In the run-up to Ecuador’s presidential elections on 13 April 2025, the two leading candidates, Daniel Noboa of the Acción Democrática Nacional (AND), and Luisa González, leader of former president Rafael Correa’s Citizens Revolution party, faced the challenge of wresting control of the country from local narco-traffickers and gang leaders. With Noboa remaining president, Ecuador’s marginalized populations may be facing the possibility of a Bukele-style administration in their country under the auspices of Erik Prince.
A key moment in the Ecuadorean election campaign came on 30 March 2025, when Luisa González secured the critical support of the Indigenous Peoples’ party, Pachakutik, which represents 5 percent of the vote, giving her a potential lead over her rival. Both candidates received around 44 percent of the vote in the first round of the elections on 9 February.
While the two candidates’ political programmes, as announced on 9 April, were similar in content and style, Noboa had the advantage and disadvantage of being the golden boy of the country’s richest family. It is now apparent that Noboa is moving closer to adopting the repressive tactics of President Nayib Bukele of El Salvador to reduce crime levels. To this end, Noboa has enlisted a Private Military Company (PMC), formerly known as Blackwater, under the leadership of the notorious US mercenary Erik Prince, to defeat local criminal gangs who have terrorized the Ecuadorian population for the last ten years.
The country’s voters had to choose between returning to the authoritarianism of Correismo or the even greater threat of a Bukele-style administration under which there is a danger of grave human rights violations.
Organized crime and Ecuador
Beginning around 2016, after a peace agreement was reached between the Colombian government and the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC), when some members of the FARC laid down their arms and ceased to engage in cocaine trafficking, Ecuadorian criminal gangs such as Los Choneros and Los Lobos gradually moved into the export of cocaine from Ecuador’s ports. Ecuador then became the leading exporter of cocaine from Latin America destined for North America and Europe. Criminal operators began to seek recruits from Ecuador’s unemployed and disaffected youth in port cities to support their activities.
Within a short time, the cartels had infiltrated the highest levels of government and the judiciary. When incarcerated, gang leaders such as Choneros leader, “Fito”, managed to continue to direct criminal operations from within the prison system, and engaged in a pattern of murdering lawyers, government officials, journalists, and small traders who had been brave enough to stand up to them. In this way, criminal leaders have ensured the continued flow of profits from the variety of illegal activities they are engaged in, within the country and across its borders.
Ecuador’s security challenge: Noboa’s record
President Noboa won Ecuador’s 2023 election on a security ticket: in 2024, the number of homicides had decreased to 6,987. In the previous year, there were 44.5 homicides per 100,000 inhabitants, the highest level in Central and South America.
Much of the country’s violent crime is centred around the country’s ports from where narcotics are hidden in containers shipped to North America and Europe inside consignments of bananas and other exports. Ecuador is rich in natural resources and the world’s biggest exporter of bananas, from which President Noboa’s family derive their wealth. Yet it is around the very ports from where the bananas are shipped that there is the greatest poverty and deprivation. One irony of Noboa’s presidency is that not only is cocaine smuggled out of Ecuador primarily in banana containers, but that an exporting company going by the name of Noboa Trading has been accused of sending banana shipments containing cocaine.
Notably, it is from those sectors of the population least served by the state in terms of social care and education that children are recruited into criminal gangs involved in the narcotics trade. Gangs such as the Latin Kings have been recruiting children from schools, by offering cash and presents, since the early 2000s. Young recruits become involved in turf warfare among competing groups, putting their lives at risk from violence among criminals or from members of security forces. The death rate of young people under 20 years old rose 195 percent 2020-2022, according to Insight Crime. Most of the deaths have occurred around Guayaquil and Durán, where the warehouses of goods to be shipped are located.
Noboa’s security platform
Although Noboa’s administration has had some success in seizing shipments of narcotics and capturing several of the leaders of the powerful mafias —supposedly dismantling their control centres within the country’s prisons— in 2025 the cartels continued to engage in narcotics trafficking, illegal gold mining and gold laundering, working in collaboration with both Mexican and European cartels. Albanian fixers arrange much of the cocaine consignments to Europe, while members of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel transport cocaine and other illegal commodities into North America.
Despite a fall in the number of homicides in 2024, and record seizures of narcotics at the country’s ports, President Noboa was employing increasingly severe tactics to control gangs in 2024. This culminated in the much publicized murder of four boys under the age of 16 (who became known as the Guayaquil Four) by members of the Ecuadorian security forces on 8 December 2024. The 16 air force personnel held responsible for the murders attempted to cover up the crime by burning the bodies and dumping them 42 km away from Guayaquil, near an air force base, alleging that their deaths were a result of gang violence. Demonstrations ensued: 12 of the alleged perpetrators were being investigated in March 2025.
The Noboa administration was criticized for its response to the murders by the Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR), and other human rights bodies, who called on the Ecuadorian government to protect human lives. An Ecuadorian judge working on the case was threatened by the Secretary of Defence, Gian Carlo Loffredo, whose own conduct was criticized by the IACHR.
After inter-gang violence caused the death of 22 people on 7 March 2025, Noboa declared an amnesty for the security forces, effectively giving them the green light to ignore human rights conventions, an attitude rejected by candidate González (Agence France Press).
In a further bid to address the cartels, Noboa, who was born and educated in the US, has been building links with the new Republican administration of the US, meeting with President Trump in March 2025
In a further bid to address the cartels, Noboa, who was born and educated in the US, has been building links with the new Republican administration of the US, meeting with President Trump in March 2025. Noboa has been campaigning for a constitutional amendment that would reverse President Correa’s closure of the US military base in Manta, on which reconstruction has already begun.
