Bird whistle debunks «guerilla» video trying to sway Ecuador election

The first round of Ecuador's presidential election took place on Sunday

Credit: Rodrigo Buendia/AFP

An effort to sway Ecuador’s presidential election with a faked video of Left-wing guerillas endorsing a candidate has been undone by the most unlikely of sources: the whistle of a ground-dwelling bird.

The video showed armed, masked men in front of an ELN flag – the largest still-active guerilla group in Colombia – declaring their support for the Left-winger Andrés Arauz, in an apparent attempt to link him to violence and instability.

The video purported to have been filmed in the Colombian jungle, but the piercing avian whistle alerted Manuel Sanchez, an ornithologist and bird guide, to something amiss.

The short, rising tweet audible in the background was, Mr Sanchez said on Twitter, that of the pale-browed tinamou, a bird native to Ecuador and not found in Colombia.

A continuación unos 2 que 3 tuits para demostrar que el vídeo donde supuestamente el ELN apoya a Correa/Arauz es trucho. El escenario donde están los 3 tipos debido a los cantos de las aves es bosque seco tumbesino del occidente de Ecuador, no es Colombia #ornitología pic.twitter.com/w91C0dSaKC

— Manuel Sánchez N. (@ClandestineBird) February 2, 2021

Rather than an ELN jungle lair, the three men were, in fact, in the endangered dry forests of Ecuador’s far-western Tombesina region.

“I recognised the whistle instantly and I knew that the video could not have been filmed in Colombia,” he told The Guardian. 

Mr Sanchez also claimed that he’d identified the calls of Ecuadorian thrush and the scrub blackbird in the video.

In Latin America, Left-wing candidates are often linked by their opponents to violent guerillas and the Leftist regimes of Venezuela and Cuba.

Ecuador held the first round of its presidential elections on Sunday, with Mr Arauz emerging in first place but well short of the overall majority needed to avoid a run-off.

He is the chosen candidate of former president Rafael Correa, who lives in Belgium and was last year jailed in absentia for eight years after being found guilty of corruption.

Mr Correa’s previous hand-picked successor, Lenin Moreno, was elected president in 2017 but tacked to the centre and undid much of Mr Correa’s legacy.

Yaku Perez, an indigenous leader and surprise contender, led the race for the second spot in the run-off vote by less than 0.25 per cent of the vote as of Tuesday afternoon. Guillermo Laso, a conservative, was in third.

The runoff will take place on April 11.