Power went out suddenly at Natalia Peñaherrera’s home in Quito on the morning of October 14. She had spent weeks hearing experts on the news talk about an electricity crisis, even though the government said there would be no outages for the public. When the lights went out, she thought of her grandmother, who has pulmonary fibrosis, and of the battery for the oxygen machine they both rely on to breathe. The blackout hit her neighborhood and much of the capital. The first thing Peñaherrera did was check that her grandmother’s emergency equipment had charge, because she needs oxygen around the clock. “It lasted just long enough until the power returned, which was a little more than two hours,” she says. “I thought of people who don’t have a backup system. What would have happened if my tank or battery had been out of charge? They leave us in total anguish; it’s outrageous.”Uncertainty has become embedded in the daily life of a country battered by violence, homicides, and extortion. Since Daniel Noboa took office in November 2023, Ecuador has lived under successive states of emergency and curfews, the president’s main strategy to fight organized crime. Added to the insecurity is an energy crisis. The government has ordered industries to be disconnected for up to three consecutive days a week to ration reservoir levels that feed hydroelectric plants, and blackouts have been recorded in different provinces without authorities explaining the causes. On top of all that, the system is failing its citizens. An obstacle courseJust try getting a driver’s license, registering a vehicle, or trying to sell one. Or securing a spot at a school, making a medical appointment, or claiming a relative’s body at the morgue. These are procedures that should be resolved quickly, but in Ecuador they can turn into an obstacle course, with endless lines beginning at dawn. This is the case for Xavier Macías, who has been trapped for two years in a procedure that forces him to go from one institution to another — the National Transit Agency, the Prosecutor’s Office, and the Internal Revenue Service — to get his vehicle registered again in his name. In 2024 someone “cloned” his license plate. Macías still has no answer. The figures from the Latinobarómetro report published in October 2026 put numbers to that experience. In Ecuador, only 16% of respondents are satisfied or very satisfied with public hospitals, compared with a 28% average in Latin America. Satisfaction with the justice system falls to 11%, versus 22% across the region. When citizens are asked whether the state has done much or even something at all for them or their families over the past three years, only 19% answer affirmatively. In 2011 that proportion was 50%.“It feels like abandonment, like being unprotected,” Peñaherrera tries to explain. “As if two siblings were fighting and we didn’t have a father to defend us. That is what the state should be, but it is absent. You cry and cry to see if someone will help you.”For Peñaherrera, 43, each everyday problem requires fighting a battle. Fifteen years ago she was diagnosed with systemic scleroderma, an autoimmune disease that over time has caused another 17 illnesses. “If we’re not bothering people every day, asking for appointments, begging for care, nothing happens,” she says. The shadow of corruptionThe efficiency of the state does not fare well either. Ecuadorians give it a score of 4.4 out of 10, below the Latin American average of 4.7, while 82% distrust that their tax money will be well spent. “Corruption helps explain that rupture,” says Germán Rodas Chaves, a member of the National Anti-Corruption Commission, a citizen initiative that monitors possible corruption cases. “What other result can you expect when state bodies have shown themselves to be on the side of impunity?” he asks. Rodas focuses attention on corruption cases that have tainted the government. One concerns Progen: the state paid $104 million to the U. S. company for generators that turned out to be used equipment, repainted and presented as new. None of these cases has led to political accountability for the ministers in charge. The assembly, which has a pro-government majority, blocked attempts to attribute responsibility to them, and the Prosecutor’s Office also excluded them from investigations. The executive branch, for its part, maintains it is taking a hard line on corruption. In a recent interview, Noboa said that even his friends would go to jail if they committed corrupt acts. “They ceased being my friends the second they committed the act of corruption,” he said. Only 31% of Ecuadorians consider that much or some progress has been made in the fight against corruption in the last two years. “There is a sense of hopelessness about the future, because institutions are not fulfilling the purposes for which they exist,” Rodas adds. And when institutions stop responding, solutions begin to be sought by other means. Without connections there is nothingAlexandra Carreño, a 43-year-old makeup artist from Guayaquil, knows that logic well. In Ecuador, she says, many things do not get done without connections — that is, contacts that help secure an appointment for a driver’s license or passport, a medical visit, a job, or a spot in an educational center. Sometimes money isn’t involved. A favor is enough, one that sooner or later will have to be repaid. Carreño’s daughter wanted to study veterinary medicine but did not get a spot at the university. Unable to pay for a private school, she decided to start a small artisanal pastry business. “She can’t dream of someday having her own shop, because we are afraid of extortion, of her being kidnapped or robbed,” Carreño says. This mother’s perception aligns with that of 60% of respondents, who believe Ecuador is losing the battle against organized crime and drug trafficking. Eighty-seven percent perceive that organized crime has a lot of power. Carreño’s family has begun to consider migrating to Spain, where her mother lives. But just talking about it tightens her throat. “Leaving your country shouldn’t be the only option. Ecuador is a beautiful country, but right now we’re just trying to survive.”Distrust reaches even the rules of democracy. According to Latinobarómetro, 88% of Ecuadorians do not feel represented by Congress. Forty-seven percent consider that an authoritarian government might be preferable to a democratic one or else they don’t care, while a significant portion believes that democracy could work without political parties, without a parliament, without opposition, even without elections. Rodas attributes that erosion to violence and the state’s lack of responses: “If democracy and freedoms lead them to an asphyxiating, desperate way of life, they assume it is a model that has failed and consider any other possibility.”During the blackout, Peñaherrera’s grandmother’s oxygen battery held out just until the lights came back on. Constant medical expenses do not allow them to prepare better in case the electricity crisis worsens. This time, the two were safe. But in Ecuador, even breathing can depend on nothing failing. 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