Seoul Gazette - Rubio ramps up Ecuador support in tough anti-crime drive

Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa, an emerging ally of US President Donald Trump, has deployed troops to combat violence that has transformed the country from one of Latin America's safest to one of its most dangerous.

Rubio, meeting with Noboa in the centuries-old palace in Quito's old city, said the United States would provide nearly $20 million in security aid including $6 million in drones.

He also said that the United States was designating two gangs, Los Lobos and Los Choneros, as foreign terrorist organizations -- putting them directly into US crosshairs.

Rubio told reporters that he was helping Ecuador to "wage war against these vicious animals, these terrorists."

Speaking of Trump's push against criminal groups, Rubio said, "This administration is confronting it like it's never been confronted before."

Noboa's mass deployment of force has won him popular support but has yet to dent crime, which mostly consists of gang battles.

At a joint press conference, Ecuador's Foreign Minister Gabriela Sommerfeld said that Ecuador wants to see the Americas region free of "threats from transnational organized crime groups and terrorist groups that want to subjugate our citizens."

The visit comes two days after US forces said they blew up an alleged drug-running boat from a gang tied to Venezuela's leftist leader Nicolas Maduro, in an operation Trump said killed 11 people.

AFP has not been able to verify independently the details of the attack presented by the United States.

In a sign of escalating tensions, the Pentagon said that two Venezuelan military planes flew near a US Navy vessel in international waters Thursday.

Rubio denounced Maduro, who was indicted in the United States, as a "fugitive of American justice."

But he also said that countries that cooperate with the United States need not worry about US strikes and in fact "help us find these people and blow them up."

- The next Bukele? -

Sommerfeld promised to keep up assistance in one of Trump's top priorities -- curbing migration.

"Ecuador is going to support the United States. It's symbolic, and it's important for our partner, and we're going to do it in a coordinated way," she said.

A senior State Department official said Ecuador has agreed to accept people from third countries deported from the United States and that implementation was "very, very near."

The official said that Ecuador's decision would boost Trump's push for mass deportations but said it was not a "quid pro quo" in return for US aid.

Rubio said that the United States would also aim within "a couple of weeks" to seal an economic agreement with Ecuador.

In Noboa, a businessman who has consolidated power since his surprise 2023 victory, Rubio could find a new ally in his campaign to strengthen security-minded right-wing leaders across Latin America.

The 37-year-old president was also born in Miami -- the hometown of Rubio, a Cuban-American and vociferous critic of Latin America's leftists.

Noboa could follow in the steps of El Salvador's Nayib Bukele, another young US-educated president, whose iron-fisted clampdown on crime has drawn complaints from rights groups but made him popular at home and a darling of the Trump administration.

- Invitation to US forces -

Located between Colombia and Peru, Ecuador is the departure point for 70 percent of the world's supply of the drug, nearly half of which goes to the United States, according to official data.

For years, the United States operated a military base at the Pacific port of Manta, and the Drug Enforcement Administration had a sizeable footprint in the country.

The base was closed in 2009, after leftist then-president Rafael Correa refused to renew the lease.

Noboa has taken steps to amend Ecuador's constitution to allow a return of US forces.

"If they invite us to return, we will consider it very seriously," Rubio said.

Ecuador also has to balance its warmth with Trump with its relationship with China, to which it owes billions of dollars after an infrastructure agreement.

O.Kwon--SG