Ecuadoran mayor killed ahead of anti-crime referendum: police

By AFP
PublishedApril 19, 2024

Mayor Jorge Maldonado was shot dead in Portovelo, Ecuador just days before a referendum on tougher measures against organized crime in the violence-riddled country. The mayor of a mining town in violence-riddled Ecuador was shot dead Friday, the second such killing in days ahead of a weekend referendum on tougher measures against organized crime, police said. Jorge Maldonado, the mayor of Portovelo, “fell victim to gunshots that resulted in his death,” police said on X, formerly Twitter. He was gunned down while off-duty by two attackers on a motorcycle.

Images seen by AFP show the slain mayor lying on a sidewalk with a pool of blood around his head. Maldonado was the fifth Ecuadoran mayor assassinated in a year, and the third in less than a month. Two days before his killing, the mayor of Camilo Ponce Enriquez in the southern province of Azuay, Jose Sanchez, was shot dead. And last month, Brigitte Garcia, the 27-year-old mayor of coastal San Vicente, was found dead in a car along with the municipality’s communications director, Jairo Loor. Both had suffered gunshot wounds.

The AME municipalities’ association said in a statement the killings were “indicative of a serious security crisis” and demanded “immediate and decisive action” to guarantee the safety of the country’s more than 200 other mayors.

Millions of Ecuadorans will cast ballots in a referendum on Sunday to decide whether or not to green-light stricter measures against organized crime in a country gripped by bloody gang wars. Once a bastion of peace situated between major cocaine producers, the South American country has been plunged into crisis after years of expansion by the transnational cartels that use its ports to ship the drug to the United States and Europe.

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