The sociologist and economic historian Immanuel Wallerstein believed that capitalism would not last forever. He argued that the system would either be replaced by something more democratic and just or by something far more exploitative and authoritarian. The outcome, he insisted, depended on how people fought for it. Ecuador’s runoff election, which will be held in April after the leading candidates tied in the first round of voting on February 9, mirrors Wallerstein’s 50-50 odds.
Ecuador has been home to some of the most compelling and most troubling political visions of our times. In 2008, it became the first country to grant constitutional rights to nature. Since then, Ecuadorian courts have increasingly enforced these rights, setting legal precedents that challenge extractive industries and the petrostate. In 2015, the Sarayaku community brought this vision to the international stage with Kawsak Sacha, or the Living Forest proposal, presented at COP21 in Paris. In 2023, Ecuadorians voted in a historic referendum to halt oil drilling in the Amazon and restrict mining in the Andean humid and mountain forests. The vote marked a turning point in environmental governance, mandating the immediate dismantling of oil infrastructure in the Yasuní National Park and the withdrawal of mining operations from the Chocó Andino Biosphere Reserve.
Yet in the twenty-first century, Ecuador also became a narco-battleground where political power and criminal power feed off each other, blur together, and remake the state. This parasitic relationship between state institutions and criminal organizations emerged alongside the U.S.-led war on drugs, which has shaped the region since the 1980s. It first took hold in the late 1990s and early 2000s through recurrent corruption cases involving security forces, local authorities, and the judiciary. In recent years, however, it has spread throughout government institutions and most political parties.
At the core of this contradiction lies a struggle for the future of democracy. The February 9 election left Ecuador divided, with President Daniel Noboa and leftist former congresswoman Luisa González advancing to the runoff after securing a combined 88.14 percent of the vote—44.16 percent for Noboa and 43.98 percent for González. Noboa, who took office in 2023 after winning a snap election, has built his presidency around a declaration of “Internal Armed Conflict” that has been used as a political wildcard, serving to militarize the streets and prison system, criminalize protest, stigmatize electoral adversaries, delay compliance with the referendum, and justify the use of security forces in environmental governance. His opponent, González, remains tied to Correa’s legacy, defined both by his history as a successful state reformer and by his record of suppressing dissent. But the contradiction playing out in Ecuador’s election is not just a national concern. What is at stake is part of a broader political struggle over the global economy and the rise of the far right.
The possibility of a compromise between left-leaning parties has become central to public debate as González maneuvers for support from Indigenous leader Leonidas Iza, who earned 5.26 percent in the February 9 vote. In the coming weeks, Wallerstein’s struggle between authoritarianism and democracy will take shape in the space between the first and second rounds of the Ecuadorian election.
Democracy Beyond the Election
In his first public speech after the election, third-place candidate and Pachakutik party leader Iza centered his remarks on the meaning of democracy, framing his support as the outcome of collective deliberation rather than a personal political negotiation with González.
“The support for the runoff won’t be decided by Iza; it will be decided by collective political power. We will show the country that decisions can be made collectively, and in time, people will come to understand that society can bring together communal democracy, direct democracy, and representative democracy,” Iza declared. He then added, “I have already received invitations to talk [with the runoff candidates], and that’s fine—we will. But first, we need to sit down among ourselves [his political base] and discuss it. We won’t support anyone without a clear political project… Conversations will be public and principled. Mientras tanto [in the meantime], they will need to be patient—to understand us and to listen. And if it takes years, then so be it. That’s just who we are.”
Let’s take a closer look at Iza’s concept of democracy. First, Iza introduces patience as a democratic value that reflects a willingness to listen and understand one’s political opponent. This shifts the emphasis from speaking to listening, from competition to cooperation, and, more importantly in the case of Ecuador, from warfare to peacemaking. What Iza calls “the meantime” is a way to slow down electoral politics to create space for public deliberation and collective choice. It is worth noting that Iza has explained multiple times that he views electoral politics as part of a broader grassroots struggle to transform the state by reclaiming sovereign agency within Indigenous territories.
In that vein, Iza’s support for González will hinge on finding innovative approaches to fundamental questions of power sharing—namely, how communal democracy, direct democracy, and representative democracy can coexist symbiotically, especially in relation to the Yasuní-Chocó Andino referendum and the expansion of large-scale mining. In a pre-election interview with Iain Bruce, Leonidas Iza summarized the Pachakutik agenda: “Our government program is not produced from behind a desk, but from grassroots struggle. It is the result of what we stood up for in 2019, of what we took to the streets for in 2022. And that was clear: financial relief for the people, no mining in watersheds and fertile areas, real and deep implementation of plurinationality, and total rejection of privatizations.” None of these topics are easy to negotiate, mainly because González’s vision of the state aligns with what economist Alberto Acosta calls neoextractivism, a model that, despite expanding state control over natural resources, continues to subordinate both national economies and environmental governance to global markets.
Iza’s approach to the runoff election resonates beyond Ecuador. As I write this, European leaders remain stunned by U.S. Vice President J.D. Vance’s unhinged speech at the Munich Security Conference, where he said: “In Britain and across Europe, free speech, I fear, is in retreat.” Defending the rise of the far right, he dismissed concerns over Russian interference in electoral processes, claiming, “If your democracy can be destroyed by a few thousand dollars of digital media from a foreign country, it was not very strong to begin with.” In response, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz pushed back, rejecting Vance’s framing of free speech, and arguing that the far right should have no role in a democracy.
