Ecuador's president enlists ex-Blackwater chief in controversial crime crackdown
Noboa, the rightwing heir to a South American banana empire, announced the partnership with Erik Prince on social media on Tuesday night.
'We [have] established a strategic alliance to strengthen our capabilities in the fight against narco-terrorism and to protect our waters from illegal fishing,' Noboa tweeted alongside a photograph of the two men sitting together.
'Organized crime has sown fear and believed it can operate with impunity. Their time is running out. International aid is beginning to flow to Ecuador,' added the president, who is seeking re-election in the second round of the country's presidential election next month.
Ecuador's president offered no further details of the partnership between his government and Prince, a Navy Seal turned multimillionaire security contractor with close ties to the Trump administration.
The announcement appeared designed to bolster Noboa's attempt to portray himself as an iron-fisted anti-crime crusader ahead of the 13 April run-off against his leftwing rival Luisa González. Noboa's administration announced on Sunday a $1m reward for the capture of one of Ecuador's most notorious drug bosses, José Adolfo Macías Villamar, who is known by the nickname 'Fito'.
Noboa launched in January 2024 a hardline crackdown on the domestic gangs and foreign cartels that have brought chaos and carnage to what until recently was one of South America's safest countries.
Ecuador's highly strategic location between two of the world's top cocaine producers – Peru and Colombia – and its Pacific ports have turned the country into a what experts call a drug 'superhighway' ferrying vast quantities of the illegal substance to the US and Europe.
'We are at war and we are fighting against people who are heavily armed, organised, with domestic and international financial backing and a structure of terror and criminality that reaches far beyond Ecuador's borders,' Noboa said at the time.
But Noboa's crackdown has failed to halt the bloodshed and has been plagued with accusations of human rights abuses, including torture and arbitrary arrests.
The news that Blackwater's former CEO would join Noboa's campaign prompted outrage and trepidation given the military contractor's track record of involvement in abuses, including the killing of 14 Iraqi civilians in 2007, after the US invasion.
'Does he intend to do the same here?' Ecuadorian lawyer Marlon Martínez Molina asked on X, accusing Noboa of planning to introduce paramilitarism to the South American country by importing foreign mercenaries.
'Noboa is the death of Ecuador … there's no end to the terror in this country,' tweeted the Ecuadorian author Cristina Burneo.
Activist Soledad Angus Freré also voiced despair, warning: 'We're going straight off the cliff.'
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