President Noboa hires a private military company to tackle organized crime
In seeking foreign support for his efforts to combat crime, President Noboa has enlisted the services of the mercenary security company, formerly known as Blackwater, created and controlled by former US Navy Seal Erik Prince, to tackle Ecuador’s security problem.
In 2024, Erik Prince already had a working relationship with President Bukele of El Salvador, and was pitching the US administration under President Trump for Blackwater to assist in the deportation of illegal migrants from the US into a third country, namely El Salvador. Marco Rubio met Bukele on 3 February 2005, where they discussed deporting even US citizens to El Salvador.
Since he was elected President of El Salvador in June 2019, President Bukele has conducted a campaign to reduce the levels of violence in the country using illegal and unethical practices. His strategy has been to carry out mass arrests of the inhabitants of entire neighbourhoods, incarcerating citizens without following legal processes, resulting in the indefinite detention of people with no links to criminal gangs. Around 85,000 people have been detained so far, mostly with no investigation or charges against them, no access to their families, or defence lawyers. Detainees can be held for three years without trial.
El Salvador’s prisoners, including pregnant women and people with disabilities, have been subjected to treatment illegal under international human rights law, and have been denied access to water and other basic hygiene necessities and medicine. There have been 368 deaths, according to AFP. The Constitutional Court has been overturned and judges dismissed. Tribunals have been held in secret; a law was passed in 2023 to enable up to 900 defendants to be tried together.
With Noboa remaining president, Ecuador’s marginalized populations may be facing the possibility of a Bukele-style administration in their country under the auspices of Erik Prince.
Prince himself has been under investigation by the United Nations. It was reported that he was unwelcome and described as “radioactive” in the Pentagon from 2020, as his methods pushed the bounds of legality, according to CNN.
Prince himself has been under investigation by the United Nations. It was reported that he was unwelcome and described as “radioactive” in the Pentagon from 2020, as his methods pushed the bounds of legality, according to CNN. He was known to have had contact with Russian arms dealers at the beginning of the first Trump administration in 2017. Yet by 2025, under the new Trump administration, he was participating in group chats at the US Department of Homeland Security, the State Department, and the White House National Security Council. This was in the context of Erik Prince’s sister, Betsy de Vos, having been President Trump’s Education Secretary under his first administration beginning in 2016. Erik and Betsy Prince came from a billionaire family in Michigan: Erik worked as an intern in the Bush presidency. In 2025, Prince became a close ally of US Defense Secretary Pete Hegseth and US Director of National Intelligence Tulsi Gabbard (CNN).
Erik Prince and Blackwater gained notoriety in the Iraq war, after an incident that brought about the death of 17 unarmed Iraqi civilians. His company has been accused of numerous human rights violations. Mercenaries tend to operate beyond jurisdictional oversight, and thus avoid prosecutions in the countries in which they operate.
With regard to Ecuador, Prince had established a strategic alliance with President Noboa by 11 March 2025, by which time his forces had already landed in the country.
On 5 April 2025, under the name of Apollo 13, led by Ecuador’s Minister of the Interior, John Reimberg, and Minister of Defence, Gian Carlo Loffredo, Blackwater were engaged in military operations in the Portete and Batallón del Suburbio suburbs of Guayaquil.
On 5 April 2025, under the name of Apollo 13, led by Ecuador’s Minister of the Interior, John Reimberg, and Minister of Defence, Gian Carlo Loffredo, Blackwater were engaged in military operations in the Portete and Batallón del Suburbio suburbs of Guayaquil.
Alongside 500 army and police personnel, the private military company carried out raids of buildings and apartments. They found weapons, motorcycles and narcotics, as well as 40 people locked in two rooms, who denied they were prisoners. It was believed that the seemingly incarcerated individuals had been forced to carry out kidnappings and extortion in the surrounding area. They were taken into custody. The Blackwater operations depart from the assurances made by Minister of Defence Gian Carlo Loffredo that the private military company operations would be restricted to assessment and training.
Erik Prince would appear to have exceeded his security brief when he announced that the people of Ecuador had a choice between confronting the gangs and restoring law and order, or following the path of Venezuela.
Presidential candidate Luisa González has denounced Noboa’s action in recruiting Blackwater, commenting that it was a strategy to counter her bid for the presidency, that it was illegal and a humiliation for the country’s armed forces.
The invitation to Erik Prince and Blackwater has been challenged by members of Ecuador’s National Assembly, who are uncomfortable at Noboa’s close ties with the administration of Donald Trump in the White House and by the use of foreign mercenaries.
Meanwhile President Noboa announced the strategic alliance with Blackwater on 11 March, posting a photo of himself with President Trump on Twitter/X. He said, ‘We [have] established a strategic alliance to strengthen our capabilities in the fight against narco-terrorism and to protect our waters from illegal fishing.’
On 12 April, one day prior to the elections, Noboa announced a 60-day state of emergency in seven provinces, as well as in Quito, and Azuay, with the mobilization of armed vehicles to prisons. In response to increasing levels of violence in the first two months of 2025, Noboa had already imposed a state of emergency at the beginning of March in some of the country’s provinces. States of emergency impose night curfews and enable searches of property without warrants.
President Noboa, in his second term, faces huge challenges that will not be resolved through increasingly repressive policies and mass incarceration in the style of the President Bukele of El Salvador. Ecuador’s problems stem from the country’s position within the current global political and economic order and demand for commodities, legal and illegal. Long-term solutions can be found in the political will of administrations and in the decisions of powerful economic players outside the country’s borders.
Dr Linda Etchart is associate lecturer in Human Geography at Kingston University, and a regular contributor to the Latin America Bureau Environment Defenders Series. She is the author of Global Governance of the Environment, the Rights of Nature and Indigenous Peoples: Extractive Industries in the Ecuadorian Amazon. New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2022.
www.lindaetchart.com