Iza’s insistence on democracy as government by public discussion cannot be parochialized. It must be understood within a global context where diverse local actors, despite their differences, are converging around an authoritarian international agenda. Democratic practice, whether in the form of free speech, the rule of law, separation of powers, or egalitarian decision-making, emerges from diversity, creativity, and necessity. It is never the product of executive orders or technocratic programs. Thus, Noboa’s approach to governance reflects the consolidation of authoritarian politics in Ecuador.
Authoritarianism Goes Viral
Ecuador has long been a laboratory of authoritarianism, with anti-democratic practices present across the political spectrum. Yet only today has cruelty been weaponized on social media as a tool for political mobilization and electoral power-building. Noboa’s government has fully embraced a visual culture of authoritarianism, where humiliation and contempt serve as scripts for ultra-violent spectacles designed for digital consumption.
At 35 years old, Noboa became the youngest person to ever take office in Ecuador. The heir to the country’s wealthiest family, he stands to inherit a fortune worth over nine billion dollars, including banana plantations, a shipping and freight empire, and an extensive real estate portfolio. His presidency consolidates inherited economic power and reproduces dynastic political control. If he wins reelection, his mother is expected to become the president of the National Assembly.
Noboa’s authoritarian style is inseparable from social media. Unlike traditional strongmen, he struggles to perform the role of a charismatic leader. His bland persona and lack of emotional depth are masked by editing techniques borrowed from social media influencers. In contrast, his wife, Lavinia Valbonesi, has carved out her own niche as a successful health and fitness influencer. She has become a media sensation, receiving the kind of adulation from the mainstream press usually reserved for Hollywood celebrities.
Joining Valbonesi, an army of local far-right influencers backed by bots and trolls has helped turn digital platforms into a political battleground where algorithmic manipulation, state violence, and reactionary masculinity feed off each other. Rather than simply amplifying Noboa’s image, social media has become a key site where authoritarianism goes viral and human rights violations are celebrated and normalized.
In January 2024, Noboa declared an “Internal Armed Conflict” to combat transnational criminal organizations involved in drug trafficking, labeling 22 crime networks as terrorist groups. Under the name “Plan Fénix” and led by the military, the government launched a social media campaign promising "mano dura" policies. The campaign showcased the military arresting alleged gang members. A series of short videos filmed by soldiers depicted young, impoverished, and racialized individuals being coerced into wearing lipstick and eating bananas while they sang and cried. The footage consisted of unsteady, single-shot scenes captured on the streets, placing the viewer behind the scenes and creating the illusion of first-hand experience. These images juxtaposed the humiliation of these youth with the voice-over of military personnel laughing and mocking the sexualized and feminized young men.
Beyond this state-orchestrated spectacle of cruelty, Noboa has cultivated an organic digital following that operates as a meme machine, increasingly resembling what anthropologist Cathrine Thorleifsson calls cyberfascism. She uses the term to describe online communities that weaponize hate humor to fabricate authoritarian fantasies centered on gendered and racialized violence that dehumanize minorities and impoverished populations. In Ecuador, this digital crowd has rallied around the glorification of police brutality and the militarization of prisons, targeting the Indigenous movement, human rights organizations, and LGBTQ+ collectives.
This spectacle of cruelty paints a picture of how I envision a second term under Noboa—a version perhaps of Wallerstein’s argument that capitalism will be replaced by something worse. If we pay attention to the emerging fascist meme mediaspace, which finds humor in Noboa’s systemic abuses of power, we see that the future looks and sounds eerily like the past, only now it is transnational, decentralized, and significantly more fluid.
On the one hand, Noboa channels a highly gendered style of authoritarianism that echoes the 1980s hyper-masculine idea of sovereignty, where power is rooted in heteronormative understandings of politics. The urban anthropologist Xavier Andrade suggests that such sovereign aspirations draw on vulgarity as a shared language between elites and the masses, a discourse that paradoxically bridges inequalities while reinforcing deeply racist, misogynistic, homophobic attitudes.
On the other hand, Noboa has positioned himself as a new figure in the burgeoning Latin American far-right, a political character eager to claim a place in Elon Musk’s presidential inner circle, alongside Donald Trump, Javier Milei, Nayib Bukele, Benjamin Netanyahu, Narendra Modi, and Viktor Orbán. This transnational connection is particularly relevant because, as Wallerstein warned, whatever comes next will have world-altering consequences, and this group is already shaping a global order rooted in outwardly antidemocratic stances.
A Call for Reparative Democracy
What if González wins? The new president will have to face the twin crises of democracy and ecology. It would be a mistake to assume that her victory will automatically solve anything. Half the country will have voted for Noboa and the values he represents, a constituency she cannot ignore. The question is not whether González is ready to govern; she is experienced and fully capable of leading the state. The real question is whether she can break from her own party’s authoritarian past, and that remains an open question.
Another mistake would be to treat the rise of fascism and the climate emergency as two separate crises, as if reconstructing liberal democratic institutions on one side and implementing stricter environmental laws on the other would be enough. As political theorist Wendy Brown argues, liberal democracy has never been able to contain the destructive forces of extractivism. Rather than trying to piece together a broken system, Brown’s concept of reparative democracy calls for a radical rethinking of democracy that acknowledges the colonial and modern histories of social-ecological devastation and expands political equality beyond the human.
On April 13, 2025, Ecuadorians will cast their votes in the runoff election. The race is so close that no one can predict the outcome. What is certain is that the election will not resolve the country’s deep contradictions. Whether González or Noboa wins, democracy remains in serious trouble. If Wallerstein was right, and capitalism is on the brink of being replaced by something better or something far worse, the next government will offer a glimpse of what lies ahead on a global scale.
Jorge Núñez is an Assistant Professor in the Anthropology Department at the University of Amsterdam and co-founder of Kaleidos, a research group in the Space and Population Department at the University of Cuenca in Ecuador
