After losing the 16 November 2025 referendum—when the Ecuadorian people rejected the government’s four questions, including the one that opened the door to foreign military bases—Daniel Noboa’s regime accelerated its assault on democracy. In the weeks that followed, it launched a multi-pronged operation that, taken together, constitutes a semi-dictatorship that has surrendered the country’s sovereignty to the U.S. geostrategic project, while judicially eliminating its main political adversary and preparing elections without real competition.

The United States Demarcates the Territory

On 5 March 2026, U.S. Secretary of War Pete Hegseth announced at the ‘Conference of the Americas Against the Cartels’ the doctrine of ‘Greater North America’: all territories north of the equator, including Ecuador, constitute the United States’ ‘immediate security perimeter.’ Twelve days later, Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Joseph Humire testified before Congress that Ecuador ‘became the first Latin American country to carry out joint ground attacks against cartel infrastructure.’ Hegseth celebrated: ‘First Ecuador. Now the Eastern Pacific.’ Ecuador became the pilot for this plan.

This stands in direct contradiction to the November vote: 67 percent rejected foreign military bases. The chain of instruments already signed with the U.S. constitutes an occupation of Ecuadorian air, sea, land, and cyberspace, including the use of the Galápagos archipelago—a key node of the Pacific Security Polygon in Washington’s military blueprint for the geopolitical encirclement of China. These treaties, as far as we know to date, are: the Status of Forces Agreement (SOFA), which grants diplomatic immunity to U.S. forces on Ecuadorian soil; a Shiprider agreement that allows U.S. armed forces to enter Ecuadorian maritime areas and airspace to stop, board, and inspect vessels suspected of transporting drugs; and the Ecuador-United States Cooperation Act, which, among other provisions, includes U.S. interference in the ‘strengthening’ of the justice system and in the use of law enforcement to combat corruption.

The Empty Field: Outlawing and Electoral Fraud

On 6 March, one day after Hegseth’s announcement, Joaquín Viteri, a judge of the Contentious-Electoral Court (TCE), ordered the provisional suspension for nine months of Revolución Ciudadana (RC), the main opposition party. The measure was adopted in less than 48 hours, based on a complaint filed by the acting attorney general in the ‘Caja Chica’ case. The movement’s lawyer pointed out that the proceedings involve individuals, not the political organization, making the measure procedurally untenable. The TCE upheld the decision on 26 March. Along with RC, the left-wing Unidad Popular and the right-wing Construye parties face dissolution.

Three weeks later, the National Electoral Council (CNE) voted 4 to 1 to move up the local government elections from 14 February 2027, to 29 November 2026, under the pretext of the risk of rains due to the El Niño phenomenon. Neither the 1998 El Niño, which was much stronger than this one is expected to be, nor the pandemic led to the elections being moved up in Ecuador. The structural reason is mathematical: the candidate registration period—from 2 to 17 August 2026—falls within the nine-month suspension of the RC. The main opposition force would be unable to field candidates. When the first challenges to the constitutionality of this act reached the Constitutional Court, CNE President Diana Atamaint threatened the judges with sanctions if they intervened.

The Sale of the Country

In late March, Noboa signed a ‘reciprocal trade agreement‘ with Washington, the reciprocity of which is fiction: it will allow U.S. companies to withdraw profits without paying taxes, force the country to transfer its citizens’ personal data to the United States, and compel the acceptance of U.S. health standards for agricultural imports, thereby undermining food sovereignty. Added to this is the ‘strategic alliance’ signed in March 2025 with Erik Prince, head of Academi (formerly Blackwater), in violation of the Constitution and the International Convention against the Recruitment of Mercenaries, to which Ecuador is a signatory. What is being sold is not just tariff conditions: it is the entire country.

War Abroad, Repression at Home

On 16 and 17 March, Ecuadorian forces carried out a joint operation with the United States on the border with Colombia and, according to Colombian authorities, bombed Colombian territory, causing 27 deaths. The Pentagon framed the operation as ‘Operation Total Extermination of Narcoterrorists,’ the same term the regime applies, without any evidence, to social and indigenous movements. The operation destroyed a dairy farm, not a drug production site.

Also in March, the Constitutional Court ruled that the Armed Forces were responsible for the forced disappearance and death of four Afro-Ecuadorian children in December 2024, whose charred bodies were found on a highway. On 25 March, the UN Committee on Enforced Disappearances documented at least 51 victims, including minors, targeted by state security agencies, mostly in Afro-Ecuadorian communities in Esmeraldas, Guayas, and Los Ríos.

Elected opposition party officials are being persecuted: the mayor of Guayaquil (the country’s largest city) is in pretrial detention in a controversial case; the mayor of Quito was prosecuted in a case of lawfare. At least ten indigenous leaders, leaders of social movements, and opposition groups face multiple legal proceedings, frozen bank accounts, and the revocation of their rights.

These five fronts—integration into the U.S. war apparatus, the outlawing of the opposition, manipulation of the electoral calendar, the surrender of economic sovereignty, and internal repression—are components of a single operation. The Noboa regime embodies the logic of elites whose survival depends not on the country’s development but on sustaining imperial domination and obedience to the “Donroe” Doctrine. The fact that Noboa needs to eliminate his main political rival, the RC, through judicial suspension and electoral fraud reveals that the government lacks the balance of power it claims to possess. The resistance continues. The Ecuadorian people demonstrated, with the September–October 2025 strike, that they know what is happening and that they are fighting back, despite constant harassment and persecution.

This article was produced by Globetrotter.Email