Ecuador election: Narco politics rule ahead of polls

Presidential candidate Daniel Noboa appears at a campaign event wearing a bullet-proof vest

The Whatsapp message arrived on a Sunday night.

"Good evening Franki, this is the Jalisco New Generation [Mexican drugs cartel]," the message read, in barely legible Spanish. "If you block me, you'll get into problems. I need $6,000 [£4,710] - I'm watching you, your wife and kids."

Franklin Torres, a banana producer, ignored it - then, a few days later, another message arrived, this time sent to Franklin's wife: "Tell your husband to get his act together, we are writing from prison and there are people watching at the window."

While he reported the threats, Franklin has little faith things will get better.

As president of Ecuador's National Federation of banana growers, he is pressuring the government to allow them to carry weapons to protect themselves.

"In the country it's hard, we don't have 911, or police patrol," he says. "It's better for good people to have weapons, not just those who are bad."

Franklin Torres, a banana producer, has received threats from one of the drug cartels that have moved into Ecuador in recent yearsEcuador is the world's biggest banana exporter and the industry is a lucrative one - banana crates are a favourite mode of transporting cocaine among drugs cartels, from Ecuador's ports and on to Europe and beyond.Mexican and Colombian cartels have infiltrated local gangs in Ecuador as they vie for lucrative drugs routes. Once one of the most peaceful countries in South America, Ecuador was hit hard by Covid and cartels have taken advantage of a country broken by the pandemic - and by corrupt politics.In the first six months of the year, there were 3,568 violent deaths in the country, according to the National Police. That was up more than 70% on last year.And as the country heads to the polls in the first round of presidential elections on Sunday, crime is at the forefront of everyone's minds, especially after last week's assassination of one of the candidates, Fernando Villavicencio."[Villavicencio's murder] was a terrifying tragedy," says political consultant Oswaldo Moreno. "It marks an inflection point in which the politics of death is now very much part of the culture here."There's no more powerful example of that than Guayaquil, Ecuador's biggest city and home to the country's largest port. It's become the epicentre of the country's crime problems as cartels take advantage of its location and logistics to move drugs out of the country.Presidential candidate Daniel Noboa chose Durán, one of the worst-hit areas of Guayaquil, for his final campaign event on Thursday. But he did so wearing a bullet-proof vest. Along the way, there was a nearby shoot-out which sent everyone into a panic - such is daily life in this crime-ridden city."We need to change the state of security in Ecuador," he told the BBC ahead of the event, adding that his priority if he became president would be tackling unemployment. "The problem is that by not giving people opportunities, we're feeding these organisations with young new members."