New Delhi:

Ecuadorian influencer, Landy Parraga Goyburo, was shot dead after her Instagram post gave away her location to the attackers, reports say. Just before her death, Goyburo had posted a picture of her having ‘octopus ceviche’ for lunch at a restaurant, which is where she was targetted by two armed men.

The incident was captured by surveillance cameras, revealing how two unidentified gunmen stormed into the eatery where Landy Parraga Goyburo was seated. As she conversed with a companion, the gunmen barged in. In a matter of seconds, the tranquility of the restaurant shattered as gunshots rang out, sending patrons diving for cover and leaving Goyburo and another person defenseless.

Despite the chaos, the 23-year-old’s attempt to seek refuge proved futile as one of the gunmen mercilessly fired at her. The attackers then made their escape, leaving behind a scene of horror and disbelief. Images captured in the aftermath depict Goyburo, a former beauty queen, lying in a pool of blood.

Just before the attack, the influencer had shared a picture of her lunch with her 173,000 followers on Instagram. Investigators believe that the gunmen learned of her location from the post.

The motive behind the heinous crime is still not known. Speculations abound, with theories ranging from Goyburo’s alleged involvement with a notorious gang boss to her entanglement in a corruption inquiry linking judicial officials to organized crime. Rumors swirl that the killing may have been orchestrated by the widow of a drug lord, whom Goyburo allegedly had an affair with.

The story so far: A political and diplomatic chasm has split Latin America. The epicentre of the crisis is Ecuador’s capital Quito; the immediate trigger was a police raid on the Mexican Embassy to arrest a political opponent convicted of corruption. President Daniel Noboa, in an unprecedented move, ordered raids on the embassy to arrest Jorge David Glas, a former Vice-President in the administration of leftist former President Rafael Correa. Mr. Glas had sought shelter at the Embassy since December, a month after Mr. Noboa came to power, and was later given political asylum by Mexico. The raid was an “exceptional decision,” taken “to protect national security, the rule of law and the dignity of a population that rejects any type of impunity for criminals, corrupt people or narco-terrorists,” Mr. Noboa said.

Critics say the raids are partly designed to boost Mr. Noboa’s image and yield short-term political gains. The young President is facing criticism for being unable to control crime, and has rallied support for a military crackdown on gang violence, the fate of which will be decided through a referendum on April 21.

The raids, however, have earned Mr. Noboa international opprobrium for violating international laws. Mexico has broken diplomatic relations with the South American nation and plans to appeal at the International Court of Justice that Ecuador be suspended from the United Nations — unless it extends an apology. 

What is the political context?

The politics of Ecuador is tied to the security and safety of Ecuadorians. The once-peaceful Andean nation of 18 million people has seen crime and gang violence explode since 2016. Ecuador, because of its geography and permeable borders, sits as a transit hub for drugs moving from Colombia and Peru. In 2009, a policy by the then-Correa Government expelled the U.S. forces from its territory, weakening Ecuador’s ability to stave off entry and deter distribution of drugs within the country. The operation of drug cartels has boomed: Ecuador was by 2019 among the top exporters of cocaine to the world, and within its borders, sheltered at least three major international crime groups. According to government estimates, almost 40,000 drug gang members operate in the country, equal to the number of soldiers in Ecuador’s army. The drug trafficking industry, mixed with an overcrowded and corrupt penal system, has sparked a crime wave: rampant prison riots, prison breaks, loot, kidnapping, cocaine trafficking, murders and political assassinations. Journalist and Presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio was assassinated on the campaign trail in August last year; mayor Jorge Maldonado, who was shot dead on April 19, was the fifth Ecuadorian mayor to be assassinated in the last year.

The government on its part has largely failed to make dents in or address the structural roots of the violence, analyst Carla Álvarez at the Institute for Advanced National Studies told The New York Times last year. The Correa Government’s reputation had been sullied due to a growing number of corruption and graft charges. Mr. Glas, who was in power from 2013 to 2017, was previously convicted of taking bribes in a scandal involving the construction giant Odebrecht; he also faces legal proceedings for alleged embezzlement in reconstruction projects after the 2016 earthquake. Mr. Glas is a “symbol of corruption in Ecuador,” scholar Esteban Nicholls told AFP.

