标签： South America

QUITO, ECUADOR – In a major escalation of joint counter-narcotics efforts between the United States and Ecuador, the U.S. Treasury Department announced sanctions Thursday against 15 individuals linked to a sophisticated transnational drug network that moves thousands of kilograms of cocaine from Ecuador to U.S. consumers every month, via Mexican smuggling routes. The new measures come as the Trump administration expands joint anti-trafficking operations across Latin America, a campaign that has already seen intensified strikes against suspected traffickers operating as fishermen in the Caribbean and Pacific, resulting in more than 200 deaths to date.

According to details released by the Treasury Department, the network conceals its illicit activities behind the facade of registered commercial fishing operations. Based near the strategic Ecuadorean port of Manta, the smuggling ring uses locally registered vessels to transfer large cocaine shipments to high-speed “go-fast” power boats, which then carry the contraband north through the Eastern Pacific Ocean toward U.S. territory.

All 15 sanctioned individuals are tied to two major Ecuadorean criminal groups, Los Choneros and Los Lobos – both already formally designated as foreign terrorist organizations by the U.S. government. After the cocaine is moved north from Ecuador, the network partners with two infamous Mexican cartels, the Sinaloa Cartel and Cartel de Jalisco Nueva Generacion (CJNG), which are also listed as U.S. foreign terrorist organizations, to move the drugs across the Mexico-U.S. border for distribution.

Ecuador has faced a spiraling crisis of drug-related violence since 2021, as major international cartels form alliances with local street gangs to fight bloody turf wars for control of smuggling routes and Pacific coastal ports. The country’s geographic position, wedged between Colombia and Peru – the world’s two largest cocaine producing nations – has made it an unavoidable transit hub for cocaine bound for North America and Europe. Last year, the crisis pushed Ecuador’s homicide rate to a 50-year high of 50 murders per 100,000 residents, according to official data from the country’s Ministry of the Interior.

Under the leadership of recently elected President Daniel Noboa, Ecuador has emerged as a key regional partner for the Trump administration’s anti-drug campaign. On the same day the Treasury sanctions were announced, Ecuadorean Defense Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo confirmed that two U.S. warships equipped with interceptor boats and helicopters will begin patrolling Ecuador’s territorial waters to support counter-trafficking operations. Loffredo made the announcement on his personal Instagram account, following a Wednesday meeting in Manta with General Francis Donovan, head of U.S. Southern Command. The defense minister did not share a specific timeline for when the patrols will launch.

Loffredo emphasized that the new collaboration will drastically boost Ecuador’s ability to intercept drug shipments at sea, telling reporters that the cooperation will triple the country’s interdiction capacity in its maritime zones. He added that three U.S. Black Hawk helicopters have already arrived in Manta and are preparing to join operational activities. The Associated Press requested additional details about the joint patrol plan from U.S. Southern Command, but did not receive an immediate response Thursday.

A 6.7-magnitude seismic event rattled the southern Andes mountain range of Peru on Thursday, leaving two people injured and causing significant damage to residential and public infrastructure across multiple affected districts, national emergency officials confirmed.

Data released by the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) pinpoints the earthquake’s timing at 1 p.m. local time (18:00 GMT), with its epicenter located roughly 38 kilometers, or 24 miles, northwest of Upahuacho, a small city in Parinacochas Province within Peru’s Ayacucho region. The temblor originated at a depth of 66 kilometers, approximately 41 miles, beneath the surface. The shaking was felt across a broad swath of southern Peru, reaching as far as the country’s coastal capital of Lima, in addition to the southern regions of Ica, Arequipa, Huancavelica, Apurimac and Cusco.

Luis Vásquez, director of Peru’s national Civil Defense agency, told reporters that the two injured people were hurt during emergency evacuation from their damaged homes in Coracora, the capital city of Parinacochas Province. Preliminary damage assessments compiled by local authorities note that 22 private residences, six public health clinics, and one primary school have been impacted across multiple districts spanning Ayacucho and Cusco, affecting communities including Puquio, Pullo, Coracora, Upahuacho, San Pedro and Pichari. Geologists also confirmed reports of rockslides on steep hillsides surrounding Coracora, triggered by the intense shaking.

