Category Archives: Ecuador

Ecuador election: former banker Lasso in lead with 93% of vote counted

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Voters in presidential race appear to have rejected leftist movement, favouring conservative over Andrés Arauz

A conservative businessman looks likely to become Ecuador’s president, with voters rejecting the leftist movement started by the former president Rafael Correa more than a decade ago.

The electoral council in Ecuador did not declare a winner in the contest to replace Lenín Moreno as president next month, but results released by the agency showed the former banker Guillermo Lasso with about 53% of votes and the leftist Andrés Arauz with 47%, with more than 93% of votes counted. Arauz conceded the election.

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Women and young people could determine Ecuador’s election outcome

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Andrés Arauz and Guillermo Lasso are seeking to expand support by broadening agendas to include LGBTQ+ rights, race and gender

Women and young people could play a decisive role in determining the outcome of Ecuador’s elections this weekend – and the two male candidates are doing all they can to attract the oft-sidelined sectors of the country’s electorate.

Andrés Arauz, the protegé of former president Rafael Correa won 32.7% of the vote in the first-round vote in February and faces three-time presidential candidate, conservative banker Guillermo Lasso, who won 19.7%, in a runoff vote on this Sunday, 11 April.

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Dozens dead after Ecuador prison riots sparked by gang fights and escape bid

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At least 62 inmates have been killed in jails in three cities, with 800 police required to quell the violence

Sixty-two inmates have died in riots at prisons in three cities in Ecuador as a result of fights between rival gangs and an escape attempt.

Edmundo Moncayo, director of prisons, said in a news conference on Tuesday that 800 police offices have been helping to regain control of the facilities. Hundreds of officers from tactical units had been deployed since the clashes broke out late Monday.

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¡Populista! review: Chávez, Castro and Latin America’s ‘pink wave’ leaders

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BBC reporter Will Grant has produced an excellent look at the group of strongmen who came from left field

If there was ever a surreal start to a trip to Cuba, it was the one that coincided with the news Fidel Castro had died. That was what I woke up to on 26 November 2016, hours before my husband and I were due to fly to Havana. A day later, we found ourselves in what seemed like an endless queue under a blazing autumn sun, waiting to enter Castro’s memorial at the Jose Martí monument in the Plaza de la Revolución.

Related: Sisters in Hate review: tough but vital read on the rise of racist America

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‘Prevent, discourage, confront’: South American states tackle Chinese trawlers

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Huge fleets’ intrusions into Pacific fishing territory prompt Chile, Colombia, Ecuador and Peru to join forces

Related: 'It's terrifying': can anyone stop China's vast armada of fishing boats?

Four South American countries have joined forces in a bid to combat illegal fishing by huge Chinese fleets off their coasts.

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Indigenous tribe in Ecuador appeals for help to deal with coronavirus

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Achuar people blame illegal logging for spread and are asking international community for aid

Climate change and multinational corporations have long posed a threat to the people of the Amazon rainforest. Now, however, the region’s indigenous tribes face an even more immediate danger: coronavirus.

Despite living deep in the heartland of Ecuadorian rainforest, the indigenous Achuar tribal people have fallen victim to the pandemic. Over the last several weeks, Covid-19 has struck at the heart of the Achuar community in Ecuador, which is made up of 13,000 people living in 88 groups over 800,000 hectares (3,000 sq miles) along the Pastaza River basin. A further 15,000 Achuar are based in neighbouring Peru.

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Ecuadorian man and woman become world’s oldest married couple

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Julio Mora, 110, and Waldramina Quinteros, 104, a combined nearly 215 years, received Guinness certification in mid-August

Julio Mora slipped away from his parents to secretly marry Waldramina Quinteros one February day. Both families disapproved.

Seventy-nine years later, they’re still together – he is 110 years of age, and she is 104, both lucid and both in good health, though relatives say they’re a little depressed because they miss their big family get-togethers due to the pandemic.

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‘It’s terrifying’: can anyone stop China’s vast armada of fishing boats?

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Ecuador stood up for the Galápagos, but other countries don’t stand a chance against the 17,000-strong distant-water fleet

The recent discovery by the Ecuadorean navy of a vast fishing armada of 340 Chinese vessels just off the biodiverse Galápagos Islands stirred outrage both in Ecuador and overseas.

Under pressure after Ecuador’s strident response, China has given mixed signals that it could begin to reel in its vast international fishing fleet. Its embassy in Ecuador declared a “zero tolerance” policy towards illegal fishing, and this week it announced it was tightening the rules for its enormous flotilla with a series of new regulations.

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European banks urged to stop funding oil trade in Amazon

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Indigenous people in headwaters region say financing harms communities and ecosystems

Indigenous people living at the headwaters of the Amazon have called on European banks to stop financing oil development in the region, as it poses a threat to them and damages a fragile ecosystem, after a new report found $10bn in previously undisclosed funding for oil in the region.

The headwaters of the Amazon in Ecuador and Peru are home to more than 500,000 indigenous people, including some who choose to live in voluntary isolation. The area, covering about 30m hectares (74m acres), hosts a diverse rainforest ecosystem, but it is threatened by the expansion of oil drilling.

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‘They just pull up everything!’ Chinese fleet raises fears for Galápagos sea life

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A vast fishing armada off Ecuador’s biodiverse Pacific islands has stirred alarm over ‘indiscriminate’ fishing practices

Jonathan Green had been tracking a whale shark named Hope across the eastern Pacific for 280 days when the satellite transmissions from a GPS tag on her dorsal fin abruptly stopped.

It was not unusual for the GPS signal to go silent, even for weeks at a time, said Green, a scientist who has been studying the world’s largest fish for three decades in the unique marine ecosystem around the Galápagos Islands.

