Tag: ecuador

Ecuadorians reject return of US bases

Voters in Ecuador have rejected a proposal to bring US military bases back to the country, in a national referendum held on Sunday.

With around 95% of ballots counted, the official tally shows that 60.58% voted against President Daniel Noboa’s initiative to allow foreign troops to operate in Ecuador as part of efforts to fight organized crime and drug trafficking.

Noboa said he accepts the results. “We consulted with the Ecuadorians, and they have spoken. We fulfilled our promise to ask them directly. We respect the will of the Ecuadorian people,” he wrote on X.

US troops were stationed at an airbase in the port city of Manta until 2009, when then-President Rafael Correa refused to renew the lease and banned foreign bases in Ecuador.

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Daniel Noboa’s electoral theft will cement cartel and corporate control over Ecuador

President Daniel Noboa appears to have stolen Ecuador’s election. He’s now poised to consolidate control of a system that has benefitted cartels and multinational corporations – including his family business – at the expense of average Ecuadorians. And Washington likes what it sees.

Watch The Grayzone’s special video report on Noboa’s well-documented ties to transnational drug cartels here.

On April 13, 2025, Ecuador’s National Electoral Council proclaimed incumbent President Daniel Noboa the winner of the presidential runoff—a result that his challenger, the left-wing Luisa González, denounced as “massive fraud.”

If Noboa secures what appears to be an ill-gotten victory, he will be able to consolidate complete control over a state weakened by austerity and corrupted by deep infiltration by transnational drug cartels – a criminal network that is deeply enmeshed with his family’s business.

González, who led several polls by up to 6 points as of Friday, has demanded a vote-by-vote recount.

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Secret chats expose decade of US meddling in Ecuador

Exclusive interviews and leaked messages reveal how a key ally of the US weaponized the fight against corruption and criminal organizations to selectively prosecute Ecuador’s heads of state, viciously persecuting Rafael Correa and his Revolución Ciudadana movement on flimsy evidence, while delaying investigations into much graver crimes allegedly committed by his successors.

Recently-leaked secret chats obtained by The Grayzone expose how Ecuadorian prosecutor Diana Salazar leaked information to a subject of an ongoing investigation, undermining the prosecution of associates of Ecuador’s current and previous US-aligned presidents, and acted hand-in-glove with the United States government, which essentially selected and controlled prosecutions from Washington.

The shocking revelations of corruption and US meddling in the geopolitically-crucial South American nation have been largely ignored by the US government and corporate media outlets.

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Yet Another Drug War Failure

An especially hot news item in 2024 has been the surge of drug-related violence in Ecuador.  Until recent years, Ecuador was hailed as an island of relative stability in the swirling violence of the illegal drug trade in the Western hemisphere.  The situation there contrasted with the level of chaos and violence in neighboring countries such as Peru and Colombia, as well as the central arena of drug trafficking in Mexico and Central America.  American retirees found the country to be an especially appealing destination.

That presumption of stability was always somewhat exaggerated.  In Ecuador violent criminal gangs “have existed for decades,” security analyst David Saucedo notes, “but with the arrival of the Mexican cartels, such as the Sinaloa Cartel and the Jalisco New Generation Cartel (CJNG), they made local alliances, and in this way, they became their operating arms for drug trafficking.”

The notion of today’s Ecuador as one of Latin America’s safer countries is a tenacious episode of nostalgia.  The murder rate in that country has soared from 6.9 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2019 to 26.7 deaths per 100,000 inhabitants in 2022, and preliminary statistics indicate that the upward trend is continuing.  When voters elected Daniel Noboa president in October 2023, he made it clear that he would take an especially hard line against the drug cartels.  Drug policy experts now talk about Ecuador with similar degrees of concern that they had reserved for Mexico and other central players in the drug trade.

Even members of the political elite in Ecuador are increasingly vulnerable to the violence.  One prominent candidate in the October 2023 presidential election was assassinated just eleven days before the balloting.  Shortly thereafter, Ecuador’s youngest mayor, Brigette Garcia, was kidnapped and murdered in the coastal town of San Vicente.  Following the January 2024 unrest, new President Daniel Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” and ordered national security forces to neutralize more than 20 armed groups classified as “terrorists.”

