Confidence in liquidity and solvency grows as authorities report a sharp increase in flagged financial transactions.

Detention order against Aquiles Álvarez deepens political fallout while judges set March hearings in linked fuel case.

Suspension of transit services stalled deliveries nationwide, with losses mounting as authorities promise gradual normalization. Ecuador’s automotive sector has spent the past week in limbo, as the suspension of vehicle registration services rippled through dealerships, importers, and buyers, stalling sales and freezing deliveries across the country. What began as an institutional intervention at the National […]

There’s a certain comfort governments take in the appearance of control. Big gestures. Hard lines. Locked doors. Tariffs. Raids. Polygraphs. Mega-prisons. They photograph well, they sound decisive, and they give officials something solid to point at when everything else feels like it’s slipping through their fingers. This week’s TCD reads like a catalog of those […]

Colombian president links border security, drug trafficking, and energy integration while tariffs deepen a regional standoff. Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro has doubled down on the idea that borders must remain open to people even as governments coordinate security, a message delivered from Washington just as a trade dispute with Ecuador hardened into reciprocal tariffs and […]

Oversight delays and weak enforcement leave key questions unanswered long after ballots are counted. Ecuador’s presidential campaigns continue to operate inside what election officials themselves describe as a financial gray zone, where spending is reported late, incompletely, or not at all, and where accountability often arrives years after voters have moved on. A growing list […]

Government approval advances a long-delayed copper mine despite legal battles, community resistance and lingering consultation disputes. The Ecuadorian government has formally granted an environmental license to the La Plata mining project, a decision that clears a major regulatory hurdle for one of the country’s most contentious mining developments and reignites tensions in rural Cotopaxi. The […]

Government removes dozens of officials after failed trust tests and internal alerts. A sweeping purge across Ecuador’s mining oversight institutions has removed dozens of senior officials, as authorities move to confront what they describe as deep-seated complicity with illegal mining networks. The shake-up was confirmed by Energy and Mines Minister Inés Manzano, who said officials […]

Foreign seizures outpace domestic interceptions as scanner overload, delayed alerts, and offshore contamination reshape trafficking routes. Two out of every three cocaine seizures tied to Ecuadorian maritime exports are being made far from the country’s docks, underscoring a widening gap between detection at origin and enforcement at destination. In 2025, authorities seized 96.1 tons of […]

Only a sliver of criminal complaints reach sentencing as staffing shortages, budget limits, and distrust choke investigations nationwide Ecuador’s criminal justice system is straining under pressures that have quietly accumulated for years but are now impossible to ignore. Prosecutors across the country are handling volumes of cases that far exceed their institutional capacity, while convictions […]

From Michael: I wrote this tongue-in-cheek column in early 2020, back when The Cuenca Dispatch was print-only and safely immune from reader comments. I’m reprinting it now because… well, what could possibly go wrong? Today only, we are offering our one-of-a-kind, never publicly offered before, fully proven and sure to work guide, “How to Destroy […]

Coverage limits protect savers per institution, not per person, reshaping how risk is understood. A system built on where money is held Deposit insurance in Ecuador is often misunderstood as a single ceiling applied to a person’s total savings. In reality, the system is structured around institutions, not individuals. Coverage applies separately to each financial […]

Intense downpours push waterways toward flood alerts while securing hydroelectric reserves after years of drought. Cuenca has entered 2026 under a markedly different hydrological reality than the previous two years. Instead of prolonged dryness, the city and the wider Austro region are facing sustained rainfall marked not only by regular frequency but by unusually strong […]

Testimony from a former insider deepens scrutiny of campaign finances, foreign funding claims, and internal fractures within Citizen Revolution The Caja Chica (Petit Box) investigation took a sharper turn this week after former assemblyman and campaign finance official Santiago Díaz Asque told prosecutors that he moved money from Venezuela into Ecuador at the direction of […]

Suspension halts extraction, but communities describe poisoned water, fear, and a crisis that long predates the decree. A sweeping halt after years of warnings The national government’s decision to suspend all mining activity in the Napo River basin has drawn a sharp line under years of environmental deterioration and social tension in one of Ecuador’s […]

Peak inflows near 119 cubic meters per second offer temporary relief for Ecuador’s most critical hydroelectric reservoir. In the industrial parks and living rooms of Cuenca, eyes are fixed on a single number: 2,153. That is the maximum elevation (in meters above sea level) of the Mazar reservoir. It is the magic number that guarantees […]

There’s a certain rhythm to the news when things start to wobble. You feel it before you fully understand it. A story here. Another one there. A road gone. A house down. A reservoir number that everyone suddenly knows by heart. None of it feels catastrophic on its own, but taken together, it starts to […]

Residents protest rising crime as armed robberies target foreign homeowners and expose a fragile police presence. Vilcabamba, the fabled “Valley of Longevity,” has long sold a promise to the world: eternal spring, health, and peace. For decades, this promise attracted a unique demographic of international retirees, wellness seekers, and tourists, transforming the sleepy agricultural parish […]

A heritage home’s sudden fall exposes the fragile balance between history, safety, and neglect in Ecuador’s highlands. The morning of Saturday, January 24, 2026, began like any other in the Andean canton of Cotacachi. The air was crisp, the streets around the central market were beginning to hum with the quiet commerce of the weekend, […]

Tourism rebounds as beach crowds return under the watchful presence of armed patrols. Salinas is a city living two realities in January 2026. Walk along the Malecón of San Lorenzo and you see the version that fills postcards and Instagram feeds: families clustered under umbrellas, vendors slicing coconuts, the smell of ceviche drifting through the […]

After months transforming public spaces, the XVII Bienal closes following record attendance and international recognition. For the past few months, the streets of Cuenca have been a gallery. The XVII Bienal de Cuenca, titled “The Game” (“El Juego”), has turned colonial plazas, museums, and heritage homes into spaces of interrogation, play, and critique. Now, as […]