How a Few Bad Years Took Ecuador From Stability to ‘Narco State’

One evening this August, Fernando Villavicencio, a prominent candidate for the presidency of Ecuador, had just finished a campaign rally at a school in northern Quito. The longtime journalist and trade unionist was running under the banner of a centrist conservative party, though much of his rhetoric hewed to outsider populism. The country’s political leaders were too corrupt to govern effectively, he said, and a shake-up was needed if its people were to break free of organized crime. “For years, rivers of money have flown to the pockets of white-collared criminals,” he told the hundreds of people in attendance. ...