It is the worst of signs. two assassinations Consecutive events announce swamps of blood where societies sink for long periods. Two assassinations were the ones that made him discover Colombia the dimension of the criminal apparatus that financed cocaine trafficking.
Luis Carlos Galan He had already gone up on stage and was seconds away from starting his speech, when the crowd fired at him, riddling him. He was assassinated by the Medellín Cartel through that annihilating arm called Los Extraditables, because the presidential candidate of the Liberal Party had promised that, as soon as he became president, he would authorize the extradition of Colombian drug traffickers to the United States.
That assassination that occurred in Cundinamarca a few days before the 1989 presidential election completed the revelation that had begun five years earlier, when Hitmen of Pablo Escobar They ambushed and shot Rodrigo Lara Bonilla, the Minister of Justice who remained in the history of Colombia as the first to denounce the head of the Medellín Cartel. What both assassinations revealed was the dimension of the destructive power that the cartelized drug trafficking had reached.
When the drug gangs they go from causing deaths in wars between them due to territorial disputes, to the dimension of political crimes of weighty figures, what remains to be seen is that drug trafficking has reached a level of organization and firepower to plunge the country into a catastrophic war.
Political crimes always herald serious social tumors. In Mexico, where there has always been corruption, two consecutive assassinations exposed the density of mafia corruption that fermented in the dark shadow of the president Carlos Salinas de Gortariin the nineties.
The bullets that bled Luis Donaldo Colosio, the pro-government presidential candidate who promised to dismantle the corruption structure set up by the president’s brother, were triggered by paid hit men in those shadows of PRI power. Just like the murder of number two of the PRI, José Francisco Ruiz Massieu, occurred immediately after.
In Ecuadoras in Colombia, what two great political crimes announced is that drug trafficking is in a position to plunge society into a swamp of blood, because its tentacles reach all corners of the State and its firepower already has the capacity to turn the country into a battlefield.
The mayor of Manta, Agustín, Intriago was shot six times with a rifle in that port city disputed by drug gangs. Three weeks later, in the Ecuadorian capital they shot down the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio at an electoral campaign rally in which he had recommitted himself to fight against drug trafficking and the other mafias that eat away at the country.
As in any city with a major port, Manta is disputed by powerful drug gangs. Killing the mayor is a warning message to officials who refuse to agree with the power of drug trafficking. But killing Fernando Villavicencio was more than a warning. The presidential candidate for a centrist coalition He was the main enemy of political corruption and drug-trafficking mafias.
Behind this political crime is surely the drug trafficking, but it is also probable that the conspiracy included some other power of the many that had Villevicencio in their sights, for being the target of their complaints. In any case, what is clear is that the impact of crime on the political scene will mainly affect the correísmo.
In fact, the consequences of the assassination immediately affected Revolución Ciudadana. It was inevitable that suspicions would reach that party. The riddled candidate was the main complainant of corruptions and negotiated during the government of Rafael Correa. And that president expressed his contempt for him with a variety of insults and threats.
Until hours before the gusts that riddled him, the volcanic leftist leader expressed his resentment against whoever had denounced him in the Odebrecht casein alleged agreements with illegal mining and in the shady dealings with a Chinese oil company.
Exuberant in terms of insults and threats, he unloaded both against Villavicencio in the networks And there is no shortage of phrases that sound like the time to pay dearly for his accusations was approaching. Some even seem to announce an imminent revenge. For this reason, while those messages loaded with hate and threats multiplied on the networks when the body shot was still being watched, the direct accusations against correísmo and its leader also multiplied.
The widow said that her husband was assassinated by an entente between correístas and narcos. He also accused Piedad Córdoba, the Colombian leader who represented Chavismo in her country, of having confronted Villavicencio to the point of threatening to make him disappear.
At that point, influencers, commentators and party leaders anti-correistas they hurled suspicious phrases at the temperamental ex-president. Is it logical to put Rafael Correa under suspicion? Does the explicit hatred that he professed for her and the threats that he publicly launched until hours before the murder prove that he may be behind the assassination?
Logic indicates otherwise. That Correa has publicly shown the density of his contempt and his desire for revenge, may be proof that he did not order or allow a conspiracy to assassinate him. The fact that so close to the moment of the crime Correa published a phrase that sounds like a threat, instead of proving his participation in the act, would prove the opposite.
The former president is bigoted and vindictive, but he is smart. Strictly speaking, he would have to be very stupid to incriminate himself by announcing that his enemy, in addition to being the target of his hatred, will be the target of bullets. That Correa said the atrocities that he said days before the assassination, what seems to prove is that he was not in the plans to assassinate him. Otherwise, besides being criminal, Rafael Correa I would be a jerk. And he is not.
But that does not imply ruling out that some in his political space, also affected by Villavicencio’s investigations and denunciations, have colluded with a drug mafia to eliminate him. Although there are other leaders that hated the journalist, the first harmed by suspicions is correísmo. It only remains to be seen if the negative electoral impact prevents Luisa González from winning, Rafael Correa’s candidate who led all the polls until she shed the blood of Fernando Villavicencio.
