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ECUADOR JUST DEALT A BLOW TO US MILITARISM IN LATIN AMERICA  
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Nick Gottlieb
December 15, 2025
Canadian Dimension
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_ An uprising against Daniel Noboa’s far-right agenda exposes how
Washington fuels violence across Latin America _

Ecuadorians protest Daniel Noboa’s far-right agenda in Quito, July
2024., Photo courtesy Popular Unity

 

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
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the decision represented a huge step in the direction climate policy
desperately needs to go: restricting the extraction and burning 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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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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
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what we’re seeing today resembles a revamped Operation Condor
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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
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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
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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
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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 [[link removed]]

— Ben Norton (@BenjaminNorton) November 18, 2025
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Noboa and US Secretary of Homeland Security Kristi Noem recently held
a photo shoot
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on horseback at Ecuador’s Ulpiano Paez air base. As Noem put it on
Instagram [[link removed]], “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
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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
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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
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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_
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understanding the power dynamics driving today’s interrelated crises
and exploring how they can be overcome. Follow him on X
__@ngottliebphoto_ [[link removed]]_._

_CANADIAN DIMENSION is the longest-standing voice of the left in
Canada. For more than half-a-century, CD has provided a forum for
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critically reviewed. Our dedicated and longstanding readership is
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* Ecuador
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* Daniel Noboa
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* Militarization
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* U.S. imperialism
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* repression
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* U.S. military bases
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* Constitution
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