On 9 September, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa presented Secretary of State Marco Rubio with the nation’s highest honor, the Grand Cross of the National Order of Merit, at Carondelet Palace in Quito. The ceremony celebrated diplomatic ties and a proclaimed commitment to regional peace, yet a day earlier a starkly different episode unfolded far from the capital, in the open waters of the eastern Pacific.
At dawn on 8 September, a US patrol vessel intercepted the Ecuadorian fishing boat Don Rufo in international waters. According to the boat’s captain, 50-year-old Mero Calderón, the American forces boarded the vessel fully armed, hauled two large explosives aboard, handcuffed and blindfolded the crew, and then detonated the ship. Calderón claims he tried to display his catch to prove a legitimate fishing activity, but the troops “the gringos were all armed as if they were going to war”. Six of the ten-person crew were handed over to Ecuadorian authorities; the remaining ten, who had been working from a smaller skiff, were left adrift until the Ecuadorian navy rescued them on 10 September.
The raid on Don Rufo and its immediate fallout
US Southern Command later released a 14-second edited video of the operation, stating that “intelligence confirmed” the vessel functioned as a “floating refuelling station” for speedboats allegedly transporting drugs. The fishermen denied any involvement in narcotics trafficking. The Don Rufo incident was the first of eight similar seizures carried out over a little more than two weeks, the latest occurring on 16 September. Unlike the nearly 70 US airstrikes in the Pacific and Caribbean that have killed 234 people since last year, these maritime actions removed crews before the boats were destroyed, sparing lives but still wrecking livelihoods.
Local NGOs, such as the Permanent Committee for the Defence of Human Rights, estimate that more than 220 fishers have endured violent boardings, arbitrary detentions, enforced disappearances, torture, or vessel destruction in -2025. Their lawyer, Fernando Bastías, argues that destroying the boats erases crucial evidence and leaves families without a means to earn a living.
Ecuador’s political backing and the joint-operations framework
President Noboa has framed the maritime actions as “joint operations” with Washington, signing a pact that grants US military personnel immunity from criminal prosecution while they assist Ecuadorian forces in counter-narcotics missions. The agreement also extends to land raids, which saw US troops participating in a raid the Thursday before Rubio’s visit. In the same period, former President Donald Trump likened the drug-trafficking fight to the campaign against ISIS, declaring that those involved should be “killed, exiled or detained as enemy combatants without the possibility of release”.
Will Freeman, a fellow for Latin America studies at the Council on Foreign Relations, notes that Noboa has turned Ecuador into a “laboratory” for a new phase of US anti-drug strategy, leveraging the country’s Pacific coastline as a logistical hub. Though Ecuador does not produce cocaine at the scale of Colombia or Peru, its ports—especially Guayaquil, Manta and the wider Manabí province—have become transit points for maritime smuggling.
Human-rights concerns and the broader anti-drug campaign
The surge in maritime raids coincides with a broader, more lethal crackdown on organized crime. Since 2025, the Ecuadorian government has declared multiple states of emergency, expanding the armed forces’ role amid criticism that such measures erode civil liberties. The most tragic illustration of this trend was the “Guayaquil Four” case, where four Afro-Ecuadorian teenagers disappeared and were later found dead, their bodies charred and dismembered.
International observers, including a UN special rapporteur, have labeled the US airstrikes as extrajudicial killings, suggesting “reasonable grounds to believe” they may constitute crimes against humanity. Yet data show that the volume of cocaine reaching Ecuadorian markets has not diminished. Critics argue that the destruction of vessels, such as the burned hull observed in Manta on 6 June 2026, merely displaces trafficking routes without addressing root causes.
Amid the geopolitical dance, families of missing fishermen—like María Cueva, whose son Jefferson Ariel Mero Cueva vanished after the Fiorella incident in January—continue to demand answers. They contend that the men were ordinary fishers, not criminals, and question why the United States would target civilian vessels under the pretext of counter-narcotics.
