Ecuador and the United States have begun joint military operations targeting drug-trafficking criminal organisations, the US military's Southern Command announced on March 3, the most tangible sign yet of Washington's deepening security engagement across Latin America under President Donald Trump.

The Pentagon gave few specifics about the scope of the campaign or which organisations it would target. Ecuador's Defence Ministry said separately that an "offensive" phase had commenced against narco-terrorism and illegal mining, but declined to elaborate, citing operational security.

"Together, we are taking decisive action to confront narco-terrorists who have long inflicted terror, violence, and corruption on citizens throughout the hemisphere," US Southern Command said.

The announcement came a day after Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa hosted Southern Command chief General Francis Donovan and Mark Schafer, who leads US Special Operations across Central and South America and the Caribbean, at the presidential palace in Quito. The two sides discussed tightening controls and sharing intelligence at the country's main ports and airports, Noboa's office said.

Noboa, a conservative politician who has built a close rapport with Trump, had teased the move on social media the day before. "In March, we will conduct joint operations with our regional allies, including the United States," he wrote on X, framing the campaign as a multilateral effort against the cartels that have ravaged Ecuador in recent years.

The country sits at the crossroads of the cocaine trade: Noboa has said that roughly 70% of the drug produced by Colombia and Peru — the region's two dominant coca-cultivating nations — passes through Ecuadorean ports on its way to international markets. Intensifying competition for those smuggling routes has driven a wave of gang violence that has seen Ecuador's homicide rate climb sharply, eroding a long-held reputation as one of South America's more peaceful societies.

Two gangs central to that conflict, Los Lobos and Los Choneros, were added to the US State Department's foreign terrorist organisation register last September, a step that opened the door to the kind of bilateral military operations announced on March 3.

The new campaign appears connected to the Trump administration's Operation Southern Spear, under which US forces have conducted more than 40 strikes against vessels believed to be transporting narcotics in the eastern Pacific and Caribbean since last September, with US Southern Command reporting 151 people killed in those actions.

Noboa separately decreed a curfew between March 15 and 30 covering the country's four most troubled provinces — Guayas, Los Ríos, Santo Domingo de los Tsáchilas and El Oro. Interior Minister John Reimberg was terse in his message to the public: "Stay home. We are at war."

The latest announcement underscores how the security relationship between Washington and Quito has intensified since Noboa came to power in late 2023 on a pledge of fighting rampant gang violence, even though a bid to give that partnership a permanent institutional footing failed last year. A referendum in November saw Ecuadoreans vote against overturning the constitutional prohibition on foreign military bases, rebuffing both Noboa and Washington. The US responded by negotiating a narrower arrangement, stationing Air Force personnel temporarily at the disused former American installation in the port of Manta.

Washington's security push extends well beyond Ecuador. The Trump administration levelled narco-terrorism charges against ousted Venezuelan president Nicolás Maduro earlier this year, and Trump met Colombian counterpart Gustavo Petro at the White House last month after a prolonged row over Bogotá's record on stemming cocaine flows, during which Trump raised the prospect of military action on Colombian soil.

American intelligence infrastructure has also been brought to bear elsewhere in the region: a US-led military taskforce focused on cartel surveillance played a supporting role in the Mexican operation last month that resulted in the death of crime boss Nemesio Oseguera, known as El Mencho, one of the most consequential blows against organised crime leadership in the region in recent memory.