In a public briefing after the quake, the Peruvian Navy quickly issued a statement ruling out any risk of a tsunami following the inland seismic event. Peru sits along the Pacific Ocean’s geologically active Ring of Fire, a horseshoe-shaped zone that sees roughly 90 percent of the world’s earthquakes annually due to tectonic plate movement along plate boundaries. Seismic activity is a constant, regular hazard for communities across the country.

The region has a history of devastating high-magnitude quakes. In 2007, a 7.9-magnitude earthquake that struck a province in Ica region claimed the lives of nearly 600 people, marking one of the deadliest natural disasters in modern Peruvian history. As of Thursday evening, emergency response teams have been deployed to the most heavily affected areas to conduct further damage assessments and provide support to displaced residents.

In a bilateral announcement made Wednesday following high-level talks in Miami, United States Ambassador to Peru Bernie Navarro confirmed that the U.S. will deploy the hospital ship USNS Comfort to Peru’s northern Pacific coast in February 2027 to assist the South American nation in managing the widespread public health and infrastructure impacts of the ongoing El Niño climate phenomenon. The deployment forms part of a broader new cooperation roadmap between the two countries, finalized during meetings between Navarro and Peruvian Foreign Minister Carlos Espá. The agreement comes as the U.S. ramps up both humanitarian assistance and joint security engagement across Latin America, in the wake of recent devastating earthquakes in Colombia and Venezuela that have tested regional response capacity.

During the Miami discussions, the two sides outlined a multi-pronged support package beyond the hospital ship deployment, including specialized technical expertise, new equipment donations, and joint surveillance overflights designed to help Peruvian authorities prevent, prepare for, and respond to extreme weather events tied to El Niño. The exact monetary value of the U.S. aid commitment was not released to the public following the talks. Espá also used the visit to meet with U.S. business leaders who have expressed interest in new investment opportunities in Peru’s mining and infrastructure sectors, opening a new economic channel of bilateral engagement alongside climate and security cooperation.

Speaking in Spanish, Ambassador Navarro explained that the core goal of the bilateral meeting was to map out Peru’s specific needs ahead of the projected 2027 El Niño peak, and build a framework for faster, more coordinated emergency response. He noted that recent humanitarian response efforts following the Colombia earthquake highlighted gaps in cross-border coordination that this new partnership aims to address. The USNS Comfort is no stranger to Peru, having previously deployed to the country for humanitarian medical missions in both 2018 and 2019.

Meteorologists have warned that the 2027 El Niño event could match or exceed the intensity of the record-breaking 1997 El Niño, one of the most destructive climate events in modern history. The 1997 event triggered widespread catastrophic damage across the Pacific basin, including deadly heatwaves, extreme rainfall, catastrophic flooding, and large-scale wildfires that displaced hundreds of thousands and caused billions of dollars in damage. For Peru, which sits on the eastern Pacific where El Niño forms, the phenomenon brings particularly severe public health and infrastructure risks, from contaminated floodwaters to disrupted access to care for vulnerable coastal communities.

Peruvian President Keiko Fujimori, who took office on July 28, has identified preparation for the potentially catastrophic El Niño event as one of her administration’s top policy priorities, framing proactive investment in disaster response as critical to protecting lives and livelihoods across the country.

One week after a catastrophic 7.4-magnitude earthquake centered in Colombia’s western, historically marginalized department of Choco left a trail of death and displacement, survivors and aid organizations are grappling with the immense challenge of recovering from a disaster that amplified the region’s long-standing inequities.

For 66-year-old Quibdo-based math teacher Ismael Arias, a routine early trip to the local market last August 10 was the only thing that spared him from the same fate as the two-story home he spent years building and decades paying off. The structure, constructed with his modest teacher’s wages, crumbled entirely when the tremors struck.

“Even if I am helped, I don’t think I will get enough,” Arias shared from temporary shelter at a relative’s home, where he and his partner have stayed since the quake. “It’s not the same. You don’t have the freedom there that you get in your own house.”

Updated official death toll released by Colombia’s central government this week confirms the disaster has killed at least 312 people and destroyed 29,000 residential structures. The United Nations Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs estimates 69,000 Choco residents — roughly 10 percent of the region’s total population of 600,000 — have been displaced or otherwise affected by the quake. Most of the region’s population identifies as Afro-Colombian or Indigenous, and Choco has remained one of Colombia’s most underfunded and overlooked regions for generations.

