A journalist who reported on a series of murders in an Ecuadorian city ravaged by drug gang violence has been killed in an ambush, press freedom groups said.
Patricio Aguilar, 54, was killed on Tuesday in a house in Fundo Limón, a neighborhood ravaged by violence, in the city of Quindí, Reporters Without Borders (RSF) said. The assailants “shot the journalist repeatedly, leaving at least 27 shell casings at the scene,” the NGO said in a statement.
He was the editor of the local newspaper El Libertador de Quinindé, in the province of Esmeralda, which borders Colombia, the country that produces the largest amount of cocaine in the world.
A country with a dollarized economy and strategic ports on the Pacific Ocean, Ecuador has in recent years become a hub for drug trafficking to the markets of the United States, the country with the highest cocaine consumption in the world, and those of Europe.
RSF notes that Aguilar, a journalist with 30 years of experience, had received repeated threats because of his articles on the phenomenon of violence in the province of Esmeralda, where at least five murders were committed on Wednesday.
Before his own murder, he had covered a shooting incident in Fundo Limón and shared images of the alleged perpetrators of a store robbery on social media.
Like RSF, the regional press freedom organization Fundamedios called for a thorough and complete investigation into the case.
“The murder of Patricio Aguilar is a serious attack on press freedom in Ecuador. His work, exposing organized crime and political corruption, put him in danger, but the authorities failed to protect him,” said Artur Homeu, director of RSF’s Latin America division.
The NGO Periodistas Sin Cadenas (Journalists Without Chains) said it was the first murder of a journalist in Ecuador since 2022, when three media professionals were killed.
According to authorities, there are about 20 gangs operating in Ecuador, mainly involved in drug trafficking, kidnappings and extortion. The homicide rate has skyrocketed in recent years, from 6 per 100,000 inhabitants in 2018 to 47 in 2023.
President Daniel Noboa, running for re-election in the April 13 presidential runoff against evangelical lawyer and left-wing candidate Luisa González, has declared a state of emergency in parts of the country, deployed the army to the streets and labeled gangs “terrorist” organizations.
