Ecuadorian Jan Topic, 40 years old and rich, aspires to become president of his country: A former member of the French Foreign Legion, he speaks of nothing but security. Faced with seven other candidates in a country in disarray, this advocate of the strong-arm approach could spring a surprise on Sunday, August 20, in the first round of Ecuador's early presidential election, which will be held at the same time as the country's legislative elections. The shooting of Fernando Villavicencio, one of his rivals, on August 9 at the close of a rally, 11 days before the election, turned the campaign and all predictions upside down.

In May, Guillermo Lasso, the outgoing president, decided to dissolve the National Assembly, which was seeking to try him for embezzlement and impeach him. He preferred to curtail his own term of office and is not standing for re-election.

The murder of Mr. Villavicencio was attributed by the police to a group of Colombian hitmen. "Violence has brutally imposed itself as the elector of the election," said Pedro Donoso, director of the communications agency Icare. "This is something new in Ecuador, and analysts are still at a loss to understand it." The Ecuadorian authorities attribute the explosion of violence in the country over the past five years to drug cartels. "How did we get here?" Ecuadorians wonder.

"The crime committed against Fernando Villavicencio is unfortunately just one of many," said Carla Alvarez of the Institute for Advanced National Studies, reminding us that 29 candidates were killed during the local elections in February and that the mayor of the city of Manta was assassinated in July. Between 2018 and 2022, the number of homicides quadrupled from 1,118 to 4,603 and passed the 3,000 mark in the first six months of 2023; Prisons have become the scene of recurrent massacres, with more than 500 prisoners murdered in custody since 2018.

"Violence has befallen us like a plague," said Maria Guamani, who sells newspapers on the street, sighing as she pointed to a photo of a severed hand in a pool of blood published by a local daily. "The increase in violence is not just quantitative," said Alvarez. "Here in Ecuador, we had never seen such images of corpses hanged, mutilated, or incinerated." High in the Andes, the capital, Quito, remains largely untouched by violence. The large port of Guayaquil, from where tons of clandestine cocaine are shipped, has become the epicenter. More than 40% of the country's murders are committed there. "Guayakill," write the graffiti artists.

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