Ecuador News

Manta Mayor Agustín Intriago died Sunday afternoon following an armed attack at a public project inauguration ceremony. According to police, a female employee of the mayor’s office was also killed, and two others were injured by the gunfire. The National Police command reports that one of the suspected shooters, injured in a shootout with Intriago’s...

By Chris Dalby Jorge Bismarck Véliz España was an ambitious man growing up in Puerto Arturo, a neighborhood in the larger town of Chone. A hub of about 50,000 people located 40 kilometers inland from Ecuador’s Pacific coast, Chone was a busy trading spot for cattle ranchers and farmers. During the 1990s, Véliz España made...

New polls suggest that Ecuador’s presidential race is headed to a runoff. According to pollster Numma, Luisa González holds the lead at 33.8% in the field of eight candidates. Former vice president Otto Sonnenholzner is second with 17.5% followed by Yaku Pérez at 15.1%. The election is scheduled for August 20 with a runoff, if...

A month ahead of the August 20 national election, political experts say the level of voter indecision and apathy about the presidential race is “off the charts.” Experts say the shortened election timeframe and the emergency nature of cross death rules have created an unprecedented level of confusion among the electorate. “Voters are aware of...

In another sign of the growing division in Ecuador’s indigenous movement, most movement leaders are rejecting the advice of Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities (Conaie) President Leonidas Iza to vote “null” in the presidential cross death election and supporting Yaku Pérez. “This is another sign of Iza attempting to control the movement and, again, he has...

By José María Irujo David Morales, owner of the Spanish security company UC Global, S.L., which spied on Julian Assange during the Wikileaks founder’s time at the Ecuadorian Embassy in London, also allegedly spied for the CIA on meetings held in 2018 by the former president of Ecuador, Rafael Correa (2007-2017), with former presidents of Argentina, Brazil and...

A prominent rights activist from the southern Chinese province of Guangzhou has been prevented from boarding a Qatar Airways flight from Bangkok to Ecuador, where he had hoped to take his family to claim political asylum in the United States. Liang Songji, who has been repeatedly jailed by the Chinese authorities for his criticism of...

Four leading presidential candidates in the August 20 cross death election offer starkly different approaches to solving Ecuador’s debt crisis. Luisa González (Citizens Revolution) and Yaku Pérez (Democracia Sí, Popular Unity) favor a policy of negotiation and auditing debt contracted in recent years while Otto Sonnenholzner and Fernando Villavicencio would focus on growing the economy,...