Daniel Noboa in his presidential bid in 2023 pledged to weed out drugs, gang violence and corruption from the land. This promise resonated in a nation where homicide rates have almost tripled from 13.7 per 100,000 people in 2021 to 45 in 2023, making Ecuador one of the top three most violent nations in Latin America.

What about the timing of the raids?

Mr. Noboa last year stood as a credible outsider presenting the vision of a safer Ecuador, one leading a revolt against narco-terrorism and avowing to undo the “old paradigms” plaguing the country. “We will not negotiate with terrorists and we will not rest until we have returned peace to Ecuadorians,” Mr. Noboa said in January. The 36-year-old’s hard-line policies — such as building high-security prisons and a 90-day state of emergency in January — haven’t emerged as permanent solutions. The emergency was imposed after Los Choneros gang leader Aldolfo Macias (or ‘Fito’), among Ecuador’s most dangerous criminals, escaped from his cell. Mr. Noboa also signed a declaration of “internal armed conflict”, a decree naming 22 criminal gangs as terrorist organisations. “We are at war,” he told a radio station. The decree allowed the government to employ the military as a pacification tactic: the government deployed soldiers in public spaces and moved to reestablish control in prisons.

Murder rates dipped initially but boomeranged soon after. The coastal city of Guayaquil was overrun by gangs as recently as January; there was a surge of violence over the April Easter weekend with more than 100 deaths in a mere three days. The escape and failed capture of Fito further emboldened Mr. Noboa’s detractors. The President appears to be failing on the litmus test of crime rates, corruption and narco-terrorism policies, jeopardising his popularity and approval ratings.

The police raids also hint at growing fraught relations with Mexico. A conflict has emerged between the 70-year-old Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador and the 36-year-old Mr. Noboa, currently the world’s youngest democratically elected serving state leader. On April 3, Mr. Obradar questioned the result of the 2023 elections in which Mr. Noboa won; Mr. Noboa responded by declaring Mr. Obrador persona non grata and expelled the Mexican ambassador. Mexico, two days later, announced political asylum to Mr. Glas. Mr. Orabadar called the subsequent raids an “authoritarian action,” taken only when “weak governments that do not have popular support or capacity” come to power.

According to the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, embassies are protected, “inviolable” spaces — not technically “foreign soil,” but territories that enjoy immunity when carrying out the sovereign functions in the country where they are located. “The agents of the receiving State may not enter them, except with the consent of the head of the mission,” the Convention states. The “rule of inviolability,” however, may mean that political opponents may avoid arrest by taking shelter in foreign embassies. “Some government use their embassy as a facade of political refuge, but it’s actually to save criminals from their sentence,” Mr. Noboa said in an interview. He also said that Mr. Glas posed an “imminent” flight risk, the government was aware of “a plan to escape” and the raids are part of his “fight against impunity.”

Last year, Ecuador’s transport minister Maria de los Angeles Duarte, sentenced to eight years imprisonment for a bribery charge, escaped to Venezuela after living in the Argentine embassy in Quito. A diplomatic row soon emerged between Ecuador and Argentina.

Is there international backlash?

Mr. Noboa has also set himself against the diplomatic order for now. All Latin American countries, with the exception of El Salvador, have condemned Ecuador’s raids on the Mexico Embassy. The break was “unwarranted and unjustified,” the Organisation of American States said; the European Union condemned it as a violation of the Vienna Convention in force for six decades. Ally U.S. has not entirely condemned Ecuador but ambiguously reiterated the “obligation of host countries under international law to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions.” Mexico, for now, has broken diplomatic relations with Ecuador and approached the United Nations.

The diplomatic rupture between Mexico and Ecuador has put regional security under the radar. The raids “could set a very dangerous precedent, and that’s very concerning for the stability of diplomatic relations in the region,” wrote scholars Fabio Andrés Díaz Pabón and Maria Gabriela Palacio in a Conversation article. Without any reconciliation, the spat could prove counterproductive to Ecuador’s narcoterrorism pursuits, and further jeopardise migrant safety. Ecuador is a point of transit for migrants attempting to reach Mexico and cross into North America; the provocation poses “serious risks in a region where illicit economies, violence and forced migration are spiralling out of control,” the scholars noted.

