Episode description

Ecuador is facing many of the same issues we see across Latin America today. Long one of the region’s most peaceful countries, it has recently seen a daunting increase in violence, as international drug cartels use the country as a transit point. It is also immersed in a debate about how and whether to exploit its oil and minerals, during an era of rapid climate change. Politics have been unstable this year. In October there will be a runoff for a new president to serve out the rest of Guillermo Lasso’s term, after he invoked a constitutional mechanism that triggered fresh elections for both the presidency and the legislature. In this episode, Brian Winter and Will Freeman discuss the two candidates, Luisa González and Daniel Noboa, and how Ecuador might fit into wider regional trends when it comes to ideological tendencies and environmental issues. Freeman, a columnist for Americas Quarterly, is a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) and a political scientist.