Ecuador and Guatemala held elections on Sunday that shed light on crucial trends throughout Latin America, including anticorruption drives, the growing importance of young voters and calls to emulate El Salvador’s crackdown on crime.
In Ecuador, where the assassination this month of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio cast a pall over campaigning, an establishment leftist, Luisa González, will head into a runoff against Daniel Noboa, the scion of a well-heeled family known for its banana empire.
And in Guatemala, the progressive anti-graft crusader Bernardo Arévalo won in a landslide over a former first lady, Sandra Torres, dealing a blow to the country’s conservative political establishment.
As concerns simmer over the erosion of the rule of law and the expanding sway of drug gangs in different parts of Latin America, the voting was watched closely for signs of what the outcomes could mean.
Persons:
El, Fernando Villavicencio, Luisa González, Daniel Noboa, Bernardo Arévalo, Sandra Torres
Locations:
Ecuador, Guatemala, America