Event Summary
On 25 February 2026, a local media outlet in the province of El Oro reported the killing of Manuel Cabrera at the hands of an unidentified armed attacker. Cabrera was one of the main driving forces behind the “El Guabo Municipal Conservation and Sustainable Use Area,” a zone of approximately 300 hectares of forest and water sources that supply drinking water to 100,000 people. Within this area, he also developed a sustainable tourism initiative that enabled him to finance his environmental conservation activities.
Initially, the crime was attributed to the broader context of violence affecting the province of El Oro, where criminal organizations resort to extortion to sustain their operations. However, a month later, an investigation by Mongabay revealed that Cabrera had not received threats from criminal groups; rather, since 2013, he had faced pressure and intimidation linked to mining interests associated with the “El Paraíso” concession, aimed at forcing the sale of his property within the protected area. Weeks before his death, he filed a complaint with the Ministry of Environment and Energy regarding the illegal opening of a road and the logging of trees in front of his land. His family also denounced the lack of progress in the investigation, noting that the police officer in charge requested a month of vacation following the crime.
This killing highlights the weakness of the Ecuadorian State’s legal and institutional framework to protect environmental defenders from attacks by non-state actors and to ensure timely and effective investigations. It also raises serious concerns about how the security crisis may contribute to obscuring violence linked to socio-environmental conflicts.
Following the publication of the report, organizations such as the National Anti-Mining Front, through the community media outlet Kapari Comunicación, condemned the killing and argued that the crime was likely connected to Cabrera’s resistance to mining interests in his territory.