Noboa promised order. Ecuador got 16,000 killings and an expanding U.S. military war
Daniel Noboa called Ecuador’s security emergency an “internal armed conflict” and promised to smash organized crime through soldiers, exceptional powers and alliance with Washington. The country he governs has suffered an extraordinary number of killings, while investigators have documented grave abuses by the very forces enlisted to restore order.
Ecuador recorded more than 16,000 violent killings across 2024 and 2025, according to an El Universo accounting of the first two years of the government’s declared internal conflict. The 2025 annual total was approximately 9,300, a record. That figure counts homicides committed by criminals and other perpetrators, NOT 16,000 killings personally ordered or carried out by Noboa. The distinction matters because the real indictment of his strategy is that mass militarization has not made Ecuador safe.
The 2026 figures are still grim
Official Ministry of Interior figures cited by Ecuadorian media show 5,676 violent deaths from January 1 to September 20, 2026, compared with 6,067 during the equivalent period of 2025. That is a decline of 391 deaths, or 6.4%—important and real, if the provisional figures hold. It is also roughly 22 people murdered every day across those 263 days. A modest year-on-year decline should not be confused with peace.
For the first six months of 2026, the Ecuadorian Observatory of Organized Crime recorded 4,145 killings, still the second-worst first half on record. The government can fairly point to some improvement versus the previous record year; it cannot credibly claim that the scale of killing is acceptable or that rights violations are collateral details.
The disappeared children of Las Malvinas
On December 8, 2024, soldiers detained four boys in Guayaquil’s Las Malvinas neighborhood: Steven Medina, Nehemías Arboleda, Josué Arroyo and Ismael Arroyo. Their bodies were found later that month near a military base, bearing signs of torture. This is not merely an allegation circulated by critics: Ecuadorian courts convicted military personnel for their forced disappearance, and the armed forces made a public apology in June 2026.
Amnesty International reported that the United Nations Committee on Enforced Disappearances had received 51 reports of disappearances allegedly committed by law-enforcement personnel during security operations in 2024–25. The group has documented individual operations and says military obstruction continues to thwart victims’ families. The governing word should be accountability, not immunity.
Washington has entered the war directly
In July 2026, Human Rights Watch released an unusually detailed investigation—62 interviews, satellite imagery, military records and video analysis—into U.S.–Ecuador security cooperation. It found that Ecuadorian troops arbitrarily detained and tortured four Colombian farm workers during a U.S.-partnered operation, then burned and bombed civilian properties. The U.S. and Ecuador have given inadequate public answers about who was responsible for which acts.
Human Rights Watch also documented the disappearance of the fishing boat Fiorella and drone attacks on two other Ecuadorian boats near the Galápagos. Survivors reported being detained by armed personnel whom they identified as Americans. HRW explicitly could NOT conclusively identify who carried out those drone strikes; U.S. officials denied involvement. Those limits are essential to the record, not excuses to stop investigating.
A subsequent October 2 report by Human Rights Watch said U.S. forces intercepted and destroyed eight Ecuadorian fishing vessels from August 28 through September 16, detaining more than 140 of 160 crew members, with abuse allegations. On October 9, a judge acquitted 32 fishermen from two intercepted boats because the prosecution had failed to establish criminal association. A first-instance acquittal is not a blanket finding about every maritime operation, but it is a devastating warning against treating every fisherman as an enemy combatant.
Security for whom?
Noboa presents his policy as necessary protection against extraordinarily violent gangs, and those gangs have inflicted real terror. But the government has simultaneously tried to expand executive powers over lethal force and intelligence. Ecuador’s Constitutional Court invalidated major portions of the 2025 security legislation. Rights groups describe illegal detentions, enforced disappearances and extrajudicial killings linked to the militarized response.
The international beneficiary is not hard to identify: Washington now has a deeper operational role in Ecuadorian security policy, with access to intelligence partnerships and joint missions. Whether these arrangements actually protect Ecuadorian communities must be judged by independent evidence, not patriotic stagecraft or declarations from foreign generals.
It is fair to call Noboa’s methods authoritarian and militarized where they erode judicial oversight or normalize abuses. Calling him a literal member of the Nazi movement, by contrast, would require evidence that has not been presented. The documented acts are damning enough: four boys disappeared by soldiers, farmers tortured, fishing boats destroyed, and many thousands of citizens still dying under a security policy advertised as salvation.
Ecuador deserves policing that targets financiers and traffickers, trustworthy prosecutions, effective civilian protection, and answers about U.S. operations. A government cannot bomb its way to legitimacy while refusing to explain the bodies.
Documents and reporting
Photograph credits: lead image Isaac Castillo / Presidency of Ecuador, May 2025; inline image Isaac Castillo / Presidency of Ecuador, August 2026. Public Domain Mark on Wikimedia Commons; no synthetic documentary images.
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