In the last few hours, leaders from across the American continent have shown their support for the government of Daniel Noboa in Ecuador, which is facing a serious wave of violence unleashed by the actions of criminal gangs and which has already caused at least a dozen deaths.
Latin American governments and organizations have highlighted the regional implications of the “internal armed conflict” -decreed by the Ecuadorian president this Tuesday-, especially in relation to the transnational dimension of drug trafficking that would be financing the criminal groups responsible for riots in prisons or the seizure temporary closure of a television channel among other incidents experienced in Ecuador in recent days.
Argentina and the United States have been the first American neighbors to propose sending aid to Ecuador. On Tuesday, the Argentine Minister of Security, Patricia Bullrich, offered to send “security forces”, and highlighted that this is a “continental issue” that could spread throughout the region.
Furthermore, Bullrich regretted that Ecuador “went from a quiet country with a low homicide rate to a country taken over by narcoterrorism.” For its part, the United States is closely monitoring the situation of violence and is “ready to provide assistance,” a State Department spokesperson for Joe Biden’s government told EFE.
Colombia and Peru, the only two States that share a border with Ecuador, have been especially forceful with their response to the crisis experienced in the country on the west coast of South America. “We are attentive to all the support that the Government of Ecuador requests of us,” said Colombian President Gustavo Petro.
The government of Peruvian Dina Boluarte has gone even further, declaring an emergency in the northern part of the country that borders Ecuador, where it has announced that it will send the Armed Forces to work on surveillance tasks together with the National Police.
Luis Arce, president of Bolivia, agreed on the risks for the continent, and considered it “urgent” to work on the “regionalization of the fight against drug trafficking and other illicit trade” as well as on the creation of a Latin American Anti-Narcotics Alliance, a Bolivian proposal presented during the Latin American and Caribbean Conference on Drugs, held in September 2023 in the Colombian city of Cali.
The Organization of American States (OAS) conveyed its “support for the provisional emergency measures taken” by Noboa, and joined the solidarity initiatives with Ecuador, ensuring that they could “count on the work of the OAS General Secretariat in their efforts for security in the country,” wrote Luis Almagro, secretary general of the organization in his X account. Almagro also pointed out the “fundamental importance for the region” of the fight against organized crime and delinquency.
The Andean Community, a group formed by Ecuador, Bolivia, Peru and Colombia that promotes regional integration, joined the statements of support for the Ecuadorian Government and encouraged it to use “all the means available to it by law to eradicate this transnational threat.” “.
The Inter-American Commission on Human Rights (IACHR) has warned about the imperative of respect for human rights in the response to this crisis. The IACHR is monitoring “the Human Rights situation during the validity of the State of Exception” in Ecuador, and has stressed that the “action of the Armed Forces in internal security tasks must be extraordinary, justified, exceptional, temporary, restricted, subordinate and complementary to the civil forces, with regulation and control”.
Other Latin American countries such as Costa Rica, Cuba, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Dominican Republic, Venezuela and Chile have also expressed their concern about the situation in Ecuador and have expressed their desire for order to be restored soon in the country.
On the other side of the Atlantic, on Wednesday, the Spanish president, Pedro Sánchez, announced that he was following the events “with logical concern” during the inauguration of the Conference of Ambassadors in Madrid, the most important annual event in diplomacy, which brings together to 130 Spanish ambassadors. Similar to his American counterparts, Sánchez has called for respect for democratic institutions in Ecuador.