What Is Blackwater Founder, Erik Prince, Doing in Ecuador a Week Before the Country’s Presidential Elections?

Prince is making bank as a security consultant for US-friendly governments in Latin America just months after trying to crowdfund a coup against a less friendly one.

With Donald J Trump back in the White House, business could soon be booming for Erik Prince, the former Blackwater CEO, arms trafficker, shadow Trump advisor and wannabe colonialist. According to Politico, Prince was among “a group of prominent military contractors” who had “pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of ‘processing camps’ on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a ‘small army’ of private citizens empowered to make arrests.”

Prince was also allegedly involved in the Trump team’s negotiations with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele that culminated in the deal that would see the small Central American nation house allegedly violent US criminals and deportees in the legal black holes of its mega-prisons.

As CNN Español reported in March, the agreement was confirmation that Prince, a former Washington pariah, had returned to the Trump fold after being ousted and banned from the Pentagon and CIA by officials who felt that his proposals to use mercenary forces around the world overstepped the bounds of legality. But following his recent rehabilitation, Prince is now back in the beating heart of US politics and his ideas are fast gaining ground.

Combatting “Narco-Terrorism”

Prince is currently making bank as a security consultant for US-friendly governments in Latin America while also trying to crowdfund coups against less friendly ones. Last year, he launched “Ya Casi Venezuela”, a social media-based fundraiser aimed at toppling Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro with an army of private mercenaries. Though the initiative led to nothing, it did attract attention from opposition groups in Venezuela, bringing in millions of dollars in donations. That money has since magically disappeared while Maduro remains firmly in power.

Now, Prince is in Ecuador, currently the most violent country in Latin America, just as its citizens prepare to vote in the second round of neck-and-neck presidential elections. On Saturday, the Daniel Noboa government announced Prince’s arrival in the country in order to strengthen the country’s internal security, combat “narco-terrorism” — the term du jour in Washington and its vassal state governments in Latin America — and protect Ecuadorian territorial waters against the growing threat of illegal fishing, particularly from China.

Nobody (apart from government insiders) knows how much Prince is being paid out of the public purse for his advice. In a tweet replete with flexed biceps emojis, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defence described Prince’s arrival as a “historic chapter for the security” of Ecuador:

The security bloc and US President Erik Prince are already on the ground fighting narcoterrorism.

From Portete in Guayaquil, we are carrying out operations against the mafias.

Defence Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo said Prince and his team are providing training and advice to Ecuadorian security forces, but added that their scope of action could be expanded. “They might not be limited to just those actions,” Loffredo said.

The timing of Prince’s visit is, to put it mildly, concerning. Ecuador is currently in the grip of arguably its worst ever security crisis, and this coming weekend the second round of presidential elections will take place. On the ballot are Ecuador’s US-born-and-raised President Daniel Noboa, who will be facing off against Luisa González, the leader of the left-leaning, Correista Citizen Revolution Movement.

The election looks likely to go down to the wire: in the first round, held on February 9, the difference between first and second place was just 17,000 votes. In recent weeks, however, González has pulled slightly ahead in many polls. Crucially, her candidacy has received the backing of the Pachakutik indigenous movement, the political arm of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie). In exchange for Conaie’s support, González pledged to protect the interests of indigenous communities in a number of key areas.

The outcome of the election will have big ramifications for Ecuador’s social and economic future. During its 16 months in office, the Noboa government has applied orthodox neoliberal policies (privatisation of state-owned industries, elimination of public subsidies, anti-labour measures, deregulation…) with all too predictable consequences: surging poverty, high unemployment, rolling energy blackouts, and rampant insecurity. By contrast, Luisa González is proposing to adopt run-of-the-mill social democratic policies (more state intervention, increased investment in social welfare as well as judicial and security reforms).

The electoral outcome could also have major implications for US security interests in the region, which is why Prince’s arrival at this time, fresh from his failed attempts to crowdfund a coup in Venezuela, is so inauspicious. Lest we forget, Ecuador’s last elections were marred by the assassination of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

Together with Milei’s Argentina and Bukele’s El Salvador, Ecuador is one of relatively few countries in Latin America that has completely subordinated itself to US strategic interests in the region. One thing all three countries have in common is that they are all beholden to the Washington-based IMF. Like Milei, Noboa has paid tens of thousands of dollars of presumably public funds to pay homage to Trump 2.0 at Mar-a-Lago where they were both given the silent treatment by Trump.

Internationalising Ecuador’s Security Crisis

The Noboa government has even violated Ecuador’s constitutional ban on foreign military bases in order to allow the US to use the Galapagos Islands, one of the world’s most precious nature reserves, as a military outpost. In March, Noboa invited the armies of the United States, Europe and Brazil to join his “war” against criminal organisations operating in his country.