There are also trade and geopolitical variables on the line. The two countries have modest trade relations: Ecuador contributes only 0.038% to Mexico’s imports and its share of Mexico’s exports was just 0.1%, according to official figures. The diplomatic tiff could still fuel commercial instability. Mexico has put on hold its negotiations with Ecuador on a free trade deal that would have allowed the latter to join the Pacific Alliance trade bloc.

Ecuador maintains that Mexico’s political asylum is a violation of laws in the first place. “No nation can give political asylum to someone [an ordinary prisoner] if they have a sentence”, Mr. Noboa said in an interview with SBS News, saying that this amounts to getting involved in the sovereignty and judicial systems of different nations.

Why is the April 21 referendum important?

Mr. Noboa entered office as a political outsider, taking over the Presidency after a snap election was called in November 2023. The leader is up for re-election in May 2025. The display of force, through raids, may hurt Mr. Noboa’s international repute but reinforces his standing on the domestic political stage, according to analysts. The raids could “bolster his domestic credibility”, strengthen his “appeal to voters looking for strong leadership and a new direction for the country,” placing him favourably for next year, wrote analyst Sebastian Hurtado in Americas Quarterly.

Ecuador on April 21 voted in a referendum to decide if the government can further increase security tactics to fight gang violence. The proposed measures include formally authorising military presence on the streets and including harsher prison sentences for gang-related crimes. The referendum is the first political test of Mr. Noboa’s popularity, and of his declaration of an ‘uncompromising’ war on crime and impunity.

The local reaction is cleaved along political lines: one side sees value in Mr. Noboa’s message of fighting crime with force, while the other worries about the authoritarian undertones driving these actions. The raids, even if a gamble, may buoy support for the referendum, boost Mr. Noboa’s image as an ‘action man’ and find appeal among Ecuadorians disillusioned with a status quo paralysing their way of life. “The priority is to clean, sanitize, continue with a process as important as President Noboa’s to put the house in order,” college professor Gabriela Sandoval told AP, calling the raids a “courageous act.” Observers are drawing parallels between Mr. Noboa and El Salvador’s president Nayib Buklee who, through similar hard-line tactics against drug and gang violence, won a second mandate in power. The incident had no international “upside,” Mr. Hurtado told FT, but “shows of force and radical action have served the president before”, especially at a time when there is a growing public desire for justice and safety.

At the same time, Mr. Noboa’s referendum served a dual political purpose: to deepen militarisation and block public dissent, wrote Mr. Pabón and Ms. Palacio. The reform wants to fight “terrorists” and “narco-terrorism” but its content is “ambiguous.”

“It is feared the government could use it to suppress protest, for example, when it comes to opposition to the government’s extractive policy,” they write. Put differently, a government that feels emboldened to violate international law would have a similar disregard for domestic laws. Moreover, “going rogue inside the embassy of a neighbouring country in the name of fighting corruption” is not going to aid Ecuador in tackling its complicated challenges, The Hindu’s editorial noted.

Mr. Noboa has discounted the “strongman” label in favour of being seen as “someone who is fair,” he told SBS News. “If he would have escaped, I would have been too weak in front of everyone. Now that I have caught the guy, I’m too strong. It’s difficult to please everyone,” he said.

When asked if he has regrets, Mr. Noboa said “zero”, because “we’re on the right side of history”. On plans of resolution he said, “I will invite President [Obrador] to have a ceviche. We can probably have some tacos together. And then we can talk…whenever he’s ready.”

Researchers in the Amazon have discovered the world’s largest snake species – an enormous green anaconda – in Ecuador’s rainforest that split off from its closest relatives 10 million years ago though they still nearly look identical to this day.

A video shared online shows the scale of these 20-foot-long (6.1-meter-long) reptiles as one of the researchers, Dutch biologist Freek Vonk, swims alongside a giant 200-kilo (441-pound) specimen.

It was thought that there was only one species of green anaconda in the wild, the Eunectes murinus, but the scientific journal Diversity this month revealed that the new “northern green anaconda” belongs to a different, new species, Eunectes akiyama.

“What we were there to do was use the anacondas as an indicator species for what kind of damage is being done by the oil spills that are plaguing the Yasuni in Ecuador, because the oil extraction is absolutely out of control,” researcher Bryan G. Fry said.

