Ecuador loses extradition in referendum: El Gato Farfán, the trophy that never was
Ecuador rejected extradition by narrow margin in popular consultation, frustrating Lasso's security strategy. Analyst Luis Córdova explains the political implications.
The failed extradition and the political cost for Lasso
The defeat of the extradition question in the Ecuadorian popular consultation—the No prevailed with 51.54%, a mere three percentage point difference—was not only an electoral setback. According to gk.city, behind that result lies a security strategy designed in close coordination with the United States that became, at least partially, dismantled.
For Luis Córdova, researcher at the Central University of Ecuador and director of the Order, Conflict and Violence programme, the extradition mechanism was never solely a legal tool. "In both Mexico, Colombia and Central America, the United States has driven a strategy that comprises three elements," Córdova notes.
The first is the creation or strengthening of elite anti-narcotics units within police forces, a process that in Ecuador has been advancing steadily for three decades. The second is an institutional reform that permits security forces to operate without prior judicial authorisation—a model already in effect in Colombia and Mexico, and which in Ecuador was sought to be institutionalised through the Organic Law of Integral Security, approved in early 2023. The third is the incorporation of extradition into the criminal framework.
The political logic behind extradition
Córdova explains that extradition operates not only as an instrument of criminal prosecution, but as a tool of political legitimisation. The case of Colombian Otoniel, captured when former president Iván Duque was experiencing his lowest approval ratings, illustrates that mechanism: "What was a resounding failure of Iván Duque's policy became the most publicised success both inside and outside Colombia."
This same script was attempted to be replicated in Ecuador with the detention of Wilder Emilio Farfán, alias El Gato, detained in Pasto, Colombia, on 9 February 2023, following 18 months of Ecuadorian police investigation. El Gato is identified as a link between the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation cartels. His capture, which occurred just days before the popular consultation vote, was, in Córdova's words, "the ideal political timing for the instrumentalisation of that extradition".
The plan was clear: if the extradition question triumphed at the ballot box, El Gato would become the first trophy of the new mechanism and a double positioning asset for the government of Guillermo Lasso. The referendum defeat closed off that possibility.
Why the government lost at the ballot box
Córdova attributes the defeat to a strategic campaign error. "At the government level, this question fails because they trusted that media work alone was sufficient," he states. The government gambled on media coverage and neglected on-the-ground work.
The Citizen Revolution Movement, of correísta origin, took advantage of that gap. With active local disputes in different territories, it managed to turn the referendum into a barometer of support for or rejection of Lasso's government. The result was a tactical victory for the opposition on terrain that the ruling party considered secured.
The mirror game of the war on drugs
Córdova's analysis extends beyond the Ecuadorian scenario. Citing the book El Traidor by Mexican journalist Anabel Hernández, the researcher describes what he terms "a mirror game" in the war on drugs. According to that investigation, in the early 2000s the DEA—the United States Drug Enforcement Administration—is said to have reached an agreement with the Sinaloa cartel: in exchange for information about rival organisations, the cartel received a free hand to expand its regional and global influence.
"The detention of drug lords or leaders of criminal structures has much to do with the way information is obtained through anti-narcotics intelligence," Córdova notes. In most cases, that information comes from human sources, which implies agreements and negotiations that are rarely made public.
The ongoing trial in the United States against Genaro García Luna, former Secretary of Public Security of Mexico, provided in that same period further testimony about the involvement of Felipe Calderón's government with organised crime groups, reinforcing the researcher's thesis.
Ecuador and its four decades of narco-politics
Córdova traces the first signs of narco-politics in Ecuador back almost four decades, when a government official under León Febres Cordero was identified as having alleged links with the Medellín cartel. That long history is the backdrop in which both the 2023 popular consultation and the capture of El Gato and the still-open question about the direction of the country's security strategy are inscribed.
With the referendum defeat and El Gato detained in Colombia—not in Ecuador—with no immediate prospect of extradition, the Lasso government faces a reconfiguration of its security strategy whose outcome remains uncertain.
Source: Google News BO — Crime