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As Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa appears as a guest at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremony in Oslo on 10 December, the international symbolism of peace contrasts with mounting concerns over artistic freedom, protest repression and cultural intimidation inside Ecuador.

Ecuador in 2025 shows a clear increase in pressure on artistic freedom: artists are being directly threatened, cultural policy is being reshaped in ways that weaken institutional support, and artistic protest is meeting police repression in the streets. These dynamics sit on top of an already militarised response to protests and violence against journalists, which amplifies the risks of using art as a language of dissent.

Bienal de Cuenca: threats and attempted censorship
At the XVII Bienal de Cuenca (opened 24th October 2025), the installation “Son de las Malvinas” by artist Fernando Falconí triggered an organised campaign of threats from a group calling itself Dios, Patria, Orden y Tradición (DPOT). The group sent a letter and electronic messages demanding the immediate withdrawal of the work and warning that they would “take actions” if the demand was not met, framing the piece as an affront to the government, the armed forces and “family” values.

The Bienal publicly denounced the messages as intimidation, reported at least one identified individual to the Fiscalía, and explicitly linked the threats to a violation of constitutional guarantees of freedom of expression and artistic creation. There is no evidence so far of substantive state action to protect the work or sanction the perpetrators.

“Son de las Malvinas” itself is a collective, participatory installation developed with families of four boys and adolescents who disappeared and were later found murdered near a military base in Guayaquil in 2024, combining music, testimonies and performance to demand memory and accountability; precisely this focus on state violence and marginalised communities appears to have triggered the far‑right reaction.

Vilma Vargas and institutional censorship
In mid‑2025, cartoonist and visual artist Vilma Vargas (“Vilmatraca”) saw her exhibition of political caricatures at the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana, Núcleo del Azuay, cancelled by director Martín Sánchez after it had been programmed and publicly announced. The show, conceived as a large Bosch‑inspired installation sharply critical of power, was presented to Vargas as a way to repair an earlier act of censorship against her 2016 exhibition “Huarmicaricaturas por la libertad”, but was then “deprogrammed” without a substantive artistic justification.

Vargas publicly denounced the cancellation as censorship and linked it to a recurring pattern of institutional nervousness about political satire, arguing that the Casa de la Cultura again closed its doors out of fear of political backlash. Sánchez later issued a public apology accepting responsibility and citing “political, social, technical, security and institutional transition factors”, suggesting that the decision was a precautionary restriction conditioned by the current climate and internal elections rather than a neutral curatorial choice; he indicated that a future administration might reinstate the show to “guarantee freedom of expression” as a core cultural principle.

Mugre Sur and symbolic violence against the president

In late 2024, the hip‑hop group Mugre Sur used a cardboard image of President Daniel Noboa and staged a symbolic hanging during their performance at Quito Fest, a major public music festival in the capital. The action generated intense political backlash: Quito city councillors condemned the performance, and the Ministry of Culture issued a statement saying it rejected any “incitement to violence” and warning that public cultural spaces should not be used to foster hatred or division.

The case drew a sharp line between artistic protest and alleged “hate” or “violence”, with supporters of the band stressing that the performance was a metaphorical expression of anger over blackouts, insecurity and social crisis, not a literal call to kill the president. Even though there is no evidence of formal legal prosecution against the group, the strong public condemnation by authorities and local politicians functions as a warning and contributes to a chilling effect around direct visual or performative criticism of political leaders.

Ministry of Culture abolition and sector mobilisation
On 24 July 2025, Noboa signed Executive Decree 60, eliminating the standalone Ministry of Culture and Heritage and folding it, along with higher education and sports, into an expanded Ministry of Education. Artists, cultural workers and institutional figures like the president of the Casa de la Cultura Ecuatoriana immediately denounced the move as a serious setback, arguing that culture has historically been “the last wheel of the cart” and will now lose even the limited budgetary and policy protections it had.

The day after the decree, artists’ unions, public‑sector cultural workers and CCE representatives protested outside the ministry building in Quito, with banners, drums and books held up as symbols, shouting slogans such as “Noboa, escucha, la cultura está en la lucha” (Noboa, listen, culture is in the struggle). Parallel to the street mobilisation, collectives like Chichi Colectiva filed constitutional protection actions, alleging that the fusion violates cultural rights and undermines the institutional framework that should guarantee access to culture and support for artistic production.

Artists in 2025 protests and police repression
As broader national protests erupted in 2025 over fuel‑subsidy cuts, mining projects and constitutional reforms, artists and students became visible actors in demonstrations, often using music, performance and visual symbols as part of the protest repertoire. On 30 September 2025, for example, an artistic “plantón” outside the Universidad Central in Quito, where students and artists gathered with banners and performances to criticise Noboa’s policies, was dispersed by riot police using tear gas and less‑lethal ammunition.

These artistic interventions also served to commemorate victims of repression, including protesters who died following abuses by security forces; performances and songs remembering those killed connected cultural practice with demands for truth and justice. This aligns with documentation by human rights organisations that describe a pattern of excessive force, arbitrary detentions and even cases of protesters killed or gravely injured by military and police, creating a context in which cultural protest is exposed to the same dangers as other forms of dissent.

Structural risks and patterns for artistic freedom
Taken together, these episodes suggest a tightening triangle of pressures: far‑right or ultraconservative groups threatening socially critical works, state authorities restructuring cultural governance in ways that weaken institutional support, and security forces treating artistic protest as a public order problem. The Bienal case shows that works dealing with state violence against marginalised communities can trigger organised intimidation and attempts to “discipline” curatorial autonomy; the Vargas case demonstrates how public cultural institutions may pre‑emptively cancel politically sharp exhibitions under the cover of “political” and “security” concerns; Mugre Sur illustrates how symbolic attacks on leaders provoke official discourse about “incitement” that can easily slide into justification for future restrictions.

At the same time, the abolition of the Culture Ministry and the merging of portfolios under a single “mega‑ministry” increase competition for scarce resources and weaken a dedicated policy voice for culture, which many artists interpret as a political signal that culture is expendable. In combination with a militarised protest response and violence against journalists and media workers, this environment incentivises self‑censorship and heightens the personal risk for artists, curators and organisers who choose to align their work openly with protest movements or to address sensitive topics like state violence, corruption, or extractive projects.

Censorship, Threats and Protest in Ecuador Under President Daniel Noboa

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