Julio César Trujillo is Ecuador’s second-most powerful man

IN 1984 Julio César Trujillo ran for president in Ecuador. He did not do well, winning less than 5% of the vote. Now, as head of the Citizens’ Participation and Social Control Council (CPCCS), Mr Trujillo holds a job that makes him almost as powerful as the country’s current president, Lenín Moreno. “I don’t know whether to thank God for not having won the presidency because I would have ended up just being one of those many presidents Ecuador has had,” says the 87-year-old lawyer. From an office in Quito decorated with an Amazonian spear, two machetes and a rope whip with opossum-shaped handle, he has led a purge of officials appointed by Ecuador’s leftist former president, Rafael Correa, who governed for ten years until 2017 and now lives in Belgium. Mr Trujillo sees the work as restoring democratic institutions that Mr Correa had weakened. “Where I’ve seen rights and liberties under threat, I’ve offered to help,” he says.