Fry – an Australian professor of biology at the University of Queensland who for almost 20 years has been investigating anaconda species found in South America – told Reuters the discovery allows them to show that the two species split from each other almost 10 million years ago.

“But the really amazing part was, despite this genetic difference, and despite their long period of divergence, the two animals are completely identical,” he said.

Although green anaconda snakes are very similar visually, there is a genetic difference of 5.5%, which surprised the scientists.

“Which is an incredible amount of genetic difference, particularly when you put it in the context that we’re only 2% different from chimpanzees,” Fry said.

Anacondas are incredibly useful sources of information for the ecological health of the area and the potential impacts on human health of oil spills in the region, Fry said.

Some of the snakes they studied in parts of Ecuador were heavily polluted by oil spills, and the anacondas and arapaima fish are accumulating a large amount of the petrochemical metals, he added.

“That means that if arapaima fish are accumulating these oil spill metals, that they need to be avoided by pregnant women, just like women avoid salmon and tuna and other parts of the world for fear of methylmercury,” he said.

(Except for the headline, this story has not been edited by NDTV staff and is published from a syndicated feed.)

A cleaner in the United Kingdom was fired by a top London law firm for eating a leftover tuna sandwich which she found in a meeting room, according to a report in the Guardian. The woman Gabriela Rodriguez, hailing from Ecuador, worked at Devonshires Solicitors for two years and is now taking legal action against them.

The United Voices of the World union, which represents the rights of migrant workers, stated that the woman was sacked a few days before Christmas last year after the contractor Total Clean received a complaint of leftover sandwiches not being returned. They confirmed that Ms Rodriguez ate a sandwich worth 1.50 euros (Rs 134 approximately) which she thought would be thrown after a meeting of lawyers. According to the legal affairs website RollOnFriday, the woman was fired for taking “client property … without authority or reasonable excuse”. The union claims that the request for Ms Rodriguez’s removal was an act of discrimination, claiming that if she were not a Latin American with limited English, the company would not have complained about her, resulting in her firing.

To protest against her firing and to get her reinstated, several union workers gathered outside the law firm’s office on February 14 with “100 cans of tuna, 300 hand-wrapped sandwiches, several helium heart-shaped balloons, and love letters for Rodriguez”.

In an interview with the outlet, Ms Rodriguez said that it was “common practice” for staff members to take leftovers for lunch. “On a normal day, some sandwiches were left in the canteen after meetings of lawyers; it was a common practice for people to help themselves for lunchtime. It was almost at the end of my shift – quarter to two in the afternoon – and I took one and put it in the fridge. A week later, I was called 15 minutes before the end of my shift. I was then suspended without pay pending further investigation,” she told the Guardian.

Petros Elia, the general secretary of United Voices of the World, told the outlet, “Cleaners are routinely dismissed on trivial and, we argue, discriminatory grounds like this every day around the country. Many describe feeling treated ‘like the dirt they clean’ and Gabriela is one of them. We will raise our voices and unite to fight any employer – even big powerful companies like Devonshires Solicitors. And just because we clean their dirt, does not mean they can treat us like dirt. We demand respect, dignity and equality, regardless of the language we speak, our country of origin, or the colour of our skin.” She added that they will take both companies to the employment tribunal for race discrimination.

A Total Clean spokesperson told the outlet that the information provided by the ex-employee was “misleading and inaccurate”. They said, “It is important to us to maintain the integrity of our workforce and service by ensuring we deal appropriately with any actions that undermine the hard work and reputation of our incredible team who conduct themselves impeccably. Trust and honesty is of paramount importance. All steps taken have been in accordance with UK employment law following the proper investigative and disciplinary process. We will be making no further comment on the matter.”

Further, the London law firm stated that they did not make a “formal complaint” against Ms Rodriguez and did not ask Total Clean to take any action. “Total Clean carried out their own investigation and the decision to dismiss Gabriela was taken without any input or influence from Devonshires whatsoever. This is a private matter between Total Clean and Gabriela but we have made clear to Total Clean that we would not object – as we never have done – to Gabriela attending and working on our premises if Total Clean changes its position,” the company told the outlet.

Thirty-five-year-old Daniel Noboa became Ecuador’s youngest-ever president-elect after the electoral authority declared him the victor and socialist rival Luisa Gonzalez conceded defeat.

Here are five points on Daniel Noboa: