Lieutenant General José Martí Villamil de la Cadena

Lt. Gen. José Martí Villamil de la Cadena (Ret.) served as Vice-Minister of Defense and General Secretary of the National Security Council of Ecuador. A former brigade commander, he was Chief of Staff of the Army, Commander of Ground Theatre Operations, and Chief of Staff of the Joint Command. He was a professor at both the War Academy and the Institute of Higher Defense Studies in Ecuador and also a fellow of the Center for Strategic Studies in London.

As Vice-Minister of Defense of Ecuador, Gen. Villamil initiated “The Coherence Project,” a field test of the Brain-Based Approach to Peace and its effects on the long-standing border war between Ecuador and Peru. He subsequently co-authored the article “Project: Coherence,” describing how 3,000 Ecuadorian soldiers practicing the Brain-Based Approach to Peace together quickly brought an end to this escalating conflict—thereby creating peace and improved commerce and diplomacy between the two nations.

Gen. Villamil is a graduate of the Inter-American Defense College in Washington, D.C., where he later served as Chief of the Ecuadorian Military Mission and Delegate to the Inter-American Defense Board. He graduated as a second lieutenant of Cavalry from the Ecuadorian Military School “Eloy Alfaro” in 1962. He retired from active duty in April 1996 and now collaborates with the newspaper El Comercio and the economic magazine Gestión.