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QUITO, Ecuador \u2014 Latin America\u2019s first presidential election of 2025 is in the books. Ecuador\u2019s president, Daniel Noboa, comfortably won reelection over his rival, Luisa Gonz\u00e1lez, after a campaign dominated by a security crisis as the country\u2019s violent crime rate has skyrocketed due to drug-related violence.<\/p>\n
The right-wing Noboa has crafted a tough-on-crime image, promising to crack down on the transnational drug cartels that have caused crime spikes<\/a> in Ecuador in recent years. He won despite temporarily losing popularity in late 2024 when a severe drought<\/a> led to energy rationing and rolling blackouts across the country.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n QUITO, Ecuador \u2014 Latin America\u2019s first presidential election of 2025 is in the books. Ecuador\u2019s president, Daniel Noboa, comfortably won reelection over his rival, Luisa Gonz\u00e1lez, after a campaign dominated by a security crisis as the country\u2019s violent crime rate has skyrocketed due to drug-related violence.<\/p>\n The right-wing Noboa has crafted a tough-on-crime image, promising to crack down on the transnational drug cartels that have caused crime spikes<\/a> in Ecuador in recent years. He won despite temporarily losing popularity in late 2024 when a severe drought<\/a> led to energy rationing and rolling blackouts across the country.<\/p>\n Gonz\u00e1lez, a leftist protege of former President Rafael Correa, rejected<\/a> the initial results and demanded a recount after the National Electoral Council declared Noboa the winner.<\/p>\n Noboa and Gonz\u00e1lez had faced off<\/a> in a closer-than-expected first-round election in February, in which both candidates secured around 44 percent of the vote but fell short of the 50 percent needed to avoid an April runoff. But Noboa appears to have made up ground in the interim, winning Sunday\u2019s vote by a sizable margin.<\/p>\n \u201cThis day has been historic, this victory has also been historic, a victory by more than 10 points,\u201d Noboa told supporters after the results were announced. \u201cThere is no doubt who the winner is.\u201d<\/p>\n In the capital of Quito, supporters held up life-sized cardboard cutouts of a sunglasses-clad Noboa, one dressed in a Spider-Man costume. Noboa first won snap elections in 2023 by vowing to stiffen drug penalties and increase surveillance<\/a> of alleged drug dealers. Ecuador had seen an unprecedented rise in homicides as Colombian and Mexican drug cartels infiltrated local gangs<\/a> and used the country for the transshipment of cocaine, turning the once-peaceful nation into the most dangerous in South America<\/a>.<\/p>\n But Noboa\u2019s first 16 months in office brought little improvement. While the homicide rate dropped between 2023 and 2024, it has spiked again in 2025, with a record 781 killings in January alone in a country of just 18 million people. He faced heavy criticism last year when four children, aged 11 to 15, were captured by an air force patrol after playing a soccer game, then found dead weeks later<\/a>. Neither Noboa nor his opponents openly pointed fingers at the military, which has been accused<\/a> of widespread rights abuses during anti-crime campaigns.<\/p>\n His response has been to draw closer<\/a> to the United States and President Donald Trump, who congratulated Noboa<\/a> on his Truth Social network on Monday morning.<\/p>\n \u201cHis entire discourse focuses on international collaboration, primarily from the United States,\u201d said Esteban Ron, dean of the Faculty of Social and Legal Sciences at Quito\u2019s SEK International University.<\/p>\n Noboa attended Trump\u2019s January inauguration and last month visited Mar-a-Lago after reportedly paying a consulting firm<\/a> to secure him an invitation.<\/p>\n Ecuador is planning for the construction of a naval facility in the coastal city of Manta that will host U.S. forces<\/a>, whom Noboa hopes will assist in battling gangs. The U.S. military manned a base in Manta until 2009, when then-President Correa declined to renew its lease<\/a>. Gonz\u00e1lez opposed the establishment of foreign military bases in Ecuador, which are currently prohibited under its constitution.