Jaime Nebot - Tenure As Mayor

Tenure As Mayor

In 2000 Nebot was elected mayor of Guayaquil. He was reelected in 2004 for another four-year term. He made public works the focus of his administration. He started an urban-renewal program to gentrify blighted areas of Guayaquil's center. In 2006, Nebot inaugurated Metrovía, a mass-transit system based on dedicated lanes for public buses. Metrovía was an effort to decongest Guayaquil's notoriously bad traffic.

Nebot tried to tackle crime, one of Guayaquil's persistent ills. In 2002, Nebot hired former New York City Police Commissioner William Bratton to help draft an anti-crime strategy. Bratton was instrumental in former New York City Mayor Rudolph Giuliani's effort to reduce crime in the 1990s. Guayaquil's new anti-crime strategy included tough penalties for individuals caught begging or selling on the streets of the gentrified areas. They can be imprisoned for up to seven days, or be subject to fines of up to $500 dollars.

Nebot built a shopping promenade along the west bank of the Guayas River, in the center of Guayaquil. Dubbed Malecón 2000, the promenade "is monitored by heavily armed police who individually assess who can enter the gated grounds and who cannot. Within the regenerated area, there are now at least 52 police-operated video cameras running 24 hours a day. This municipal gaze is not only concerned with crime control; rather, a key function of the cameras is to monitor the regenerated areas for the occupation of public space—particularly by informal workers."

Violence has played a role in the gentrification plan. In 2003, the media reported 10 cases of excessive police force, including the case of a 53-year-old man who was shot and injured during the eviction of a group of street vendors.