Silvia Moreno was an Ecuadorian journalist whose career in print and digital media in Ecuador addressed some of the most challenging and consequential stories in the country’s recent history, including corruption, the expansion of criminal organisations, and the threats to civil liberties that have accompanied Ecuador’s deteriorating security situation in the twenty-first century. She died in 2026, one of a generation of Latin American journalists whose commitment to investigative reporting carried significant personal risk.
She was born in Ecuador and pursued journalism as a professional calling in a country whose political and security environment has made independent journalism increasingly difficult and dangerous across the decades of her career. Ecuador was for much of the late twentieth century one of the more stable democracies in South America, but the combination of political polarisation under Rafael Correa’s decade-long presidency from 2007 to 2017, which was marked by systematic efforts to intimidate and legally prosecute critical journalists and media outlets, and the subsequent collapse of public security as drug trafficking organisations established significant operations in the country transformed the environment for Ecuadorian journalism into one of the most challenging in Latin America.
Investigative reporting in Ecuador requires the willingness to confront institutional resistance, legal risks, and increasingly physical danger from the criminal organisations whose operations journalists seek to expose. The murders of Ecuadorian journalists and media workers, including the killing of journalists from El Comercio in the border region in 2018 by Colombian guerrilla organisation dissidents and the assassination of Fernando Villavicencio in 2023, have demonstrated that the physical risks facing Ecuadorian journalists are not theoretical but immediate and lethal. Reporters who continue working under these conditions demonstrate a commitment to the journalism profession and its public service function that goes beyond ordinary professional dedication.
She worked in the Ecuadorian media landscape that includes major daily newspapers, television news operations, and the growing digital media sector whose independence from the ownership interests and political pressures affecting legacy media institutions has made it an important vehicle for accountability journalism. Digital media in Latin America has created new platforms for investigative journalism and for the distribution of reporting that might face editorial or political obstacles in legacy media outlets, and journalists who build careers in this emerging sector contribute to the development of a more diverse and resilient journalism ecosystem.
Her death in 2026 was mourned by the Ecuadorian journalism community as the loss of a journalist whose career had been dedicated to the reporting that Ecuadorian civil society needs and that the country’s deteriorating security environment makes increasingly costly to pursue. She died in 2026.