Ecuador voters reject foreign military bases amid surge in drug-violence News
Martín Vasco, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons
Ecuador voters reject foreign military bases amid surge in drug-violence

In a decisive referendum held on Sunday, Ecuadorian citizens overwhelmingly rejected a constitutional amendment that would have allowed foreign military bases on the country’s soil.

Early counts show nearly two-thirds of ballots cast opposed the measure. President Daniel Noboa introduced the referendum, arguing that foreign cooperation, such as hosting bases for allied nations, was essential to combat the ongoing surge in violence related to drug-trafficking.

The rejection represents a significant setback for Noboa and his broader security agenda, revealing public skepticism of involving foreign military forces. It also raises questions about how Ecuador will confront organized crime without resorting to foreign military and intelligence assistance.

Ecuador has in recent years become a major transit route for cocaine moving from Colombia and Peru, and criminal organizations have expanded their control by extorting local communities and carrying out attacks on journalists and politicians as they compete for territory.

Noboa framed the measure as a practical tool to enhance security capacity, but opponents argued that hosting foreign military bases could undermine Ecuador’s sovereignty, citing past experiences with foreign forces that have generated mistrust among local populations.

For US policy in the region, the referendum complicates efforts to deepen military-security cooperation with Ecuador. Washington had sought to re-establish access to a former US base at Eloy Alfaro on Ecuador’s Pacific coast, used from 1999 to 2009 for counter-narcotics operations. However, Ecuador’s constitutional ban on foreign bases, adopted in 2008, remained in force.

At the same time, however, the urgency of Ecuador’s security crisis cannot be overstated. The country’s homicide rate is projected to reach 50 per 100,000 people this year, the highest in Latin America. Gangs operating in port cities and along coastal routes work with transnational criminal networks and exert powerful influence over local institutions.

Ecuador now faces the critical task of bolstering domestic security capacity, regional cooperation on closing drug-trafficking routes, and instating institutional reform. The referendum’s result marks both a political rebuke and a call for more domestically rooted security policies.

THIS DAY @ LAW

Standard Oil incorporated

On January 10, 1870, John Davison Rockefeller incorporated Standard Oil. Rockefeller's corporation would grow to achieve a virtual monopoly over oil production in the United States. Standard Oil's dominance lasted until the corporation was split into 34 separate companies in 1911 after the Supreme Court found the company in violation of the Sherman Anti-Trust Act. The rise of Standard Oil made Rockefeller America's first billionaire and eventually the richest man in the world. Read the text of Standard Oil Co. of New Jersey vs. United States, 221 U.S. 1 (1910).