<\/p>\n Noboa in March announced<\/a> a \u201cstrategic alliance\u201d with Blackwater founder Erik Prince, who has lobbied<\/a> in recent months to involve himself with anti-drug operations in Latin America and deportations from the U.S. to El Salvador. Days before the election, Prince j<\/u>oined<\/a> law enforcement operations in Guayaquil, Ecuador\u2019s largest city and one of its most dangerous. The group detained 40 people, many of whom have since been released.<\/p>\n \u201c[They were] seemingly used to promote a publicity campaign\u201d for Prince, said Carla Morena \u00c1lvarez Velasco, a professor and researcher at the Ecuadorian Institute of High National Studies. \u201cHis participation appears uncoordinated with any known local strategy or objective, and coincides with a political timing that is difficult to overlook.\u201d<\/p>\n Ecuador\u2019s surge of violence spilled into politics in 2023 when presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, a critic of corruption and criminal gangs, was assassinated at a rally in the north of Quito, allegedly at the order<\/a> of the Los Lobos organized crime group. Just before the election, Villavicencio\u2019s widow accused the Noboa administration of pressuring her<\/a> to blame Correa\u2019s political party for the murder despite already knowing who was responsible.<\/p>\n But Noboa was able to soundly defeat an opposition campaign that sometimes appeared disorganized and lacked substantive alternatives to Ecuador\u2019s security, economic, and energy issues.<\/p>\n Gonz\u00e1lez pledged to follow her mentor, Correa, by increasing social spending to help those living in poverty. But her party\u2019s past economic mishaps \u201cundermined her discourse\u201d among the public, Ron said.<\/p>\n Noboa touted his relationship with Trump in angling to avoid tariffs, claiming that its 10 percent rate would rise should Gonz\u00e1lez win. He has not commented on Trump\u2019s cuts to the U.S. Agency for International Development, which delivered<\/a><\/u> $117.3 million between 2020 and 2024 to Ecuador.<\/p>\n Ecuadorians have left the country in droves; more than 90,000 people left in 2024, and Ecuadorians were the second-largest group crossing the Dari\u00e9n Gap in 2023<\/a>, after Venezuelans.<\/p>\n In the final months of 2024, the crisis worsened when Ecuador, which relies on hydropower for about three-quarters of its energy, experienced a severe drought that led to a power shortage and scheduled blackouts of up to 14 hours per day. Noboa\u2019s administration was criticized for ignoring warning signs earlier in the year, when water levels were low in the Amazon.<\/p>\n \u201cIt ended up affecting the image of Noboa in the first round,\u201d said Homero Palt\u00e1n, a researcher on climate and water risks at Oxford University. \u201c[He] got lucky, in a way, that it started raining.\u201d<\/p>\n With the blackouts in the rearview mirror, Noboa and Gonz\u00e1lez mostly played a blame game during the campaign. Noboa accused Correa of causing it by relying too heavily on hydropower, while Gonz\u00e1lez said there were no blackouts under Correa, although his presidency occurred during a series of unusually wet years.<\/p>\n \u201cThe discussion has been highly political from both sides without really addressing the technical and structural issues,\u201d Palt\u00e1n said.<\/p>\n Both candidates expressed openness to increasing Ecuador\u2019s capacity of wind, solar, and other renewable energy, and promised to repair thermal power plants that malfunctioned during the crisis. Noboa has pledged to seek private investment in the energy sector. Gonz\u00e1lez favors more state control and has said she would seek public-private partnerships, but gave few specific details.<\/p>\n Ecuador has seen intensifying fluctuations between wet and dry spells that project to get worse in the years to come. It already has frequent environmental disasters<\/a> in its oil-producing regions, most recently an oil spill in March<\/a>, and the country\u2019s energy demand is expected to double by 2050 as its population grows. Ecuador\u2019s security and economic issues are thus deeply wedded to its ability to produce power\u2014and at present, that remains dependent on the rain.<\/p>\n \u201cThis will just happen again,\u201d Palt\u00e1n said. \u201cThat\u2019s the problem with climate change.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n