cheques issued to young people, to those affected by natural disasters, and to the military. This had resulted in an unequal campaign, according to Ecuadorian sociologist, Franklin Ramírez.
Correismo’s troubled history with the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and of Nature
Correismo’s relationship with Ecuador’s Indigenous communities has been complicated. President Rafael Correa, with the support of Alberto Acosta and Natalia Greene, introduced the Rights of Indigenous Peoples and the Rights of Nature into the Constitution in 2008, for which the President received international recognition.
In 2010, an agreement was reached with the UNDP for Ecuador to receive US$3.5 billion from the “international community” in return for not drilling for oil in the Yasuní National Park. Very little of the promised funds were forthcoming, however, and there were disputes over the distribution of the funds. It transpired that President Correa was not interested in the protection of Indigenous people’s rights and the Rights of Nature in the first place. He soon alienated Alberto Acosta, government minister and architect of the new constitution, as well as the Indigenous peoples whom he had committed himself to protect.
Correa withdrew from the agreement to protect Yasuní in 2013. Oil drilling continued, concessions were granted for other extractive industries to operate in the Amazon rainforest, and the government became increasingly authoritarian. Indigenous and non-Indigenous environment defenders were arrested and imprisoned; dissent and the press were suppressed, and support for both Correa and his party plummeted.
There were also allegations of corruption against government officials in the Correa administration. The former vice-president, Jorge Glas, was convicted in 2017 for receiving US$13.5 million in bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht. There were cases against other government officials, including against Carlos Ramon Pólit Faggioni, the former Ecuadorian Comptroller General, who was convicted in 2024 in a Florida court for laundering US$10 million, derived from money received from Odebrecht and other sources between 2010 and 2015.
The death of Fernando Villavicencio
One of President Correa’s fiercest critics was the whistleblower and journalist Fernando Villavicencio —who later became a candidate for the Movimiento Construye in the 2023 presidential elections— whose allegations of corruption against government officials resulted in his being persecuted by the administration, who ordered a police raid on his home in December 2013. In 2014, despite an order of protection from the Inter-American Court of Human Rights, a warrant was issued for his arrest, as well as that of his colleagues, National Assembly member Kléver Jiménez, and Dr Carlos Figueroa. Villavicencio and his colleagues sought refuge from the police with the Indigenous Sarayaku Kichwa of Ecuador, in whose community they stayed for several months before handing themselves in to the authorities. In 2017, Villavicencio went into exile in Peru.
As a journalist, Villavicencio focused on white-collar crime, mainly regarding contracts involving state-owned companies, with which he had been involved as a trade unionist. It was estimated that altogether his findings had exposed the loss of US$10 billion of Ecuador’s state funds that had been diverted into individuals’ private bank accounts through corrupt practices. He also investigated the infiltration of drug trafficking into the country and the penetration of criminal cartels into the government itself.
On 9 August 2023, 11 days before the election, Villavicencio was murdered after a campaign rally. Seven Colombians held to be responsible for his murder were killed in prison within days of his murder, six in the Litoral prison of Guayaquil and one in the Inca prison in Quito. One Colombian hitman had already died in the shoot-out with police at the time of his death. Two people were convicted of the murder, one of whom was the leader of the Los Lobos cartel, Carlos Angulo, alias “Invisible”, who apparently gave the order for the killing from prison. Angulo and his accomplice Laura “La Flaca” Castillo were each given 34-year sentences for the murder: three other accomplices were sentenced to 12 years.
There is mystery still surrounding Villavicencio’s assassination. He had received several death threats over the years, including one from the Sinaloa cartel —a Mexican-based organisation also involved in drug trafficking out of Ecuador— shortly before his murder. There was an attempt on his life in September 2022. Many more individuals were allegedly involved in planning his execution, including people close to the government. The security forces’ failure to apprehend the assailants before the assassination may have some bearing. The hitmen were under suspicion and out on bail on 9 August: orders for their arrest were issued two hours before they carried out the assassination.
Prior to the 2025 elections, Fernando Villavicencio’s widow Verónica Sarauz released a video in which she endorsed allegations that in the campaign for the 2023 elections she had been pressured by Attorney General Diana Salazar and now-President Daniel Noboa to blame Correa for her husband’s murder, despite the identity of the true assassins being known at the time.