Luis Mora, representative of the United Nations Population Fund in Colombia, summarized the overlapping emergency facing the region: “We are facing a triple crisis. You have the humanitarian crisis caused by the earthquake, now joining the under development crisis and the crisis caused by armed conflict in this territory.”

Long before the earthquake struck, Choco struggled with systemic challenges that have made recovery far harder than it would be in better-resourced parts of the country. Covered mostly by steep mountains and dense Amazon-adjacent rainforest, Choco is connected to the rest of Colombia by just two unstable, poorly maintained roads. More than 650 kilometers of Pacific coastline lacks any overland road connections to the region’s interior, leaving most remote communities accessible only by air or river travel — routes that become treacherous during bad weather. For decades, armed rebel groups have also battled for control of illegal mining operations and drug trafficking corridors across large parts of Choco, forcing civilian displacement and imposing arbitrary lockdowns that cut off local families from their farmland and livelihoods for days at a time.

Critical public services were already on the brink of collapse before the disaster. More than 200 schools across the region sustained damage in the quake, and widespread lack of reliable high-speed internet rules out the option of shifting to remote learning for displaced students. The region’s only public hospital, located in the capital Quibdo, was ill-equipped to handle the surge of earthquake-related injuries.

Cristian Maturana, a physician at the Quibdo public hospital, explained that in the immediate aftermath of the tremors, the emergency room was overwhelmed with patients suffering broken bones and crush injuries. Thirty-six patients with severe multiple fractures had to be airlifted to a larger, better-resourced hospital in Medellin, the capital of neighboring Antioquia, because Quibdo’s hospital lacked sufficient staff and specialized equipment to treat them. A power surge after the quake also damaged the facility’s only refrigerator for storing blood donations, halting all blood transfusion procedures for days until a replacement was donated over the weekend by a group of Bogota-based oncologists.

“These have been tough days,” Maturana said, noting that outside support from across Colombia and the international community “has been crucial.” Currently, the emergency room operates at twice its intended capacity, with patients receiving care on stretchers and chairs lined up in hospital hallways. While donations of antibiotics, bandages, and blood pressure monitors have filled some gaps, the facility still faces critical shortages of wheelchairs and additional beds. “These seem like basic things,” Maturana said. “But they are items we have long had shortages of.”

Local humanitarian groups have worked to deliver aid to hard-to-reach communities, relying on donated flight time from private aircraft owners to bypass the impassable road network. Camilo Prieto, a doctor with the Colombian Environmental Movement humanitarian organization, said his group has delivered more than two tons of medical supplies, including portable electrocardiogram and ultrasound machines, to affected areas, flying aid to remote towns via helicopter and small plane. “By land it would be very difficult,” Prieto explained.

UNFPA, for its part, has prioritized supporting women and girls in emergency shelters, distributing personal hygiene kits and establishing dedicated safe spaces for female survivors in temporary accommodation sites. High-profile support has also emerged: global pop star Shakira, who is Colombian, recently made a surprise visit to earthquake-impacted areas and pledged to fund the rebuilding of damaged Choco schools. Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella has also visited the region twice since the disaster, announcing a sweeping recovery plan that includes billions of dollars in new infrastructure investment, targeted job creation programs, rental subsidies for homeless families, and a dedicated government oversight position to lead recovery efforts.

Colombia’s national statistics agency DANE confirms Choco already held the country’s highest unemployment rate in 2024, with a per capita GDP of just $3,500 — one quarter of the per capita income of the capital Bogota. Wiston Mosquera, the Roman Catholic bishop of the Quibdo diocese and a lifelong Choco resident, said he hopes the global attention brought by the earthquake will finally force action on the region’s decades of structural neglect. “We are decades behind the rest of Colombia’s regions,” Mosquera said, pointing to persistent gaps in healthcare, transportation, and power access that predate the disaster.

But many local survivors remain skeptical of government promises, echoing the region’s long history of broken pledges for investment. For Arias, who took out bank loans totaling roughly $32,000 to build his now-destroyed home, rebuilding is all but out of reach on a teacher’s salary, even with proposed government subsidies. He is far from alone: thousands of homeless survivors across Choco face an uncertain future, as aid groups race to address an emergency that has deepened the Choco region’s decades-long struggle for equity and basic services.