Daniel Noboa wins another term as Ecuador’s murder rate soars
Ecuadorians will have little patience if the would-be strongman cannot tackle the gangs
On April 13th Daniel Noboa, Ecuador’s conservative president, trounced his left-wing opponent, Luisa González, to win a second term. A 37-year-old heir to a banana fortune, Mr Noboa has been in office only since November 2023, when he was elected to finish the mandate of an unpopular president who had resigned. Since then he has hammered Ecuador’s drug gangs, sidelined rivals and ramped up spending on welfare. He also puffed up his friendship with Donald Trump, whom he met in Mar-a-Lago just before the election. Mr Noboa is only the second president to win re-election since Ecuador became a democracy in 1979.
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This article appeared in the The Americas section of the print edition under the headline “Nobody’s perfect”
From the April 19th 2025 edition
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