As Ecuador heads to a second round of presidential elections on April 13, incumbent Daniel Noboa has made headlines by calling to incorporate foreign military special forces into the country’s fight against drug traffickers and transnational organized crime.
The announcement came just months after Noboa, the 37-year-old Miami-born heir to the South American country’s banana fortune, sought to amend Ecuador’s constitution to permit the installation of foreign military bases amid the country’s rapidly deteriorating security landscape.
Since Noboa won snap elections in October 2023, Ecuador has become the most violent country in Latin America, with 1,300 homicides in just the first 50 days of 2025 — a 40% increase over the same period in 2023. Nestled between the world’s two largest cocaine producers, Ecuador has also emerged as the global leader in cocaine exports to Europe, with a growing presence of Mexican, Colombian, and Albanian cartels taking advantage of the country’s weak institutions, porous borders, and strategic location.
After heavily-armed gangs took over a live news broadcast early last year, U.S. security analysts and editorial boards have called for a "Plan Colombia" — the largest U.S. military and counternarcotics aid package ever in the Western Hemisphere — for Ecuador, which just years prior had been hailed as an “island of peace.”
The $15 billion aid plan to Colombia, Washington’s top security partner in the Americas, brought down crime in the country's urban centers. But after a 2016 peace deal with Colombia’s largest insurgency led to its partial demobilization, transnational actors moved in to fill the void and drug trafficking was rerouted through neighboring Ecuador.
The Biden administration responded to Ecuador’s de facto declaration of war on 22 criminal gangs in January 2024 by sending its SOUTHCOM commander, the “drug czar,” and White House and State Department officials to meet with Noboa, leading to agreements in defense, intelligence and law enforcement.
These visits came on the heels of signing a bilateral “status of forces” agreement (SOFA) that granted U.S. military personnel the exemptions and immunities typically afforded to diplomats. As part of a five-year, $93 million aid package promised by SOUTHCOM, the U.S. delivered 20,000 bullet-proof vests, deployed a mobile border police unit and FBI agents, and donated a Lockheed Martin C-130H aircraft and two island-class Coast Guard patrol boats.
In July 2024, South Florida-based Matrix Aviation Inc. registered with the Department of Justice as a foreign agent for Ecuador’s Defense Ministry to help the Noboa administration access new funds under the Foreign Military Financing (FMF) program and implement the International Narcotics and Law Enforcement Ecuador program. Its objective is to “secure U.S. government funding and assistance programs to combat drug trafficking, border defense, human trafficking and other crimes,” according to the FARA records.
The foreign principal, Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo, has no formal military experience, but was previously a counter-terrorism instructor at the Israeli Tactical School, which was founded by former Mossad officials, and has claimed to be the only certified National Rifle Association instructor for Latin America.
Meanwhile, Noboa is actively courting the Trump administration to shore up his electoral bid and urge increased U.S. military support amid the country’s worsening security environment. Noboa was one of few foreign leaders at President Trump’s inauguration, and some U.S. lawmakers are openly urging Ecuadorians to not vote for Ecuador’s progressive opposition candidate, Luisa Gonzalez, who is currently favored to win the run-off after major third-party candidate Leonidas Iza signaled his support.
Gonzalez, who lost to Noboa in the 2023 contest, is a protégée of former President Rafael Correa (2009-2017), whose administration reduced levels of violent crime and enjoyed relative economic prosperity during a period of high commodity export prices. In October 2024, Correa and former Vice President Jorge Glas — whom Noboa had arrested six months earlier as he sought asylum at the Mexican Embassy in Quito — were sanctioned by the U.S. in what was perceived as a signal of support for Noboa.
Despite a 16% reduction in crime during Noboa’s first year, 35 “states-of exception” have been declared since Correa left office in 2017, and conflict zones across the country’s Pacific coast have become thoroughly militarized. Noboa’s approval ratings have suffered as a result, plummeting from 72% to 45% through 2024.
According to Pedro Labayen Herrera, a research associate at the Washington-based Center for Economic and Policy Research, the victor of next month’s election can reduce spiralling crime by strengthening state presence in long-neglected areas and adopting social policies to curb poverty and inequality — rather than allowing U.S. naval patrols around the Galapagos Islands or re-inviting U.S. forces to operate out of the Manta air base after they were expelled by Correa in 2009.
Isabel Chiriboga, assistant director of the Atlantic Council’s Adrienne Arsht Latin America Center, similarly cautions against the adoption of a “Plan Colombia”-like U.S. security package for Ecuador, arguing that investment in education and youth development programs, as well as securing preferential tariffs for Ecuador’s U.S.-bound exports, as contemplated in the bipartisan IDEA Act, could help stem the tide of violence.
A May 2024 SOUTHCOM publication similarly recognizes the perils of an overly militarized approach to Ecuador’s multi-faceted crime problem, finding “the increased presence of U.S. military forces in Ecuadorian territory may provoke public opposition among some segments of the population who argue that the SOFA grants unprecedented privileges and immunities to foreign military personnel, which undermine Ecuador’s legal jurisdiction and sovereignty.”
The country’s grim economic reality could further complicate the Noboa administration’s hopes of scoring a robust U.S. security package. After Ecuador agreed to turn over its Soviet-era arms scraps to the U.S. for transfer to Ukraine in exchange for $200 million in modern materiel, Russia retaliated by cutting off imports of Ecuadorean bananas and flowers. Unwilling to jeopardize nearly $700 million in annual sales to Moscow, Noboa backtracked on the deal.
In late 2022, Congress passed the U.S.-Ecuador Partnership Act aimed at expediting bilateral assistance and shoring up investment for the country, but the framework has proven ineffective as Ecuador’s economy contracted 1.5% in late 2024, compounded by IMF-imposed austerity measures and 14-hour blackouts in some areas of the country.
Amid surging U.S.-bound migration, a feud with his vice president and the residual economic fallout from Covid, Noboa faces an uphill battle on April 13, hoping that foreign military presence in Gonzalez’s coastal stronghold can stabilize conditions and give him a last-minute electoral boost, Chiriboga explains.
Yet as Ecuador becomes the new front line of the U.S. war on drugs, Noboa’s reliance on worn-out strategies has so far failed to yield concrete results — and April 13 may not give him enough time to prove to voters that he’s the man to usher in the peace and security that Ecuador desperately seeks.
