Ecuador just dealt a blow to US militarism in Latin America

Two years ago, the Ecuadorian people showed the world what meaningful climate action looks like, voting by a huge margin to restrict oil and gas drilling in Yasuní National Park, a 10,000 square-kilometre protected area considered one of the most biodiverse places on Earth. As I wrote at the time, the decision represented a huge step in the direction climate policy desperately needs to go: restricting the extraction and supply of fossil fuels.

Earlier this month, the Ecuadorian people showed once again what it means to stand up for a better future by voting overwhelmingly to reject their government’s push to allow US military bases in their country. And they voted this way despite Ecuador’s radical far-right turn under President Daniel Noboa.

Noboa, the Miami-born son of Álvaro Noboa, the richest person in Ecuador, won the presidency in 2023 in the same election that held the Yasuní referendum, though by a much slimmer margin. The two years since have been devastating for Ecuador. Noboa declared a state of emergency early in his presidency and imposed long-term martial law justified on the grounds of combatting crime and violence. He has also implemented a classic neoliberal austerity program, slashing public investment and dismantling regulations to serve the interests of business elites and transnational lenders.

Noboa has justified this draconian transformation on the basis of security concerns: Ecuador has gone from being one of the safest countries in Latin America to one of the most dangerous in just a few years. But his policies have done nothing to reverse the trend.

The simultaneous rise of violent crime and the far-right in Ecuador is paradigmatic of what looks like a new US-led approach to politics in the region. It’s a kind of “strategy of tension”—create social unrest and insecurity by backing violent organized crime in the form of cartels, gangs, and far-right militias, and push the public to democratically choose to be governed by US-friendly despots.

It’s a successor to what journalist Vincent Bevins has described as the “Jakarta Method,” a US-led counterinsurgency strategy first deployed in Indonesia in the 1960s, combining economic coercion with systematic mass violence to crush left-wing and anti-imperialist movements. As one anonymous Ecuadorian activist argued in a recent interview, what we’re seeing today resembles a revamped Operation Condor—the CIA-convened transnational security apparatus of repressive right-wing regimes that dominated Latin America in the 1970s and 80s—updated for an era of nominal democracy, permanent emergency, and “law-and-order” rule.

Ecuador is not the only country falling prey to this strategy: El Salvador has repeatedly elected the Trump-aligned autocrat Nayib Bukele by huge margins. He is systematically undoing the country’s democracy yet remains tremendously popular precisely because of his authoritarian police state, imposed under a permanent “State of Exception.” Social unrest and insecurity, in other words, became so bad in El Salvador that the El Salvadoran people themselves rubber stamped Bukele’s seizure of power.

So-called organized crime is driving murder rates and insecurity across the continent, particularly in countries that either have or recently had left-leaning governments. In Colombia, right-wing militias are creating an atmosphere of violence, opening the door for a law-and-order candidate to seize power democratically from the anti-Zionist incumbent President Gustavo Petro, who the US recently banned from visiting the United Nations in New York City. Chile, governed by the socialist Gabriel Boric for the last four years, is on the cusp of electing a far-right candidate in large part because of “fears over crime and migration.”

If history is any guide, the full extent of American involvement in this wave of violence may not be known for decades. But what is already clear is that the US has, for more than half a century, deliberately cultivated, armed, and protected narcotraffickers, death squads, and contra forces across Latin America as tools of counterinsurgency in its pursuit of hemispheric dominance. Seen in that light, the rise of today’s “law-and-order” strongmen is not a coincidence but a convergence: figures like Bukele and Noboa govern in ways that neatly align with US strategic priorities, from migration control to the suppression of left-wing movements, and are rewarded accordingly.

A big loss for the US empire:

Ecuador’s Trump-backed, right-wing oligarch President Noboa tried to rewrite the country’s progressive constitution to allow US military bases in its territory.

61% of Ecuadorians voted against his proposal. They DON’T want foreign military bases. pic.twitter.com/vz2jH33zfR

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 18, 2025

Noboa and US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem recently held a photo shoot on horseback at Ecuador’s Ulpiano Paez air base. As Noem put it on Instagram, “Ecuador [under Noboa] has been an excellent partner to the U.S. in our work to stop illegal immigration, drug trafficking, and smugglers on land and on the seas.”

Noboa even brought in the notorious US military contractor Erik Prince to terrorize people in the lead-up to the most recent presidential election.

To treat the explosion of violence and the rise of US-friendly dictators as unrelated phenomena is not just naïve. It actively obscures the structural relationship between insecurity, militarization, and the consolidation of authoritarian power in the US sphere of influence.

The people of Ecuador are living at the sharp end of a renewed phase of American imperialism in Latin America, enduring levels of militarization and repression that remain largely unimaginable to most of us in North America. And yet, in the face of that violence, they have once again shown what meaningful resistance looks like—launching a general strike and decisively rejecting Noboa’s four ballot measures. Because of that collective defiance, Ecuador will not become another forward operating base for US militarism, denying Washington a platform from which to menace Venezuela, Colombia, and the wider region. It’s a rare and inspiring victory that deserves to be matched far beyond Ecuador’s borders.

The situation in Ecuador is still dire: Noboa remains in power, political disappearances are on the rise, and, with his US partners, Noboa continues to consolidate control, impose austerity, and repress dissent. But the unexpected referendum results should remind us that the people, united, can never be defeated, no matter how violent and oppressive capital and its allies might get.

This resurgent far right in Latin America is almost certainly, once again, a product of US intervention, but from Milei and Bolsonaro to Noboa and Bukele, it is also unmistakably part of a coordinated global far-right project. And, as with the climate crisis, it is Latin American social movements that are out in front, developing the strategies and building the power needed to confront it.

We are far behind here in Canada, but the Ecuadorian people’s victory is a reminder that any serious movement for a livable future must also be a movement willing to confront US militarism head-on.

Nick Gottlieb is a climate writer based in northern BC and the author of the newsletter Sacred Headwaters. His work focuses on understanding the power dynamics driving today’s interrelated crises and exploring how they can be overcome. Follow him on X @ngottliebphoto.