As People’s Dispatch noted at the time, this open-ended invitation to foreign armies suggests that “a model similar to that of Haiti could be repeated, according to which troops from third countries enter national territories with serious internal conflicts and thus seek to ‘pacify’ the society, while wealthy countries finance the expeditions without risking their soldiers.”

Needless to say, a Luisa González government is unlikely to continue such policies — after all, it was her mentor and former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa (2007-17), who made foreign military bases illegal in the first place. González has talked about cooperating with the US military but has ruled out subordinating her government’s policies to US interests. She has also said she will recognise Venezuela’s Maduro government, which Erik Prince was trying his darnedest to topple just a few months ago.

Since setting up his private security firm Blackwater in 1997, Prince has made a habit of meddling in the security affairs of other countries, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and Venezuela, often with ugly consequences. Most notoriously, Blackwater was responsible for the Nisour Square massacre in Iraq (2007) in which 17 civilians were killed. The four Blackwater Worldwide contractors prosecuted and found guilty of multiple criminal acts committed during that massacre were ultimately pardoned by Trump’s first administration in late 2020.

Prince has also been investigated for illegal arms trafficking, money laundering and, as already mentioned, has proposed the mass deportation of migrants using an army of loosely regulated private companies. If anything, Prince’s ideas appear to have hardened in recent years. Just over a year ago, he spoke on his aptly named podcast, Off the Leash, of the need for the US to “put the imperial hat back on” and take over and directly run large swathes of the globe. From The Intercept:

Here’s are Prince’s exact words:

If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. …

You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.

Prince’s co-host Mark Serrano then warned him that listeners might hear his words and believe he means them: “People on the left are going to watch this,” said Serrano, “and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talking about being a colonialist again.”

Prince responded: “Absolutely, yes.” He then added that he thought this was a great concept not just for Africa but also for Latin America.

Having arrived in Ecuador just a few days ago, Prince has already begun meddling in the country’s political processes.

“Next Sunday, the people of Ecuador can choose law and order and choose Daniel Noboa, or they can choose to make Ecuador look just like Venezuela, a narco-state with massive drug processing, with all the socialism and despair that comes with that,” Prince said in an interview on the streets of Guayaquil. “I hope that Ecuador chooses law and order, and we are here to help combat the gangs and provide the tools for the government to restore law and order, peace and prosperity.”

Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private mercenary contractor Blackwater (now Academi), is campaigning for Ecuadorian President Noboa's reelection. Many suspect Noboa, son of the country’s richest man, is leveraging Prince to orchestrate a coup if his opponent Luisa Gonzalez… pic.twitter.com/xFCCIAD0RY

— BreakThrough News (@BTnewsroom) April 7, 2025

In another televised interview, Prince accused the opposition leader, Luisa González, of being “a surrogate” of former President Rafael Correa, of mothering one of his children and of serving the interests of Venezuela’s Chavista government.

El programa de @CarlosVerareal es una madriguera para que cualquier miserable hable en contra de @LuisaGonzalezEc

Ya no pueden decir que es limitada o que nunca ha trabajado. Ya no alcanza eso porque es una candidata a la presidencia muy solvente. Ahora, la calumnia es que el… pic.twitter.com/XelphXCWPh

— Gonzalo J. Paredes 🦉🔴🇵🇸🔥 (@Gonzalojparedes) April 7, 2025

You’ve got to hand it to Prince — it takes some chutzpah to go to a foreign country whose language you don’t even speak and tell the locals who they should vote for in the coming elections, especially when the family of the candidate you’re proposing is currently embroiled in a cocaine trafficking scandal. According to an investigative report by the magazine Raya, Noboa Trading Co., a banana producing and trading firm belonging to the Noboa family, one of the richest in the country, has been caught on three occasions concealing hundreds of kilos of cocaine in cargos of bananas destined for Europe.

This is the way by which much, or even most, of the cocaine transported from Ecuador reaches Europe: through the banana trade. Although the police seized the shipments in flagrante delicto, those allegedly involved, including members of the Noboa family, have not faced justice. From Progressive International:

“Part of the investigation was revealed last weekend by Ecuadorian journalist Andrés Durán, who, after disclosing several official documents containing reports on the drug seizure, had to leave the country due to death threats and legal harassment from the ruling political party, Movimiento Acción Democrática Nacional (ADN). In an interview with Revista RAYA, Durán spoke about his investigation and his departure from Ecuador:

“This is the first documented case in Ecuador’s history in which a presidential family is allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking. The Noboa family controls the entire chain of the banana export business, from planting and harvesting to transportation and private ports. There is no doubt that the death threats are closely linked to this investigation.”

