The mayor of a small mining town in the southern Andes of Ecuador was shot dead
, a few days before a popular consultation was held with which the Government of President Daniel Noboa intends to approve
reforms to confront the insecurity crisis.
José Sánchez, mayor of the Camilo Ponce Enríquez canton in the province of Azuay,
"was shot and as a result lost his life"
on Wednesday, the mayor's office of that town said on its Facebook page.
Sánchez, 52,
was doing physical exercises
at night accompanied by his security team, when
armed men opened fire on him
, according to the police on the social network X.
The suspects "were traveling in a van that was later allegedly incinerated and later located," he added.
The Ministry of the Interior expressed its solidarity with the family and friends of the mayor, who had suffered an attack on his home in October last year.
"This tragic event reinforces our tireless commitment to fighting serious criminal acts," said the Ministry of the Interior in a statement posted on its X account.
Sánchez was a lawyer and in 2021 he presided over the Chamber of Mining of Camilo Ponce Enríquez, where there is illegal extraction of minerals.
With the murder of Sánchez, four mayors have been killed in one year in Ecuador, and it is the second in less than a month. In March, the mayor of San Vicente, in Manabí, was murdered in similar circumstances.
Brigitte García, who at just 27 years old was the youngest mayor of Ecuador, was found with her communications assistant Jairo Loor inside a vehicle without vital signs and with gunshot wounds.
The Association of Municipalities of Ecuador (AME) requested in a statement a "thorough and rapid" investigation into the crime and demanded protection for the country's mayors. "Each fallen mayor is a direct blow to stability and local governance," noted the AME.
The political violence also included presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who died last August when he was shot leaving a campaign event.
Referendum and power outages
This year's deaths have occurred in the midst of a resurgence of violence and an internal armed conflict, declared by President Daniel Noboa to combat criminal gangs with the armed forces.
Next Sunday,
nearly 13.6 million Ecuadorians are called to the polls to vote
for legal and constitutional reforms whose main axis is the fight against violence.
It is the third popular consultation for Ecuadorians in just over a year. The previous government of President Guillermo Lasso called the polls in February 2023 also on security issues and the “no” won.
Analysts agree that, behind the 11 questions of the consultation, is President Noboa's intention to position himself with a view to his eventual re-election in the 2025 presidential elections. Noboa assumed a transition government at the end of November - after the departure of Lasso when he was being impeached - for a short period of a year and a half that ends in May of next year.
Meanwhile, this Thursday
the two-day suspension of public and private work
began to take effect due to the electricity crisis caused by a historic deficit in the reservoirs that supply the water plants, which led to blackouts of up to six hours and could bring Millionaires loses.
President Daniel Noboa decreed the "suspension of the working day" on Thursday and Friday, the presidency said in a statement, which attributed his decision not only "to environmental circumstances" but to "unheard-of acts of corruption and negligence."
With information from Agencies