Despite such spectacular policy failures, drug warriors in the United States and other countries cling to hard-line strategies and refuse to face an inconvenient economic truth.  Governments are not able to dictate whether people use mind-altering substances.  Such vices have been part of human culture throughout history.  Governments can determine only whether reputable businesses or violent criminal gangs are the suppliers.  A prohibition strategy guarantees that it will be the latter – with all the accompanying violence and corruption.  The ongoing bloody struggles among rival cartels to control the lucrative trafficking routes to the United States merely confirm that historical pattern.

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Six Suspects in Ecuadorian Presidential Candidate’s Assassination Found Dead in Jail

According to a report from CBS news, six inmates at the Litoral Penitentiary, all of whom were suspects in the August assassination of a presidential candidate in Ecuador, were killed on Oct. 6.

The inmates, all Colombian nationals, were accused of killing former presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio. They were identified as: Jhon Gregore R., Andrés Manuel M., Adey Fernando G., Camilo Andrés R., Sules Osmini C. and José Neyder L.

Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso announced that he would immediately convene the Security Cabinet, expressing his commitment to uncovering the truth behind the incidents, emphasizing there would be no complicity or cover-up in the investigation. 

“Following the information about the six crimes that occurred in the Deprivation of Liberty Center No. 1, in Guayaquil, I have ordered an immediate meeting of the Security Cabinet,” Lasso wrote on X, according to the site’s translation system. “In the next few hours I will return to Ecuador to attend to this emergency. Neither complicity nor cover-up, here the truth will be known.”

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US Signs Deal That Will Allow Military Deployments to Ecuador

The Biden administration has quietly struck a deal with Ecuador to deploy troops to the country and patrol the waters off its coast to combat drug cartels, the Washington Examiner reported on Friday.

Select members of Congress were informed of the agreements on Wednesday during a closed-door briefing with Ecuadorian President Guillermo Lasso, who was in Washington to sign the deals.

The State Department did not publicize the agreements, but a State Department official confirmed the deals were signed in comments to the Examiner. The maritime deal will allow the US Coast Guard to patrol waters off Ecuador’s coast, an area where Colombian cartels transport cocaine.

The second agreement outlines the terms by which the US troops could be deployed to Ecuador, known as a status of forces agreement. The details of the agreement are not known, and it’s also unclear if it means a US troop deployment is imminent.

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Ecuador Arrests Six Colombians as Suspects in Slaying of anti-Corruption Presidential Candidate

The six men arrested as suspects in the assassination of an anti-corruption Ecuadorian presidential candidate are Colombian nationals, a police report said Thursday as authorities investigated the motive for a crime that shocked a nation already reeling from a surge in drug-related violence.

The six men were captured hiding in a house in Quito, Ecuador’s capital, said the report, which was reviewed by The Associated Press. Officers also seized four shotguns, a 5.56-mm rifle, ammunition and three grenades, along with a vehicle and a motorcycle, it said.

Fernando Villavicencio, 59, who was known for speaking up against drug cartels, was assassinated in Quito on Wednesday, less than two weeks before a special presidential election. He was not a front-runner, but his death deepened the sense of crisis around organized crime that has already claimed thousands of lives and underscored the challenge that Ecuador’s next leader will face.

Ecuador’s interior minister, Juan Zapata, had earlier confirmed the arrest of some foreigners in the case, although he didn’t give their nationalities.

Zapata described the killing as a “political crime of a terrorist nature” aimed at sabotaging the Aug. 20 presidential election.

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Ecuador presidential candidate assassinated: Fernando Villavicencio is shot dead while leaving a political rally less than two weeks before the vote

Gunmen in Ecuador shot dead presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio as he was leaving a rally on Wednesday night, with less than two weeks to go until a bitterly contested election.

Footage shared on social media showed Villavicencio, 59, being escorted out of the rally venue at 6:20pm local time and into a waiting car. He was climbing into the back seat when gunfire rang out. The windows did not appear to be bulletproof.

