| Welcome back to The World Weekly, where we deconstruct some of the biggest international news stories from the week and place the seemingly local events in global context. Ecuador's presidential elections on Sunday come 10 days after the assassination of a prominent candidate and amid concerns over the global drug trade and the climate crisis. Let's discuss what connects the three.  Ecuadorean presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio speaks during a campaign rally in Quito on August 9. (Reuters) What's at stake in Ecuador? Ecuador votes tomorrow in a tense presidential election after a shockingly bloody few weeks in politics. Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio of the Movimiento Construye Party was assassinated in public in the capital of Quito last week despite heavy security, sending jitters through the Andean nation. His was not the only politics-related killings though – it came after the murder of Agustín Intriago, the mayor of Manta, Ecuador’s third largest city, on July 26; and was followed by the shooting, in the northern province of Esmeraldas on Monday, of Pedro Briones, a local leader of Revolución Ciudadana, the party of former president Rafael Correa. On Thursday, gunfire also interrupted a caravan being held by presidential candidate Daniel Noboa, though he was not hurt. “Ecuador is experiencing its bloodiest era," Luisa González, the presidential candidate for Revolución Ciudadana, said in a post on X (formerly Twitter), condoling the death of Briones. The murders have shone a spotlight on rising crime and violence in a country that once was considered relatively stable despite being sandwiched between Colombia and Peru – the world’s largest cocaine producers. President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the opposition-dominated National Assembly in May and called snap elections to avoid an impeachment. Ahead of the polls, experts had already warned that the violence may be a bigger problem than authorities realise. “Ecuador is not prepared for this violence, and the security forces and the general population don’t know how to react,” María Teresa Escobar, who runs the political website Primicias, had told the Financial Times in May. “Before it was so safe that people didn’t think about crime and would leave their doors unlocked.” The homicide rate in the country is now the fourth highest in Latin America. At least 3,568 violent deaths were reported in just the first six months of this year, which was an increase of 70% in the same period last year.  Members of the police stand guard as supporters gather at campaign rally on Thursday. (Reuters) How did we get here? A series of ill-thought out policies – including those under Correa that doubled prison populations, making them a breeding ground for gangs, and resulted in economic decline, which has fed crime – unintentionally coincided with unrelated developments – like the truce between the government and the guerrilla group FARC in neighbouring Colombia – to transform Ecuador into a major participant in the global drug trade. In a way Ecuador appears to be a victim of circumstances. Its porous borders, major Pacific ports and the use of dollars as legal tender make it easier to move and ship cocaine as well as launder money, turning it into a “drug traffickers’ paradise”. Reports say Mexican cartels – including Mexico’s infamous Sinaloa cartel (which boasts El Chapo as a founder), Colombian and Venezuelan groups, and the Albanian mafia are all vying to control Ecuador’s drug trade and simultaneously infiltrating the state’s institutions to tip them in their favour. In the past, Villavicencio, who had vowed to fight corruption and violence in the country, claimed he had been threatened by affiliates of the Sinaloa cartel since his campaign presented a threat to such groups. In that light, the murder of Villavicencio could be interpreted as a message to authorities against trying to dislodge them. Six Colombian nationals have been arrested and charged with murder for their suspected involvement in Villavicencio murder, while one suspect died at the scene after a gunfight. To be sure, authorities have not confirmed any speculations or provided any motive for the attack. "Cartels are criminal organisations that don't have an ideology," organised crime expert Pedro Granja told the BBC. "They are criminal organisations moving illicit goods, they follow the same logic as a company. They are doing a market study at the moment - then we'll see whether if they want to, they can paralyse the elections."  Kominta, a Waorani Indigenous man, goes hunting in the Waorani Community of Bameno, Ecuador. (AFP) What does this mean? Analysts believe Villavicencio's murder, in particular, could affect how the country of 18 million votes on Sunday – if a presidential candidate is not safe, then how can the average person be? Villavicencio was in second place in opinion polls, ahead of his death, while the leading candidate was González, who is close to former president Correa (2007-2017), who is currently living in exile in Belgium after being sentenced to eight years in jail in a graft case. Since opinion polls are prohibited in the lead-up to the elections, there’s no way to know exactly how much the polls were impacted, but the assassination certainly seems to have compounded concerns on two fronts: Ecuador’s democracy and the country’s presence in the global drug trade. The latest report by the United Nations warned that global demand for cocaine is at a record high. It said coca cultivation rose by 35% between 2020 and 2021 to record levels and Colombia still dominates trafficking routes. According to its estimates, nearly one-third of Colombia's coca fields are within 10km of the border with Ecuador. In 2021, Ecuador was the country with the third most seizures of illicit drugs in the world, at 7%, after Colombia (41%) and the US (11%), and it has become a top exporter of cocaine to Europe. Whoever wins, it seems, will have an escalating crisis on their hands. Additionally, experts were already worried that the victory of some candidates, like González, who has promised to reinstate many of Correa’s policies, could usher the return of democratic decline. Correa implemented fines against media companies who criticised the government, removed presidential term limits, targeted activists and opposition leaders with prosecutions and espionage and shut down NGOs opposed to oil and mining projects. Personally, too, Ecuadorians appear to be reconsidering their tryst with democracy. According to Latinobarómetro, an annual public opinion survey, only 37% of Ecuadorians said they're satisfied with a democratic rule and about a fifth of people said they'd be fine with authoritarianism. “The collapse in governments' performance is reflected in this dissatisfaction… making the region vulnerable and prone to populism and antidemocratic regimes," researchers warned in the report, Axios said. All this is particularly important because on Sunday, Ecuadorians will also vote in another crucial poll on whether oil production should be allowed to continue in the northeast corner of the Yasuni National Park in the Amazon region. Drilling there provides almost 12% of the total crude output produced by state-controlled Petroecuador and shutting it down would cost an estimated loss of $16 billion over the next 20 years. But the national park is also one of the most diverse biospheres in the world and home to three of the world’s largest uncontacted Indigenous populations. At a time when the world is visibly grappling with the effects of the climate crisis, experts have warned that the Amazon basin, which stretches across eight nations and is a vital carbon sink, is dangerously close to a tipping point. Scientists say once 20-25% of the forest is destroyed, rainfall will dramatically decline, transforming more than half the rainforest to tropical savannah - a particularly devastating loss for the fight against the climate crisis. The referendum, hailed by Swedish activist Greta Thunberg as “historic”, could become, as American actor Leonardo DiCaprio put it “an example in democratising climate politics, offering voters the chance to vote not just for the forest but also for Indigenous rights, our climate, and the well-being of our planet.” In that way, it is as important for the rest of the world as it is for Ecuador. A lot rides on the elections on Sunday for Ecuador. But just like Villavicencio had said before his death, “Here nothing is free. This democracy has cost us our lives. Defending the homeland has cost us our lives.” Only time will tell how it plays out. That's all for this week, folx. If you have any suggestions, feedback, or questions, please write to me at sanya.mathur@hindustantimes.com  Trending news this week | | These women tried to warn us about AI
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Reupping this one in light of this week's newsletter: Harper's Magazine presents a revisionist view of the drug wars. It discusses the argument that drug cartels don't exist and are sort of presented as a bogeyman so that governments and its officials (in this case in the US and Mexico) have ultimately benefited from the so-called "war on drugs." This is one of the most fascinating articles in a while and reminded me of Barry Seal, an American pilot who worked for the US government and Colombian drug lord Pablo Escobar at the same time. His story (in case you're interested) is told in the Tom Cruise's American Made, and, in a limited capacity, in Netflix's Narcos. | | | | | How Sisi Ruined Egypt
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