US Secretary of State Marco Rubio met Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa in Quito on September 9, announcing a new terrorist designation for the criminal group Los Tiguerones and pledging to seek an additional $45mn in security funding for the country, as he continued a Latin American tour built around governments closely aligned with President Donald Trump.

The meeting took place at the Carondelet Palace, after which Rubio and Ecuador's foreign minister, Roberto Kury, gave a joint statement setting out new commitments on counter-narcotics and illegal mining. Kury described the visit as an opportunity to advance shared goals, calling Ecuador "a loyal ally, an active ally and a decisive ally to be able to build a safer hemisphere, free hemisphere and prosperous hemisphere."

Rubio said the additional funding, which requires congressional approval, would go toward "dismantling these terrorist groups" active in the country, alongside a separate $10mn initiative targeting illegal gold mining, which he said allows criminal networks to seize resources that should benefit the population. Ecuador's navy has now received seven vessels from Washington so far this year for the fight against maritime drug trafficking; Rubio said an additional 110-foot Coast Guard cutter and five interceptor boats would follow in the coming months.

Separately, the State Department confirmed it had publicly designated seven former Ecuadorian officials — among them a former director of Ecuador's prison authority and two former judges on its National Court of Justice and Judicial Council — over accepting bribes from gangs linked to designated foreign terrorist organisations, including Los Choneros, Los Lobos, the Cartel Jalisco Nueva Generación and the Sinaloa Cartel.

The designation, the department said, renders the officials and their immediate families "generally ineligible for entry into the United States," a corruption-related entry ban rather than an asset freeze. 

"We are doing many things together. Our elite forces are working together daily, in a truly unprecedented way, to dismantle these terrorist groups," Rubio said, adding that Ecuador was doing more than any other country in the region to confront the threat.

The remarks came against the backdrop of a year-long US military campaign against suspected drug-trafficking vessels in the Pacific and Caribbean, which Rubio said was shifting toward joint operations conducted within partner nations' territorial waters and in line with their laws, while insisting the US military would "still blow up ships if need be." The underlying campaign, dubbed Operation Southern Spear, has killed at least 230 people across 69 strikes over the past year, according to the most recent figures cited by AP.

Rubio also addressed criticism over strikes on Ecuadorian fishing vessels, telling reporters Washington had no "intention to kill fishermen" and that the aim was to stop vessels functioning as refuelling points for smugglers linked to Los Choneros. Targeting decisions, he said, hinge on Ecuadorian cooperation and are assessed individually rather than following a blanket rule.

Asked about the broader region, Rubio reserved his sharpest language for Mexico, where he said cartel power made the situation "an even graver challenge" than elsewhere, and said the two countries addressing it jointly would be the "ideal" outcome. Mexican authorities, he added, have done "more than they've ever done before to go after these groups, but it is still not nearly enough."

On regional trade, Rubio said talks on a bilateral agreement with Ecuador were progressing well, telling reporters "we've had very good negotiations, significant progress has been made, and I expect good news soon," a language closely echoing his comments a day earlier in Colombia on the state of tariff negotiations there. He was awarded Ecuador's National Order of Merit in the degree of Grand Cross, with Noboa crediting him with helping strengthen regional security ties.

The Ecuador visit followed a stop on September 8 in Colombia, where Rubio and President Abelardo De La Espriella signed memoranda on civil nuclear cooperation and critical minerals and unveiled the "Barranquilla Accords," a roadmap covering reconstruction, economic recovery and regional security. Rubio travels next to Lima to meet Peru's new president, Keiko Fujimori. The three stops complete a circuit through a region reshaped over the past year: Colombia, Ecuador and Peru now join Argentina under Javier Milei and Chile under Jose Antonio Kast in a bloc of right-leaning governments aligned with the Trump administration, leaving Brazil and Mexico as the only major regional economies still governed from the left.

Trump has embraced the term "Donroe Doctrine" for this more assertive posture, a play on the 19th-century Monroe Doctrine's assertion of US primacy in the Western Hemisphere. Meanwhile, administration officials have pointed to the run of right-wing election victories, alongside former Venezuelan president Nicolas Maduro's removal in a US operation in January and Cuba's deepening isolation, as evidence the approach is remaking the region in Washington's favour.