U.S. Troops Are Now Fighting the Drug War on the Ground in Ecuador

Dozens of American military personnel joined Ecuadorean police in raids, marking a new level of direct U.S. involvement

Ecuador’s security forces carried out a series of raids this week around the country, killing three alleged drug traffickers and capturing dozens more. At their side was a contingent of heavily armed American soldiers.

The operations, which were announced by the Ecuadorean government, signal a deepening of U.S. military involvement in Latin America’s drug wars as the Trump administration pledges to go after criminal groups it has labeled narcoterrorists.

On Thursday in the city of Guayaquil and several other locations, 50 U.S. military personnel joined more than 300 national police officers in raids against a drug network that Ecuadorean officials said has ties to Mexico’s Jalisco New Generation Cartel. Images posted by the interior minister showed police inside a home in an upscale Guayaquil neighborhood accompanied by masked American soldiers wearing U.S. flags stitched onto the shoulder of their uniforms. More than 30 people were detained.

A day earlier, Ecuadorean soldiers, in cooperation with the U.S. Southern Command, which oversees U.S. forces in Latin America, killed a local drug boss known by the alias Charlie and his two security guards in the coastal province of Manabí. Charlie was a member of Ecuador’s Choneros gang and also had ties to Mexico’s Jalisco cartel, officials said.

“We said it was either prison or hell, and this one didn’t make it to prison,” Ecuador’s defense minister, Gian Carlo Loffredo, said in a video on X, where he and other officials posted pictures showing three men sprawled out on a bloodstained road beside a...

Green Berets in Latin America has been pretty much a fact

I will attest to that....but not to sure about their effectiveness. I did the Plan Colombia gig a decade or so ago.....Uribe was kicking butt, but the socialists were voted in and clandestine US operations were largely halted.

The FARC, AUC and ELN were welcomed into “ surrender” but from what I know the “ plan” never worked out....the Che Guerra types ( young teenagers led by old communists ) are still roaming the jungle.

Green Berets in Latin America has been pretty much a fact

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