NewsTracker Answers for week of Aug. 14, 2023

Q: A presidential candidate who campaigned against the link between organized crime and Ecuador’s officials was assassinated by armed gunmen last week after a political rally in the nation’s capital Quito. Where is Ecuador on the western edge of South America?

Circle the area on this map


Q: Six suspects were arrested in the killing of Fernando Villavicencio, the candidate and a former journalist. The six men were from what country that borders Ecuador to the north?

A. Bolivia

B. Colombia

C. Peru

D. Venezuela


B. Ecuador had been a relatively safe and stable country, but crime has shot up in recent years as drug cartels from both its northern neighbor, Columbia, and Mexico infiltrated local criminal gangs. Ecuador is wedged between the world’s largest cocaine producers - Columbia and Peru, which is east and south of Ecuador.


Q: Colombians also were arrested in the 2021 assassination of the president of the poorest nation in the Americas. What is the poorest country in the western hemisphere?

A. Belize

B. Bermuda

C. Haiti

D. Honduras


C. Plagued by extreme poverty, natural disasters and a history of political repression, Haiti has descended into a state of near anarchy since the killing of President Jovenel Moise. Warring gangs now control much of the country,


Q: Drug gangs use Ecuador to ship cocaine produced in Columbia and Peru. Earlier this year, Ecuadorean authorities seized cocaine worth $330 million in a shipment of bananas bound for which country that is the de facto capital of the European Union?

A. Belgium

B. France

C. Germany

D. Netherlands


A. While Belgium hosts the top European Union’s top councils, the country also has become the site where the largest quantities of cocaine have been seized in the political and economic union. Europe is also reporting increased drug violence. Last year, more than 200 tons of cocaine was seized in Ecuador, most of it at the southern port of Guayaquil.


Q: As both as a candidate and as journalist, Villavicencio took aim at drug gangs and public corruption. Journalists across Latin America have been killed for reporting on those same topics. Which Latin American nation had the most journalists killed last year?

A. El Salvador

B. Haiti

C. Honduras

D. Mexico


D. Thirteen journalists were slain in Mexico in 2022, according to the Committee to Protect Journalists. Seven journalists were reported killed in Haiti. Of the 67 journalists killed around the world last year, nearly half were slain in Latin America, a region “nominally at peace.”