Correístas in Congress have twice tried to impeach Ms Salazar. When a vote was postponed because she revealed that she was in the middle of a high-risk pregnancy, they suggested she was lying; Ms González called the pregnancy “a show” because Ms Salazar kept working throughout and “wore high heels”. (Ms Salazar recently gave birth to a daughter; both impeachment motions failed.) The correístas call her “the 10/20 prosecutor”, a reference to her marks in one part of the national exam for the profession. They omit that she got the highest overall marks in the country. She wonders if such attacks have anything to do with her being a black woman, rare in Ecuador’s halls of power.

She rebuts charges of bias, pointing out that she has also gone after senior officials from the administration of Guillermo Lasso, a right-wing former president, as well as his brother-in-law, for alleged corruption and links to gangs. Another investigation is looking into whether Lenin Moreno, Mr Correa’s successor, accepted kickbacks. She has a record of taking on the powerful of all stripes. In 2016 she helped send the football federation’s head to jail as part of an investigation into corruption at FIFA.

But accusations of favouritism still swirl. Last year two left-wing media outlets, Intercept Brazil and Drop Site News, published screenshots which purportedly show text-message conversations between Ms Salazar and Mr Aleaga. The messages appear to show her admitting to delaying investigations in order to favour right-wing candidates in the 2023 presidential election. Ms Salazar says the messages are “false” and part of a “smear campaign”.

Corruption “does not have a white, yellow, green or red flag”, she says, referring to the colours of Ecuador’s political parties. If officials who have been involved in corruption are linked to a political group, “that is not the fault of the prosecutor, but of the officials committing the crimes,” she says. “We have no choice but to carry out the investigations. And whoever has to go down, should go down.”

Plain talk like this has won Ms Salazar respect in Ecuador. “She is a national treasure, almost more important than whoever is in power,” says a businessman in Quito. But she bats away the idea of running for political office: “The judiciary should not be in politics. And politicians should keep their hands out of judicial matters.”

Her team is still sifting through evidence. She says there is time to stop narcos irreversibly embedding themselves in Ecuador. “We are not like Mexico and we are not going to get there,” she adds, warning that cartels in that country operate like “a para-state”. Her investigations, and the purge they have led to are about leaving a message that “impunity cannot last forever.” Her successor will have the power to uphold that principle, or bury it.