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A dollar for sex: Venezuela’s women tricked and trafficked

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Women attempting to flee the country’s economic collapse are in desperate straits, stranded at borders and forced into sex work, say NGOs

The family had nothing at home, says mother of six Luisa Hernández, 30, from Zulia state, Venezuela. “To see your children grow up without food, without anything, is unbearable.

“Eating from rubbish bins to survive was no life, so we left. But, now with the pandemic, we are in limbo, we are stuck in Colombia, and hungry again. We have gone from one crisis to another.”

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Alarm over discovery of hundreds of Chinese fishing vessels near Galápagos Islands

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The fleet, found just outside a protected zone, raises the prospect of damage to the marine ecosystem

Ecuador has sounded the alarm after its navy discovered a huge fishing fleet of mostly Chinese-flagged vessels some 200 miles from the Galápagos Islands, the archipelago which inspired Charles Darwin’s theory of evolution.

About 260 ships are currently in international waters just outside a 188-mile wide exclusive economic zone around the island, but their presence has already raised the prospect of serious damage to the delicate marine ecosystem, said former environment minister Yolanda Kakabadse.

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Diego the tortoise, father to hundreds and saviour of his species, finally retires

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Giant tortoise, whose reproductive efforts almost single-handedly saved his species, has been moved to an uninhabited island

Diego, the giant Galápagos tortoise whose tireless efforts are credited with almost single-handedly saving his once-threatened species, has been put out to pasture on his native island after decades of breeding in captivity, Ecuador’s environment minister said.

Diego was shipped out from the Galápagos national park’s breeding program on Santa Cruz to the remote and uninhabited Española.

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Nobel laureates condemn ‘judicial harassment’ of environmental lawyer

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Chevron’s treatment of Steven Donziger branded ‘an exceptionally bad case of intimidation’

Twenty-nine Nobel laureates have condemned alleged “judicial harassment” by Chevron and urged the release of a US environmental lawyer who was put under house arrest for pursuing oil-spill compensation claims on behalf of indigenous tribes in the Amazon.

The open letter signed by scientists, authors, environmentalists and human rights activists said the treatment of lawyer Steven Donziger, whose movements have been restricted for more than 250 days, was one of the world’s most egregious cases of judicial harassment and defamation.

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Ecuador’s death rate soars as fears grow over scale of coronavirus crisis

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Mortalities in one province leap from 3,000 to 11,000 in six weeks, with health and mortuary services overwhelmed

New data suggests that Ecuador’s coronavirus toll may be much higher than previously indicated, after figures revealed a massive jump in deaths in the province at the centre of the country’s devastating outbreak.

Since the beginning of March six weeks ago, 10,939 people have died in Guayas province, which includes Ecuador’s largest city, Guayaquil, according to figures released late on Thursday.

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Release Julian Assange, says woman who had two children with him while in embassy

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Stella Moris, who had two sons with WikiLeaks founder while he was in Ecuadorian embassy, says he is in danger from coronavirus while in prison

The partner of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange has revealed that she had two children with him while he was living inside the Ecuadorian embassy in London.

Stella Moris, 37, a South African-born lawyer, issued a plea for the father of her two young sons, Gabriel, three, and Max, one, to be released from prison and said there were genuine fears for Assange’s health.

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Ecuador: cardboard coffins distributed amid coronavirus fears

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Guayaquil, where mortuaries have been overwhelmed, creates helpline for removal of coronavirus victims

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    • Authorities in Ecuador’s biggest city are distributing thousands of cardboard coffins and have created a helpline for families who need corpses to be removed from their homes.

    Guayaquil has emerged as a regional hotspot for coronavirus, and hospitals and mortuaries have been overwhelmed, forcing some families to store bodies at home.

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    ‘They’re leaving us to die’: Ecuadorians’ plead for help as virus blazes deadly trail

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    Dead bodies kept in homes or dumped on roadsides as authorities and hospitals are overwhelmed by Covid-19 in Andean nation’s second city

    Democratic leaders given poll boost for handling of crisis

    It has been three days since Reynaldo Barrezueta passed away at his home in Ecuador’s biggest city – and still his body lies in a coffin on the sitting room floor.

    “The authorities are just leaving us to die,” said his son, Eduardo Javier Barrezueta Chávez, who has spent the last 72 hours pleading with authorities remove his father’s corpse – so far to no avail.

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    Wildlife rescue centres struggle to treat endangered species in coronavirus outbreak

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    Shortages in funds, medicines and masks threaten charity work around the world

    Last Thursday morning Louisa Baillie drove down the five-kilometre dirt track that connects her jungle home in the Amazon rainforest to the main road. At the junction, she parked, hiking the rest of the way into Mera, a town of about 8,000 people.

    After filling her backpack with fruit and vegetables from local sellers, she grabbed some leaves and set about plucking termites off trees along the roadside, stuffing them into a bucket containing small fragments of the insects’ nests. Baillie works as a veterinarian at Merazonia, a wildlife rescue centre in Ecuador. The termites were dinner for Andy the anteater, a baby recently confiscated at a police checkpoint.

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    Coronavirus: Ecuador city blocks runway to Spanish repatriation flight – video

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    Authorities in the Ecuadorian city of Guayaquil have stopped a plane from landing by blocking its airport runway with trucks, cars and motorcycles. The Iberia plane had flown from Madrid to repatriate Spaniards after Ecuador closed its borders to foreign travellers. Guyaquil's mayor, Cynthia Viteri, called the repatriation effort ‘criminal’. ‘How is it possible that you were going to permit this crew to stay in the city with the most coronavirus cases?’ she said. Almost half of Ecuador’s 260 confirmed cases of Covid-19 were registered in Guayaquil

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