At the elevator door of the Guasmo hospital, Laura Ipanaque heard her 19-year-old son say for the last time: “Mommy, I love you.” Javier was on a stretcher. He had asked the doctors to let his mother pray with him. “I asked God to be her family doctor, he fought to survive,” she says. The next time she saw him, Javier was intubated, unable to speak. “Still, he had hope that he would walk out of there,” Laura continues. At that moment she didn't even understand what had happened or who had shot her son. She was unaware that while she was praying for him, Javier was bleeding to death from the bullets that had pierced his right lung, intestine, and spinal cord. He died the next day, at 7:20 in the morning.
Only Eduardo Velasco, Javier's cousin, and the soldiers who fired the shots know what happened on the morning of Friday, February 2. The five video surveillance cameras that are installed on Robles Street in the Cuba neighborhood, south of Guayaquil, where the crime occurred, do not work, according to what the family has been told. There is no record of what happened, only the version of Eduardo, the witness who survived, and that of the Ecuadorian Armed Forces, which have the support of President Daniel Noboa, who has called those who defend human rights “antipatriates.” and they question the work the Government is doing to control the violence in the country.
Eduardo is 34 years old and works as a taxi driver for different cooperatives. He feels obliged to tell that his cousin was murdered by the Ecuadorian military “for no reason.” For the spokespersons of the Executive, the reduction of violence rates by more than half 55 days after decreeing the internal armed conflict are arguments that indicate that the plan is on the right track. In this scenario, Javier's family has denounced the State for extrajudicial execution, while the authorities have denounced Eduardo for attack and resistance, calling him and his dead cousin “terrorists.”
The day at the Vega Ipanaque family bakery began, as always, long before dawn on Friday, February 2. The three children were sleeping when Laura left. That day it was Javier's turn to do the morning shift, but she changed it with her mother to accompany her cousin Eduardo to the house of a potential buyer of a pit bull puppy they were selling. The person concerned lived on Robles Street, in the Cuba neighborhood, right next to where a group of soldiers was carrying out an operation in an alley where there are 26 homes.
“They took us all out of the houses and forced us to be two blocks from the place,” describes one of the inhabitants of the sector who prefers that his identity be kept confidential. Behind the military cordon, they located the inhabitants of that alley, neighbors and curious people, while the uniformed officers searched the houses in search of terrorists, weapons, ammunition or drugs. Since the State of Exception began, the Armed Forces have carried out 137,000 operations, in which they have detained 11,000 people, 280 for terrorism, according to official information.
The military closes several streets around the site of the raids. “From where we were we couldn't see what happened to the dark red car where the two young people were traveling, they came from the other side, we only heard two shots,” says a resident of the neighborhood. Eduardo and Javier were in the dark red car. Minutes before, the military had prevented both of them from passing through that same street. “When we arrived we realized the presence of the military. “I got out of the car to ask one of them if he would let us pass because we were going to a house that was just a few steps away, but he told me no and I returned to the car,” says Eduardo.
“I started to back up to turn around and go down the same street and the soldier who was closest pointed at me, I got scared and collided with a patrol car. The soldier who was closest starts kicking the front of the car and I told him: Hold on, don't kick the car! “He continues. According to Eduardo, the soldiers approached and one of them stood next to the vehicle. “When I started I brushed against the soldier, I don't know if it was the boot, or something, because I passed very close to him, but it wasn't a direct impact against him.” Seconds later a shot was heard.
Eduardo didn't think it was against them. “I didn't believe that the military fired, I thought that a shootout had broken out due to the operation. My cousin Javier hit me with his arm and I realized that he was pale and I started,” he continues. He was also shot in the left shoulder, from which he is still recovering. The military chased them. “I took the road to the hospital that at that moment I thought was the closest, but they forced me to stop and I stopped in a busy area.” They took them out of the car and threw them on the ground. “I asked them to take my cousin to the hospital, but they kicked me in the chest and I kept quiet.” Eduardo and Javier were taken to the hospital under police custody, the treatment towards them was that of alleged terrorists.
The Armed Forces came out to give their version. They claimed that the two men tried to evade the checkpoint by “hitting military personnel and hitting the patrol vehicle,” as stated in the official statement. “In response to this attack, shots were fired to ensure the safety of the personnel. Immediately afterwards, the chase began, reaching the vehicle meters ahead, where it was found that two alleged terrorists were injured.” The statement cites Decree 111 signed by President Noboa, in which he recognizes – for the first time in the country's recent history – the existence of an internal armed conflict that turns 22 criminal organizations into military targets.
When Laura arrived at the hospital, the medical staff was going to take Javier up the elevator, and she listened to her son for the last time. While she waited for news of his health, she watched social networks and the press. “I couldn't believe they called them terrorists. My son? Do they want to justify what they did by calling my son a terrorist? ”She asks herself. “The Police themselves said that they did not find anything in the car, nor did they find anything in them. Nothing. They have only caused us the greatest pain, destroying a family even more, at least they should rectify it,” she asks.
Sadness barely allows Laura to speak. Her eyes water just by hearing the name of Javier, the second of her four children. She remains silent, with a lost look. Only at the end does she say: “He was the most affectionate. He always hugged me, wherever I was.” Javier played bass and guitar in the musical group of an evangelical Christian church in Guayaquil. Less than a year ago he had graduated from high school. While he was doing the paperwork to enter university, he worked in the family bakery with his parents, in the south of the most populated city in Ecuador.
In his maternal grandparents' house, his presence is everywhere. The instrument lies covered with a printed sheet, to prevent Javier's grandparents from seeing the guitar and starting endless crying. They sit and watch photos and videos of the small, athletic grandson with straight hair. The recording shows a smiling young man at his school, dressed in the Ecuador national team shirt. “He was joking and uninhibited. “Everyone loved him because of how loving he was,” says Nicole, his younger sister.
The military took to the streets two months ago to take charge of security at the request of the president, in a context of social unrest due to the spike in violence, constant shootings and extortion. After the fear spread throughout the country, it was now the alleged criminals who were subdued by the public force. The images recorded by the military in which the young people cry, beg not to be mistreated, check the tattoos on their bodies and are forced to sing the national anthem as an act of remission of their crimes quickly spread across social networks and received thousands of comments. likes, hearts, and applause. The Armed Forces are today the institution with the greatest credibility in the country, over the State and the church, according to the pollster Perfiles de Opinión.
However, this apparent peace and reduction in crimes comes up against violations of human rights and due process, as denounced by several organizations, such as the Permanent Human Rights Committee of Guayaquil, CDH. Human rights groups have raised alarm bells to demand monitoring of the actions of the public forces, “if they continue to give free rein they can fall into crimes against humanity,” says Elsie Monge, a well-known human rights defender from the INREDH organization. , who also investigated the worst barbarities committed in Ecuador between 1984 and 1985 by the National Police.
“What we are seeing now with these decrees of impunity for the public force is worrying, it is like a license to kill. It is very dangerous to assign the armed forces the role of maintaining order, they are not trained for that. They are trained to kill,” Monge emphasizes.
Meanwhile, Laura says that one day she will forgive them. “In the church they have taught me that I have to forgive and when I do I will tell the military who did this. For now every day I ask God to help me forgive, I know I will, but earthly justice will have to take care of them.”
Follow all the information from El PAÍS América in Facebook and xor in our weekly newsletter.
#death #Javier #young #man #sell #dog #ended #shot #military #checkpoint #Ecuador