The espouse of legislator Arce, of the Citizen Revolution movement, Marcelo Molina, was shot at his home on Sunday, in the Durán canton, province of Guayas.
The parliamentarian was the mayor of Durán from 2014 to 2019. Her husband’s shooting comes one day after the double murder in Cali, Colombia, of the leaders of the Chone Killers, a gang that kept Durán on high alert.
That is the most violent territory of the so-called Zone 8, also made up of the municipalities of Samborondón and Guayaquil.
In Guayaquil a massacre was perpetrated on Saturday, leaving six people, five men and one woman, dead in the rural parish of Posorja.
According to local media, the victims were outside a transport cooperative when an armed group opened fire on them.
These events occur despite the state of emergency declared in Guayas.
Ecuador’s Minister of the Interior, Mónica Palencia, reported that nationwide homicides decreased from January 1 to December 15 of this year by 16.5 percent compared to 2023.
Up to that date, she specified that the country had registered 6,547 murders.
However, the population demands more action from the Executive because violence persists on the streets, despite the presence of the military and the constant states of emergency.
This Sunday marks 21 days since the disappearance of four minors who were detained by uniformed officers in Guayaquil, a case that has shocked the entire nation.
The Human Rights Committee of the United Nations (UN) published a report in November voicing concerns over “the frequent and apparently normalized” declarations of a state of emergency in Ecuador.
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