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The strategy is simple: stay just outside Ecuador\u2019s territorial waters, avoid major patrol routes, and supply the drug runners as they go. If they\u2019re not intercepted, the vessels link up mid-ocean \u2014 often under cover of night \u2014 and continue their journey, undetected. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a supply chain built for stealth \u2014 and for speed. And it\u2019s helping fuel a wave of cartel-driven violence that\u2019s turned Ecuador\u2019s coastal cities into some of the deadliest in Latin America. <\/p>\n
Many of those who take these trips never return. <\/p>\n
In a modest home near the port, more than two dozen women crowd into Solanda Bermello\u2019s living room \u2014 mothers, wives, and sisters of men who were arrested abroad or simply never came home. Some hold photographs. Others clutch letters, hoping someone might deliver them to husbands or sons locked up overseas. <\/p>\n
Bermello founded the Association of Mothers and Wives of Fishermen Detained in Other Countries nine years ago \u2014 after her own son was caught running drugs and imprisoned. Today, she says the group includes 380 members and they\u2019ve documented more than 2,000 cases in Mexico, Colombia, El Salvador, Honduras, Nicaragua, and the United States since January 2024. <\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve sent letters to all those countries,\u201d she says, pleading for repatriation of their loved ones. <\/p>\n
Many don\u2019t know where their relatives are being held or even if they\u2019re still alive. <\/p>\n
\u201cOur fishermen are not drug traffickers,\u201d Bermello says. \u201cThey are drug trafficking mules. Unfortunately, they are offered an amount of money that is so large for them\u2026 but at times they do not collect any of that money because they end up in prison and leave their families adrift and their children fatherless.\u201d <\/p>\n
She says economic desperation, not ambition, is what drives them. \u201cThey are not drug traffickers,\u201d she repeats. \u201cUnfortunately, they do it because of the economic situation in the country \u2014 we don\u2019t have money, we don\u2019t have work, we don\u2019t have a way to subsist.\u201d <\/p>\n
Even those trying to fish legally, she says, aren\u2019t safe. \u201cOur fishermen are robbed by pirates. Not even making an honest living is possible.\u201d <\/p>\n
She supports the idea of a US security presence returning to a nearby military base, vacated in 2009 after Ecuador banned foreign troops on its soil. \u201cThe US used to help us,\u201d she says. \u201cWe need that again.\u201d <\/p>\n
The streets of Ecuador\u2019s coastal cities are soaked in blood. In just the first few months of 2025, more than 2,500 homicides have been recorded according to national police statistics \u2014 on pace to make this the deadliest year in the country\u2019s history. InSight Crime, an organization that tracks and investigates crime in the Americas, now ranks Ecuador as having the highest homicide rate in Latin America. <\/p>\n
The surge in violence is fueled by a complex web of transnational crime: drug trafficking routes, turf wars, and brutal alliances between local gangs and foreign cartels. Ecuador\u2019s location between Peru and Colombia, top producers of cocaine, and its efficient transport and export network has made it attractive to traffickers. <\/p>\n
It\u2019s a crisis unfolding beyond its borders but with real consequences for the US \u2014 from the cocaine flooding into American cities to the migration pressures reshaping its southern border. <\/p>\n
\u201cThere are plans,\u201d he said. \u201cWe had conversations, we had a plan, we had options\u2026 and now we just need another meeting, post-election, to consolidate it.\u201d <\/p>\n
But Noboa insists this won\u2019t mean American boots patrolling Ecuadorian streets. \u201cThe control of the operations will be in the hands of our military and our police,\u201d he said. US forces, he explained, would play a support role \u2014 focused on monitoring illegal operations and reinforcing Ecuador\u2019s ability to stop them before they reach open waters. <\/p>\n
Noboa, who was born and educated in the United States, has pushed to revive Ecuador\u2019s cooperation with Washington across multiple fronts, including security, trade, and migration. He says he wants to fix conditions at home to keep Ecuadorians from fleeing north, while also stepping up efforts to intercept drug flows bound for the US. <\/p>\n
He\u2019s even expressed willingness to reform Ecuador\u2019s constitution \u2014 potentially allowing for the formal return of a US military presence, like the one that existed from 1999 to 2009 at the now-defunct Manta Air Base. <\/p>\n
\u201cThat would help to keep peace,\u201d Noboa said. \u201cLike we had in the past.\u201d <\/p>\n
As he heads into his second term, the young president is staking his political future on security. He has invited both US President Donald Trump and El Salvador\u2019s President Nayib Bukele \u2014 another right-wing populist who cracked down on gangs \u2014 to his inauguration in May. And he insists another meeting with US officials is just around the corner. <\/p>\n
For Ecuador, the war is already underway \u2014 at sea, on land, in homes and streets. And for the fisherman who once cast lines for tuna, it\u2019s a war that pays. His next drug run, he says, might be his last. But the system that pulled him in shows no signs of stopping. <\/p>\n<\/p>\n
This post appeared first on cnn.com<\/div>\n
<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
\u201cOne more trip,\u201d he says. \u201cAnd then I\u2019ll stop.\u201d He\u2019s a fisherman by trade, born and raised in the coastal city of Manta \u2014 a place once known for tuna and tranquility. But these days, the fish are harder to find. The trips are longer. And the money, he says, just isn\u2019t there anymore. \u201cAs…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5671,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-5670","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5670","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5670"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5670\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5671"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5670"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5670"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/republicanstradetoday.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5670"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}