When questioned about the scandal during the last presidential debate, Noboa denied having any direct links himself with the company in question but admitted that other members of his family did. Since then, an investigation by the Brazilian independent journalism agency Agência Pública has revealed that documents leaked in the Pandora Papers show that the majority shareholder of Noboa Trading Co, Lanfranco Holdings S.A., is joint-owned by Daniel Noboa and his brother, John.

Ecuador’s “Internal Armed Conflict”

As readers may recall, in January 2024, within weeks of coming to power, Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” against the country’s criminal gangs following a wave of violence in the country, labelling more than 20 of them as “terrorist organisations” and “belligerent non-state actors”. Noboa ordered the deployment of the country’s armed forces onto the streets of Ecuador’s cities to assist the Police in combating the drug cartels and restore law and order in the crime-ravaged country.

As we warned at the time, the result would likely be an even larger explosion of violence, just as happened in Colombia and Mexico when their governments declared all-out war on their drug cartels, in 1984 and 2006 respectively. And so it has proven: although the violence did subside in the first half of 2024, it has surged back to record levels in the first months of this year. As the Spanish news agency EFE reports, Ecuador just registered the most violent January of any year on record:

According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 781 homicides were registered in January of this year, 276 more than the 505 recorded in 2024, and 247 more than the 534 in 2023, the year in which Ecuador led the rate of violent deaths in Latin America.

This latest surge in violence once again cements Ecuador’s position as the most violent country in Latin America, reports El País:

In the first 50 days of the year, the country has recorded 1,300 murders, which is equivalent to one crime per hour. This figure represents a 40% increase on 2023, a year that already holds the title of being the most violent in the country’s recent history. In the midst of this bloodbath, at least 50 minors lost their lives in January alone…

Ecuador now faces a new configuration of criminal gangs, better armed, better trained and more violent than ever — an outcome that had already been anticipated by several security experts, when the government granted them the status of enemies of war, with the intention of stopping the advance of these organizations.

So, who is to blame for Ecuador’s almost complete breakdown in law and order?

That depends who you ask, as I wrote in a previous post on Noboa’s internal armed conflict:

For those on the right, it’s Rafael Correa’s government’s general permissiveness with the drugs cartels and alleged ties with the Colombian insurgency group FARC that is at the root cause. And there is probably a certain amount of truth to that. His government encouraged Ecuador’s gang members to hand in their weapons in exchange for amnesty, and Correa himself is now being ridiculed in the right wing press for once comparing the Latin Kings, one of the groups labelled as terrorists, with the Boy Scouts.

For those on the left, including Correa himself, Lenin Moreno, the man who stabbed Correa in the back by handing over Julian Assange to the British police, allegedly in exchange for a $4.2 billion IMF bailout that signalled the recommencement of brutal austerity in Ecuador, and Lasso are the main culprits after having systematically gutted and dismantled the Ecuadorian state, leaving it incapable of performing even the most basic government functions — including maintaining law and order. The numbers more or less speak for themselves.

Rafael Correa’s government was in office from 2008 to 2017. Between 2009 and 2017 the homicide rate per 100,000 inhabitants steadily fell from 18 to 5.78, one of the lowest rates in Latin America — a fall of almost 70% in less than 10 years. The Correa government’s law and order reforms even received plaudits from the Washington-based Inter-American Development Bank. The reforms included a significant pay rise for police officers, much closer cooperation between the police and local communities, and increased investment in local policing.

After 2017, the number of homicides began rising once again, first slowly but then rapidly. In 2020, when the Moreno government executed an austerity drive as the economy reeled from the effects of the pandemic and global lockdowns, the rise became exponential. It included budget cuts for police forces. For many people, crime became the only means of survival as firearms were flooding the market, most of them bought or stolen from the police and security forces. Ecuador’s prison system began to collapse after years of under- funding and maladministration. By the end of 2023, the homicide rate had reached 45%, the highest in the region. In just six years, the number of homicides has increased more than seven fold…

There are, of course, plenty of other reasons for Ecuador’s dramatic fall from grace beyond (IMF-supported/imposed) austerity. They include bananas and dollarisation…

As the violence rose, Noboa’s presidential predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, a Guayaquil-based banker-cum-politician whose presidential term was cut short in 2023 by a flurry of scandals including one involving his alleged ties to Albanian drug traffickers, came up with the idea of setting up a security agreement with the United States modelled on Plan Colombia. Unsurprisingly, Washington was happy to oblige.

Repeating Plan Colombia’s Counter-Insurgency Success?

