Ecuador rejects push to allow US military bases

Ecuadoreans celebrate defeat of proposed US base and other ballot measures

(Image credit: Rodrigo Buendia / AFP via Getty Images)

What happened

Voters in Ecuador Sunday rejected four measures backed by President Daniel Noboa, including repealing a constitutional ban on U.S. and other foreign military bases in the country. The other measures voted down would have created an assembly to rewrite the Constitution, cut public funding for political parties and slashed the number of seats in the National Assembly to 73, from 151.

Who said what

The results were a “significant defeat” for Noboa, a “conservative who is closely aligned with the Trump administration,” The Associated Press said. He recently gave Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem a “tour of a military base along Ecuador’s coast that could possibly host U.S. troops.” Noboa said after casting his ballot Sunday that “international cooperation” was “the only way to dismantle” the “transnational criminal networks” that have turned Ecuador into a violence-plagued conduit of cocaine from neighboring Colombia and Peru.

Noboa’s “bet on the military has not brought peace” to Ecuador, just “ignited new waves of violence,” International Crisis Group analyst Glaeldys González Calanche wrote in The New York Times. And “more troops — even foreign ones — won’t solve the problem.”

What next?

Noboa said on social media Sunday night that his government would “respect the will of the people” and continue to fight for the country that “everyone deserves.” The U.S. had “hoped the referendum would pave the way for it to open a military base” in Ecuador after a 16-year ban, the BBC said. The Trump administration on Saturday announced its 21st military strike on suspected drug trafficking boats off South America’s Caribbean and Pacific coasts, bringing the death toll to 83.

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Peter has worked as a news and culture writer and editor at The Week since the site's launch in 2008. He covers politics, world affairs, religion and cultural currents. His journalism career began as a copy editor at a financial newswire and has included editorial positions at The New York Times Magazine, Facts on File, and Oregon State University.