Ecuadorians put aside fears of leaving their homes amid unprecedented violence and voted for a new president Sunday in a special election that was heavily guarded by police and soldiers in part due to the assassination of a presidential candidate this month.
Authorities deployed more than 100,000 police and soldiers to protect the vote against more violence. Voting in Ecuador is mandatory for most voters, and many of them weighed the risk of getting robbed against the fine and inconveniences they could face for not voting.
Ecuadorians were already struggling to make sense of the violent crime their once calm South American country has experienced over the last three years when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated Aug. 9 as he left a campaign rally in Quito, the capital. His killing heightened people's fears of spending time anywhere other than their homes and becoming victims of robberies, kidnappings, extortions, homicides or any of the other crimes that have become commonplace.
Presidential candidate Luisa González, of the Citizen's Revolution Political Movement, waves upon her arrival to a polling station in Guayaquil, Ecuador, Aug. 20, 2023. The election was called after President Guillermo Lasso dissolved the National Assembly by decree in May to avoid being impeached. Also running was Yaku Perez, an Indigenous man promising to defend the environment and water from mining and oil extraction.
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