On November 16, 2025, Ecuadorian voters delivered a decisive rebuke to Washington’s expansionist ambitions in Latin America, rejecting a proposal to overturn the country’s constitutional ban on foreign military bases by a commanding 60.56%-39.44% margin. The referendum result demonstrates that even as right-wing, pro-American governments proliferate across the region, Latin American citizens remain deeply skeptical of direct U.S. military intervention on their soil.
President Daniel Noboa, the country’s 37-year-old president born in Miami and groomed in elite American business schools, had championed the referendum as essential to combating Ecuador’s spiraling drug violence. With homicide rates reaching 50 per 100,000 people by 2025, the highest in Latin America, Noboa argued that reestablishing an American military presence at the former base in Manta would provide critical intelligence and operational support against transnational criminal organizations.
But Ecuadorians saw through this security theater. The overwhelming rejection reflects not just concerns about sovereignty but deep suspicions about Noboa himself and his shadowy connections to the very criminal networks he claims to fight.
Noboa’s background raises profound questions about whose interests he truly serves. Born in Florida to Álvaro Noboa, an Ecuadorian business magnate who controls one of the country’s largest banana export conglomerates, the young president represents everything wrong with Latin America’s comprador elite. His family’s Noboa Trading company was implicated in multiple cocaine smuggling operations, with nearly 700 kilograms of cocaine seized from their banana containers between 2020 and 2022. Investigative reporting by the Organized Crime and Corruption Reporting Project revealed that Croatian drug traffickers boasted in encrypted messages that only they could load cocaine in containers shipped by Noboa Trading.
The referendum’s rejection carries historical weight. Ecuador’s 2008 Constitution, approved with 63.93% support, explicitly defined the country as a “territory of peace” and banned foreign military installations. This provision emerged from President Rafael Correa’s decision not to renew the lease for the U.S. base at Manta, which had operated from 1999 to 2009.
The Manta base’s legacy remains contentious. While U.S. Southern Command touted operational successes, deploying radar planes that covered 6,400 kilometers and contributed to seizing over seven-hundred tons of narcotics worth $35 billion, local activists documented serious abuses. American personnel allegedly sank Ecuadorian fishing vessels mistaken for smugglers, killing fifteen people. These incidents lingered in lawsuits for years and left lasting scars on coastal communities.
The 2025 referendum campaign was rushed and problematic. The National Electoral Council allowed campaign periods as short as thirteen days for some questions, far below the legally mandated sixty days. The Organization of American States criticized this truncated timeline, noting it hampered informed decision making. In the weeks before voting, U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem visited Ecuador twice, touring potential base sites in Manta and Salinas alongside Noboa in a brazen display of American interference.
The “No” vote prevailed for multiple reasons. Sovereignty concerns dominated. Ecuadorians remembered the Manta era and feared foreign forces would operate with impunity. Women voters, who comprised 70.1% of those viewing the 2008 Constitution positively, emerged as primary defenders of the institutional framework that pioneered the Rights of Nature and established robust protections for indigenous peoples and the environment.
The referendum’s outcome represents a significant setback for U.S. security strategy in South America. Washington sought to reestablish forward operating capabilities to monitor cocaine trafficking routes, enhance regional intelligence sharing, and counter Chinese influence. The Trump administration’s push for expanded military cooperation, including recent U.S. airstrikes against alleged drug-laden vessels, has generated controversy over sovereignty and collateral risks.
Instead of seeking to impose itself militarily in Latin America, Washington should focus on actual border security at home. The United States maintains over eight-hundred military bases abroad, a staggering imperial footprint that drains resources and dangerously overextends the United States. Shutting down this network of overseas installations would free up resources for genuine domestic security improvements.
The referendum stands as a pivotal moment in Ecuador’s democratic trajectory. By decisively rejecting foreign military bases, Ecuadorian citizens reaffirmed their commitment to sovereignty and constitutional continuity. The vote delivered a sharp political rebuke to Noboa, exposing the limits of executive power even during acute security crises. As former President Correa declared, this represented “a historic validation” of Ecuador’s constitutional framework.
The message from this referendum is clear: solutions to Latin America’s challenges cannot be imposed by Washington’s military machine.
