When Ecuador’s centre-right president Guillermo Lasso dissolved the country’s National Assembly amid a second impeachment proceeding against him in May 2023, he triggered a general election in which he did not run but which would choose his replacement. Throughout the early part of the campaign, polls often showed what seemed to be a scramble for the presidency among three contenders: Luisa González of the Movimiento Revolución Ciudadana of former president Rafael Correa; Jan Topić, a businessman with a colourful background that included training with the French Foreign Legion; and Fernando Villavicencio, a well-known journalist who had been a representative in the Nation Assembly and who had been forced into exile during Rafael Correa’s tenure as president amid repeated attacks by his government. Worrying aloud that Ecuador was on its way to becoming a narco-state, Fernando Villavicencio promised a strong response against the country’s gangs and corruption and by August 2023, he was publicly sharing threatening messages his team had received via the messaging app WhatsApp that he said originated with José Adolfo Macías Villamar aka Fito, the boss of Ecuador’s Los Choneros criminal network. With a post on X, Villavicencio responded, saying that “Despite the new threats, we will continue fighting for the brave people of our Ecuador.” On August 9th, 2023, however, in a crime that shocked the nation, Villavicencio, who had survived a previous assassination attempt in 2022, was murdered following a rally in Ecuador’s capital, Quito. The alleged 18 year-old hitman, from the Colombian city of Cali, was himself gunned down at the scene. Six other Colombians were arrested and charged with roles in the killing. All six were subsequently murdered during a prison riot that October. In the aftermath of the killing, Carlos “Invisible” Angulo, a grandee of the Los Lobos criminal organization, was convicted for his alleged role in the killing, and, in September 2025, Ecuadorian prosectors charged Rafael Correa’s former Minister of the Interior, José Serrano, Ronny “King Reaper” Aleaga, a member of the Latin Kings street gang and a former congressman, and businessman Xavier Jordan (who had been accused of being part of the money-laundering network of the slain Ecuadorian narco Leandro Norero) with being the “intellectual authors” of Villavicencio’s murder. Things remain very murky, however, and in an April 2025 video posted on X, Villavicencio’s widow, Verónica Sarauz, who has relentlessly pushed for justice on behalf of her late husband, accused then-Attorney General Diana Salazar of a “cover up” of the truth in her husband’s murder, claiming that Salazar had presented her with “false” information designed to make her publicly accuse Correa of the crime. She went on to say that it had “become clear” to her that neither Salazar or Ecuador’s President, Daniel Noboa “would allow the truth to come out” and that she “suspected” that both were “part of the sinister network surrounding my husband’s case.” The leader of Los Lobos, Wilmer “Pipo” Chavarría faked a death certificate claiming he had died from Covid-19 in February 2021, and, for good measure, also was claimed to have been killed in a prison riot the same month. Fleeing Ecuador, he was apprehended in the city of Málaga in southern Spain in November 2025 after having arrived from Morocco with false identity papers. In February 2026, from a prison cell in Spain, Pipo accused Daniel Noboa of ordering Villavicencio’s killing, claiming the killing was ordered “out of fear that Villavicencio would win the 2023 elections.” To decode this complex political and legal situation, we are joined on Notes From the World today by Verónica Sarauz, who has never stopped advocating for justice in the case.
