QUITO, Ecuador—Latin America’s first presidential election of 2025 is within the books. Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, comfortably received reelection over his rival, Luisa González, after a marketing campaign dominated by a safety disaster because the nation’s violent crime charge has skyrocketed as a result of drug-related violence.
The best-wing Noboa has crafted a tough-on-crime picture, promising to crack down on the transnational drug cartels which have brought on crime spikes in Ecuador in recent times. He received regardless of quickly shedding reputation in late 2024 when a severe drought led to power rationing and rolling blackouts throughout the nation.
QUITO, Ecuador—Latin America’s first presidential election of 2025 is within the books. Ecuador’s president, Daniel Noboa, comfortably received reelection over his rival, Luisa González, after a marketing campaign dominated by a safety disaster because the nation’s violent crime charge has skyrocketed as a result of drug-related violence.
The best-wing Noboa has crafted a tough-on-crime picture, promising to crack down on the transnational drug cartels which have brought on crime spikes in Ecuador in recent times. He received regardless of quickly shedding reputation in late 2024 when a severe drought led to power rationing and rolling blackouts throughout the nation.
González, a leftist protege of former President Rafael Correa, rejected the preliminary outcomes and demanded a recount after the Nationwide Electoral Council declared Noboa the winner.
Noboa and González had faced off in a closer-than-expected first-round election in February, during which each candidates secured round 44 % of the vote however fell in need of the 50 % wanted to keep away from an April runoff. However Noboa seems to have made up floor within the interim, successful Sunday’s vote by a large margin.
“This present day has been historic, this victory has additionally been historic, a victory by greater than 10 factors,” Noboa informed supporters after the outcomes have been introduced. “There isn’t any doubt who the winner is.”
Within the capital of Quito, supporters held up life-sized cardboard cutouts of a sunglasses-clad Noboa, one wearing a Spider-Man costume. Noboa first received snap elections in 2023 by vowing to stiffen drug penalties and enhance surveillance of alleged drug sellers. Ecuador had seen an unprecedented rise in homicides as Colombian and Mexican drug cartels infiltrated local gangs and used the nation for the transshipment of cocaine, turning the once-peaceful nation into the most dangerous in South America.
However Noboa’s first 16 months in workplace introduced little enchancment. Whereas the murder charge dropped between 2023 and 2024, it has spiked once more in 2025, with a document 781 killings in January alone in a rustic of simply 18 million folks. He confronted heavy criticism final 12 months when 4 kids, aged 11 to fifteen, have been captured by an air pressure patrol after taking part in a soccer sport, then found dead weeks later. Neither Noboa nor his opponents brazenly pointed fingers on the navy, which has been accused of widespread rights abuses throughout anti-crime campaigns.
His response has been to draw closer to america and President Donald Trump, who congratulated Noboa on his Reality Social community on Monday morning.
“His whole discourse focuses on worldwide collaboration, primarily from america,” mentioned Esteban Ron, dean of the School of Social and Authorized Sciences at Quito’s SEK Worldwide College.
Noboa attended Trump’s January inauguration and final month visited Mar-a-Lago after reportedly paying a consulting firm to safe him an invite.
Ecuador is planning for the development of a naval facility within the coastal metropolis of Manta that will host U.S. forces, whom Noboa hopes will help in battling gangs. The U.S. navy manned a base in Manta till 2009, when then-President Correa declined to renew its lease. González opposed the institution of overseas navy bases in Ecuador, that are presently prohibited beneath its structure.
Noboa in March announced a “strategic alliance” with Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who has lobbied in current months to contain himself with anti-drug operations in Latin America and deportations from the U.S. to El Salvador. Days earlier than the election, Prince joined legislation enforcement operations in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s largest metropolis and certainly one of its most harmful. The group detained 40 folks, lots of whom have since been launched.
“[They were] seemingly used to advertise a publicity marketing campaign” for Prince, mentioned Carla Morena Álvarez Velasco, a professor and researcher on the Ecuadorian Institute of Excessive Nationwide Research. “His participation seems uncoordinated with any identified native technique or goal, and coincides with a political timing that’s tough to miss.”
Ecuador’s surge of violence spilled into politics in 2023 when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a critic of corruption and legal gangs, was assassinated at a rally within the north of Quito, allegedly at the order of the Los Lobos organized crime group. Simply earlier than the election, Villavicencio’s widow accused the Noboa administration of pressuring her accountable Correa’s political celebration for the homicide regardless of already realizing who was accountable.
However Noboa was capable of soundly defeat an opposition marketing campaign that typically appeared disorganized and lacked substantive alternate options to Ecuador’s safety, financial, and power points.
González pledged to observe her mentor, Correa, by rising social spending to assist these dwelling in poverty. However her celebration’s previous financial mishaps “undermined her discourse” among the many public, Ron mentioned.
Noboa touted his relationship with Trump in angling to keep away from tariffs, claiming that its 10 % charge would rise ought to González win. He has not commented on Trump’s cuts to the U.S. Company for Worldwide Growth, which delivered $117.3 million between 2020 and 2024 to Ecuador.
Ecuadorians have left the nation in droves; greater than 90,000 folks left in 2024, and Ecuadorians have been the second-largest group crossing the Darién Gap in 2023, after Venezuelans.
Within the remaining months of 2024, the disaster worsened when Ecuador, which depends on hydropower for about three-quarters of its power, skilled a extreme drought that led to an influence scarcity and scheduled blackouts of as much as 14 hours per day. Noboa’s administration was criticized for ignoring warning indicators earlier within the 12 months, when water ranges have been low within the Amazon.
“It ended up affecting the picture of Noboa within the first spherical,” mentioned Homero Paltán, a researcher on local weather and water dangers at Oxford College. “[He] obtained fortunate, in a manner, that it began raining.”
With the blackouts within the rearview mirror, Noboa and González principally performed a blame sport in the course of the marketing campaign. Noboa accused Correa of inflicting it by relying too closely on hydropower, whereas González mentioned there have been no blackouts beneath Correa, though his presidency occurred throughout a sequence of unusually moist years.
“The dialogue has been extremely political from each side with out actually addressing the technical and structural points,” Paltán mentioned.
Each candidates expressed openness to rising Ecuador’s capability of wind, photo voltaic, and different renewable power, and promised to restore thermal energy crops that malfunctioned in the course of the disaster. Noboa has pledged to hunt non-public funding within the power sector. González favors extra state management and has mentioned she would search public-private partnerships, however gave few particular particulars.
Ecuador has seen intensifying fluctuations between moist and dry spells that mission to worsen within the years to come back. It already has frequent environmental disasters in its oil-producing areas, most recently an oil spill in March, and the nation’s power demand is predicted to double by 2050 as its inhabitants grows. Ecuador’s safety and financial points are thus deeply wedded to its capability to supply energy—and at current, that is still depending on the rain.
“It will simply occur once more,” Paltán mentioned. “That’s the issue with local weather change.”