One suspect was shot dead in crossfire with security services, the country’s attorney general said, adding that nine people were injured – among them a female candidate for the National Assembly and two police officers. 

Last week Villavicencio, a former journalist known for tackling corruption, said he and his team had been threatened by the leader of a gang linked to drug trafficking. 

In May, announcing his candidacy, he declared that he intended to ‘take on and defeat the mafias which have coopted the state and have society on its knees.’

He was behind at least two other candidates, but had been gaining support in recent days, and was seen as the toughest candidate on organized crime.

General Manuel Iniguez, a deputy commander of the Ecuadoran national police, said a police officer was also injured in the attack, which happened outside a college in the north of Quito.  The hit men launched a grenade toward Villavicencio’s group, but it did not explode.

He was taken to a nearby clinic and pronounced dead in hospital. Shocking video showed the moment he arrived, slumped in a wheelchair and pushed by men in army fatigues. They tried to lift him out the wheelchair and up the steps but were unable to do so, and wheeled him up the ramp as a medical employee rushed out.

The country’s President, Guillermo Lasso, confirmed the assassination of Villavicencio and suggested organized crime was behind his slaying. He later declared a state of emergency in response to the killing. 

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Journalist plugs in unknown USB drive mailed to him—it exploded in his face

It’s no secret that USB flash drives, as small and unremarkable as they may look, can be turned into agents of chaos. Over the years, we’ve seen them used to infiltrate an Iranian nuclear facility, infect critical control systems in US power plants, morph into programmable, undetectable attack platforms, and destroy attached computers with a surprise 220-volt electrical surge. Although these are just a few examples, they should be enough to preclude one from inserting a mysterious, unsolicited USB drive mailed to them into a computer. Unfortunately, one Ecuadorian journalist didn’t get the memos.

As reported by the Agence France-Presse (via CBS News) on Tuesday, five Ecuadorian journalists have received USB drives in the mail from Quinsaloma. Each of the USB sticks was meant to explode when activated.

Upon receiving the drive, Lenin Artieda of the Ecuavisa TV station in Guayaquil inserted it into his computer, at which point it exploded. According to a police official who spoke with AFP, the journalist suffered mild hand and face injuries, and no one else was harmed.

According to police official Xavier Chango, the flash drive that went off had a 5-volt explosive charge and is thought to have used RDX. Also known as T4, according to the Environmental Protection Agency (PDF), militaries, including the US’s, use RDX, which “can be used alone as a base charge for detonators or mixed with other explosives, such as TNT.” Chango said it comes in capsules measuring about 1 cm, but only half of it was activated in the drive that Artieda plugged in, which likely saved him some harm.

On Monday, Fundamedios, an Ecuadorian nonprofit focused on media rights, put out a statement on the incidents, which saw letters accompanied by USB-stick bombs sent to two more journalists in Guayaquil and two journalists in Ecuador’s capital.

Fundamedios said Álvaro Rosero, who works at the EXA FM radio station, also received an envelope with a flash drive on March 15. He gave it to a producer, who used a cable with an adapter to connect it to a computer. The radio station got lucky, though, as the flash drive didn’t explode. Police determined that the drive featured explosives but believe it didn’t explode because the adapter the producer used didn’t have enough juice to activate it, Fundamedios said.

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State Department funding ‘drag theater performances’ in Ecuador to ‘promote diversity and inclusion’

The U.S. Department of State has awarded more than $20,000 for a cultural center in Ecuador to host “drag theater performances” in the name of diversity and inclusion. 

The State Department awarded a $20,600 grant on Sept. 23 to the Centro Ecuatoriano Norteamericano (CEN), a non-profit organization supported by the U.S. Embassy and Consulate in Ecuador, to “promote diversity and inclusion” in the region.

The project at CEN, which started Sept. 30 and runs until Aug. 31, 2023, will include “3 workshops,” “12 drag theater performances,” and a “2-minute documentary,” according to the State Department’s grant listed on the USASpending.gov website.

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