David Villamar talked to me about Ecuador’s violent crime disaster (part 2)
Political persecution and neoliberalism helped make Ecuador the deadliest country in the Americas
Since 2017, US-backed right wing rule in Ecuador has made it the most dangerous country in the Americas, as even supporters of those governments (like The Economist) concede.
Since 1980 the homicide rate in Ecuador had been steadily increasing under neoliberal governments. But Rafael Correa’s leftwing (2007-2017) government, known by its supporters as the Revolucion Ciudadana, brought about a stunning 2/3 reduction. The chart below (H/T Ollie Vargas) is only updated to 2022. The homicide rate is now over 40 per 100,000 people.
The return of the violent crime problem has coincided with the return of US-backed rightwing governments, and fierce persecution of the leftwing Correaist movement that had made Ecuador safe.
Quito-based political analyst and economist David Villamar was kind enough to discuss Ecuador with me in January.. I posted the first part of our discussion weeks ago. Below is the second part
Joe E: On the one hand, looking at it positively, the Correaist almost won the 2023 presidential election, they need just a few points to win the presidency: 48% of the valid votes went to Luisa Gonzalez, the Correaist candidate, despite years of persecution of Corraists. There is the clear connection between the persecution and the catastrophe that the country is experiencing,
David V: They are intimately related, but I think that what is not being said enough, and it is exasperating, is that this is a country in which the rate of violent deaths grew steadily for 30 years. In other words, today [the late former rightwing president] León Febres Cordero (1984-1988) is spoken of as somebody who brought down violent crime. What a lie! In the time of Febres Cordero, violent deaths increased by 13%. To merely stop the increase that was underway would have been a failure but it actually increased by 13%. The only reason Febres Cordero is remembered as successful is because, first, he persecuted the left. He massacred a subversive group known as Alfaro Vive Carajo. The right conflates insurgency, mass political demonstrations, and common crime. They bundle all those things together to tell you that he beat violent crime. [Below a chart shows the homicide rate from 1980-2021 indicating which president was in office during each year]
Alfaro Vive Carajo was never a serious threat to the state. It was an excuse for Febres Cordero to repress student and union movements. There were grave abuses during that time like the disappearance of the Restrepo brothers, the disappearance of Consuelo Benavides. Dozens of others disappeared under murkier circumstances. There was also ample use of torture. Febres Cordero combatted the left, not violent crime, but many want to rewrite history.
After Febres Cordero’s government the homicide rate continued to increase. It peaked at about 17-19 deaths per hundred thousand inhabitants, just as the US was forced to close up its military base in Manta which had been in the country for a decade. So, there is no evidence to sustain that it is because of the closure of the base that violent crime increased.
Joe E: Throughout my life I've traveled a lot inside Ecuador. During the 1970s violent crime was not a big concern. Then I saw how security deteriorated starting in the 1980s, how the security situation constantly worsened every time I visited. It never stopped until the first years of Correa’s government. Practically overnight the country became quite safe. I could travel throughout Ecuador with my family, without fear. But the trend, as you say, under neoliberal governments since the 1980s has been constantly increasing crime. Correa solved the problem but now it has returned, and it has never been worse. Until the 1980s, rightwing rule in Ecuador was not characterized by an exploding crime rate like it has since 1980. Why is that? Is there something about Ecuador’s rightwing elite since 1980 that makes it especially bad for security?
David V: I think there are two elements. First is that neoliberalism, understood as the weakening of the state at all costs, came at a time when organized crime managed more and more resources, because the new drugs were more additive, cheaper to produce, etc. Organized crime functions as a parallel state. If you weaken the formal state, that power is gained by the parallel state.
That parallel state is present in all countries, but even more so in countries that are close to major cocaine producers such as Peru and Colombia. Thus, the weakening of the state constitutes an increase in the capacity of influence of the parallel state through drug trafficking. You weaken the state when you eliminate scholarships, you no longer give free uniforms or books to public schools in the poorest areas. If you start charging a symbolic fee to family members, what are these people going to do, especially in times of crisis? They take their children out of school and put them to work, to look for bread, and there they become easy targets for the mafia. When you weaken the state and take away opportunities from the most vulnerable, you are turning them into the raw material of the parallel state that is organized crime.
So, that's something that maybe didn't happen before because organized crime had fewer resources, but there are more and more resources for transnational crime. It has more and more capacity for local action in each country. And it is probably going to explode in those countries where you weaken the state fastest. So, that's one factor, the neoliberal element.
The other factor is a sickening thing that has occurred in Ecuador over the last seven years: “De-Correaization”. The attitude adopted was that “Ah, if Correa did it, it must be wrong”. Under Correa, the Judicial Council was able to dismiss judges. So that attitude was “Ah, let's switch to a Judiciary Council that can't dismiss judges”. They did it in 2019 and since then you can no longer dismiss judges who release criminals. What a great policy!
Similarly “Ah, Correismo created the Ministry of Justice, let's put an end to that Ministry of Justice”. “Correismo created coordinating ministries to improve the efficiency of public policies, let's get rid of them”. So, all the politics that for 10 years gave you positive results, you erased with the stroke of a pen under the banner of “de-Correaization”.
If you do the opposite of what works well, what do you think is going to happen? You're going to have opposite results.
And ultimately, the responsibility for that lies with the press, because it is the press that for 10 years was in charge of hiding and distorting all the good that was achieved in the 10 years of progressive government in Ecuador. Correa’s government built several hydroelectric plants and what did they tell us? “Ah, but they were overpriced and poorly built hydroelectric dams” So, for years the government stopped investing in the hydroelectric plants and what did you end up with in December, 2023? Blackouts.
It has been years of the press telling everyone constantly that we must undo everything that once worked. It's very painful.
Joe E: Yes the drug traffickers bordering Ecuador started becoming much more wealthy around 1980. But don't you think that the Ecuadorian right is especially disastrous for security, even more than other right-wingers in the world?
David V: Well, I understand the point and I would also like to believe that it is a problem only of the Ecuadorian right, but I am afraid that the same thing that happened in Ecuador is going to happen in Argentina. Milei is already doing the same thing in Argentina that Jullio César Trujillo [a key appointee of former President Lenin Moreno] and Moreno did here in Ecuador: erasing with a stroke of the pen everything that was built as institutionality and capacity for action of the State, wiping out half of the public sector in terms of ministries, privatize everything and is not shy about transferring the cost of the crisis to the poorest.
Now, the difference is that Argentina is not a route to the main consuming countries. Ecuador is, because drugs leave Colombia, enter through Ecuador and leave for the Pacific to go north. In the case of Argentina, it may work differently, but the logic of weakening the state is the same. Impoverish the most vulnerable and you're throwing them into illicit activities be it drugs, robbery or contract killings. Milei received a violent death rate of 5 per 100,000 inhabitants. Let's see where he leaves it in four years. And then we will be able to know if it was really a problem of the Ecuadorian elites or if it is a general myopia of the right that does not understand that now it is no longer a question of with or without a state.
Weaken the state, and you strengthen transnational crime. As long as we don't understand that, all we're going to see is more forced migration, more increase in drug production, and more drug use. That's the future of civilization, at least in the next 10 - 15 years. I believe that the great challenges are going to be the forced migrations that we are seeing in Europe and the Americas and the increased political power of transnational crime.