If there’s one thing most historians can agree upon, it is that “Plan Colombia”, the US government’s anti-narcotics drug-eradication program, was an unmitigated disaster — at least from an anti-narcotics perspective.

Signed in 1998 by President Bill Clinton and his Colombian counterpart, Andrés Pastrana, it burnt through $10 billion of US and other overseas funds over two decades, worsened the violence in Colombia, bathed more than a million hectares of farmland in a rich brew of toxic chemicals, including Monsanto’s “probably” carcinogenic weedkiller glyphosate and exacerbated organised crime — all while overseeing a significant upsurge in coca production.

Even the US House of Representatives Foreign Affairs Committee admitted in 2020 that Plan Colombia had been a resounding failure from a counter-narcotics perspective — but a counterinsurgency success. And that, I would argue, was ultimately the main goal. As if to confirm that, the former head of US Southern Command, Laura Richardson, has described Plan Colombia as so successful that it became an example for the rest of the region, starting with Ecuador. 

SOUTHCOM says Plan Colombia was "so successful" that it's become an example for the rest of the region and that Ecuador could benefit from a 'Plan Ecuador'. pic.twitter.com/hYEdGrctUa

— Kawsachun News (@KawsachunNews) May 20, 2024

Despite his alleged ties to drug trafficking organisations, one of Lasso’s last acts in office was to sign an anti-narcotics security agreement with the US military. In October 2023, Lasso attended a hush-hush meeting with senior officials of the US Coast Guard and Department of Defence in Washington in October 2023. The meeting was so hush-hush that it was not even mentioned in any of the State Department’s press releases from that week, reported the Washington Examiner, the only US media outlet to cover the story.

From our post, “First Peru, Now Ecuador: US Southern Command Escalates Its War on Drugs in South America“:

The ´[first status agreement allows] the deployment of US naval forces along Ecuador’s coastline while the other [permits] the disembarking of US land forces on Ecuador’s soil, albeit only at the request of Ecuador’s government.

All with the ostensible aim of combating drug trafficking organizations.

Obviously, that is not what this is really about. If Washington were serious about tackling the violence generated by the drug cartels, the first thing it could do is pass legislation to stem the southward flow of U.S.-produced guns and other weapons. But that would hurt the profits of arms manufacturers. And if it were remotely serious about tackling the major cause of the drug problem—the rampant consumption of narcotics within its own borders—it would never have let Big Pharma unleash the opium epidemic. And once it had, it would never have let the perps walk free with the daintiest of financial slaps on the wrists.

And let’s be honest: the US government, through its web of three-letter agencies, has done more to shape the contours of the international drugs trade over the past 70 years than any other country on the planet. Back to that previous post:

The primary goal of this latest escalation in the U.S.’ decades-old war on drugs, as with all previous escalations, is to achieve or maintain geostrategic dominance in key, normally resource-rich regions of the world while keeping the restive populace at home in line—or in prison, generating big bucks for the prison industrial complex.

The US’ prison industrial complex is now spreading across the American continent, as El Salvador agrees to house thousands of US “criminals” and deportees. The same is likely to occur with US military bases, as Washington seeks to reassert its strategic dominance over its direct neighbourhood. According to plans recently obtained by CNN, the Noboa government is already laying the groundwork for US forces to arrive:

According to a high-level Ecuadorian official familiar with the planning, construction of a new naval facility in the coastal city of Manta is part of that preparation, with barracks-style housing and administration offices designed to support sustained operations and US military personnel. The official requested anonymity because they were not authorized to speak publicly.

The construction of a new US naval facility is particularly controversial in Ecuador given: a) its populace voted to evict all US military personnel from Ecuadorian territory almost two decades ago; and b) the current constitution expressly forbids the establishment of foreign military bases on Ecuadorian soil.

In 2009, when the lease on the US base at Manta came up for renewal, the Rafael Correa government held a referendum on whether to maintain or close the base. An overwhelming majority of Ecuadorians voted in favour of closing the base, and within months all US military personnel had left the country. At a ceremony marking the American withdrawal, Ecuador’s then-Foreign Minister Fander Falconí made the following statement:

“The withdrawal of the American military is a victory for sovereignty and peace. Never again to foreign bases on Ecuadorian territory, never again will we sell out the flag.”

Until now.

Even as his family business is accused of participating directly in the drugs trade, Noboa is not only trying to fast track the establishment of new US military bases on Ecuadorian soil, in direct violation of Ecuador’s constitution; he is also opening the doors to US mercenary groups just days before make-or-break elections. Whether another US-backed coup is once again in the works, it is still too early to tell. But one thing is clear: Ecuador’s US-born and raised President, Daniel Noboa, is selling out what remains of Ecuador’s sovereignty as fast as he possibly can.