The ongoing demonization of Fernando Villavicencio
In the run-up to the 2025 presidential election, Villavicencio’s reputation came under fire, not for the first time.
Back in 2023, the late politician was blamed by his opponents for the Revolución Ciudadana’s last-minute drop in popularity prior to the elections. In the run-up to the polls, knowing his life was in danger, and on receiving death threats, Villavicencio had made a statement that was interpreted as an accusation that Rafael Correa himself wished him dead.
By the time of the 2025 elections on 13 April, the late Villavicencio was still being demonized by the supporters of Luisa González, partly as a legacy of the past, for having cast a slur on Correa’s reputation. The Correístas made the accusation that Villavicencio was a CIA informant. This was in the context of ongoing prosecutions and convictions of members of the judiciary by the Attorney General Diana Salazar. Salazar was involved in the prosecution of Jorge Glas, Correa’s vice-president. In 2022, Salazar launched the “Caso Metástasis” – an investigation into collusion between drug traffickers and government officials, which was ongoing at the time of the 2025 elections.
Salazar herself has received death threats. She has been accused of being close to the US administration, and of having worked in collusion with the former US Ambassador to Ecuador (2019-2024), Michael Fitzpatrick, who has made allegations of narco-trafficking involvement at the highest levels of government.
Recordings have apparently come to light of conversations in which Salazar expressed her hostility to the Revolución Ciudadana, which have led to accusations not only that the prosecutions in which Salazar is involved are politically motivated, but also that she conspired to damage the reputation of Luisa González and the Correa administration in order to ensure Noboa’s electoral victory.
Deep divisions within Pachakutik contributed to Noboa’s electoral victory
At the news of Noboa’s electoral victory, Luisa González claimed that the presidential elections were fraudulent. Yet the opinion polls prior to the elections indicated that the two candidates were neck-and-neck, and it is possible that González did not receive the Indigenous votes she had anticipated.
Pachakutik itself is bitterly divided. While the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (CONAIE) led by Leonidas Iza, supported González – with reservations – CONFENIAE, the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of the Ecuadorian Amazon, were calling for a null vote, or a vote for Noboa. It was thought that González might receive 60-70 percent of the Pachakutik vote.
Many Indigenous communities felt betrayed by the Revolución Ciudadana under President Correa, whose administration was successfully prosecuted by the Sarayaku Kichwa community in Pastaza for violation of their rights at the Inter-American Court of Human Rights in 2012. Correa was condemned by Human Rights Watch for his labelling of Indigenous environment defenders as “terrorists”.
Villavicencio, Correa’s nemesis, was a founder member of Pachakutik in 1995, and a defender of both Indigenous peoples’ rights and the environment. His vice-presidential candidate of the 2023 elections, who also stood in the 2025 elections, Andrea González Nader, is an environmental activist herself.
One example of Indigenous communities’ support for Fernando Villavicencio, prior to the 2025 elections, is a Facebook post uploaded by Marlon Santi, of the Sarayaku and Achuar peoples, responding to the vilification of Fernando Villavicencio by certain elements of the press. Marlon Santi reposted a communiqué from Villavicencio’s daughters, Amanda and Tamia Villavicencio Sandoval, in which they defend their father’s reputation. He notes in his own eulogy of Villavicencio that he and the Sarayaku had been prepared to risk their own safety by giving refuge to Villavicencio and his colleagues when sought by Correa’s security forces:
‘I am the one responsible for having given humanitarian assistance in compliance with international norms, to Don Villa [Villavicencio], Klever Jimenez, Carlitos Figueroa, whom I consider my true friends, from the many conversations we had in the silence of the forest… we knew their lives were in danger… which is why we defended them, even though we were surrounded by the red beret special commandos from Latacunga. We were prepared to defend them through the diplomatic channels of the United Nations and the International Labour Organization. They were martyrs for the truth. If there is no justice on earth, then there will be divine justice… Hasta siempre, Don Villa.’
Dr Linda Etchart is associate lecturer in Human Geography at Kingston University, and a regular contributor to the Latin America Bureau Environment Defenders Series. She is the author of Global Governance of the Environment, the Rights of Nature and Indigenous Peoples: Extractive Industries in the Ecuadorian Amazon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
www.lindaetchart.com
