Guayaquil, Ecuador
CNN
—
The convoy moves fast — half a dozen unmarked pickups and SUVs, plates ripped off, weaving and speeding through traffic. The vehicles cross into bus lanes and straddle road dividers, but the other drivers barely react as they pass, numb — it seems — to this kind of chaos.
The convoy’s passengers suit up, adding tactical vests over their clothes, ski masks over their heads. If not for POLICIA emblazoned across their body armor, anyone would think this was a crew of masked bandits, not the undercover law enforcement officers they are.
The vehicles screech into a neighborhood in Pascuales, a gang stronghold in Guayaquil, Ecuador’s biggest city, allowing CNN to follow them.
Families are grilling outside, and children splash in pools set up in the tightly packed streets as the largely Catholic population celebrates the end of Carnival and prepares for the start of Lent.
Officers pile out of the vehicles and rush into multiple homes at once. Police tell us they have four targets — suspects linked to the drug trade that’s making this city so dangerous.
When the raid ends, only one man is taken into custody. Relatives quickly step forward, removing the man’s bracelets and earrings as officers load him into the back of a pickup truck. His mother, arriving just in time to see him taken, shouts through tears: “Que Dios te bendiga” (may God bless you).
Police officials tell us the operation was a success and that along with the suspect they seized approximately 150 grams (5.3 ounces) of cocaine and two small explosives.
But one of the undercover officers has something else to say. “We could use the US’s help,” he tells us, not wanting to give his name in case it jeopardizes his security. “We need resources: vehicles, armor, personnel.”
The problem is certainly a lot bigger than a bag of cocaine weighing about the same as a peach or a baseball.
Sandwiched between Colombia and Peru, top producers of cocaine, Ecuador has become caught up in the drug trade and the violence that always follows it. Its efficient transport and export system has been used by cartels to move and ship their goods overseas — the bricks of cocaine hidden in boxes of bananas and other goods that then head to the United States, Europe and the rest of the world.
Police dogs alerted officers to more than six tons of cocaine concealed under bananas in a port outside Guayaquil last July, officials reported. And in November, Spanish police said they had made their biggest drugs bust ever — finding 13 tons of cocaine under bananas shipped from Guayaquil.
As well as checks in the ports and the targeted raids, police make a show of force — stopping cars and searching for drugs and weapons.
Under stormy gray skies, they ask drivers to step out into the thick humidity while they search inside vehicles, in the trunks and even in the depths of the engine, making sure there’s no illicit package taped out of sight, trying to evade detection.
“We’ve pinpointed the most dangerous areas in the city to carry out these anti-crime operations,” says police Capt. Orlando Posligua, standing by a bus terminal in Guayaquil.
But there’s limited success. The neighborhood that had the lightning raid, its city and perhaps even the whole country is becoming inured to crime, the residents tell us.
The officers from the raid point to a house where, they say, two months earlier, a couple was gunned down. There’s a bullet hole in the front door, near a faded sticker reading “Somos Católicos” and images of the Virgin Mary. From the outside, we can still see a pool of dried blood left uncleaned on the floor. Asked why the couple were targeted, we are told they hadn’t paid their “vacuna” — a protection fee the gangs demand from families and businesses.
The mix of gangs, drugs and public safety are driving rising migration from Ecuador and all of that offers opportunities for President Daniel Noboa to ask for help from the US and President Donald Trump.
Noboa — who’s in a tight race for re-election next month — wants foreign military assistance and many here believe that means US troops.
The countries have a degree of military cooperation already. The US State Department has spent $81 million helping Ecuador tackle drugs and cartels since 2018, and there is a Status of Forces Agreement in effect, allowing US military and civilian personnel to be sent to Ecuador but remain under US control if needed.
Noboa’s proposal needs to go through the Ecuadorian congress, but it already has some support in Guayaquil, the most populous city in the country, and now also one of the most dangerous.
“I think (foreign assistance) is necessary, local police don’t really help us,” resident Kathy Flor tells CNN. “We need more control.”
Jaqueline Villacres, who sells candy, snacks and cigarettes from a tiny kiosk near the bus station, agrees: “It would be excellent to get foreign support to help the Ecuadorians.”
The undercover officer pointed out that the US used to station troops at a base in Manta, in the west of Ecuador on the Pacific coast, before foreign bases were outlawed by the constitution. “I want to have US troops back at the base they once occupied,” he says.
But Stalin Escobar says he is suspicious of the costs that Ecuador could end up paying. “I don’t think it would come here for free … the government needs to invest that money to equip our police and military instead of paying foreigners.”
Looking to Trump for help could be a natural thing for Noboa to do.
He already has ties with the US president, accepting an invitation for him and his wife Lavinia Valbonesi to be in the Capitol Rotunda for Trump’s second inauguration.
The 37-year-old has also mirrored some of Trump’s actions and words.
The day of Trump’s inauguration, the Ecuadorian president’s X account posted how he supported the US intention to categorize drug cartels as foreign terrorist organizations, something he had already done.
And Noboa — also the son of a wealthy magnate, though in his case it’s bananas not property — raised tariffs on imports from Mexico on February 3, just as Trump was doing the same before last-minute negotiations delayed the change for a month.
Noboa would not want to hurt business with the US, which is Ecuador’s largest trade partner as well as a leading investor. About one in five of the bananas imported to the US comes from Ecuador, which also supplies shrimp, tuna, cacao and cut flowers.
He could also play into Trump’s plans to stem illegal immigration into the US. Data shows Ecuador is accepting more deportation flights since Trump became president, but there are also more Ecuadorians heading north since the security at home got worse.
While the numbers of people from Mexico and the Central American countries of El Salvador, Guatemala and Honduras encountered by Customs and Border Protection all fell in 2023 and 2024, there was a jump from Ecuador.
In 2022, CBP found 24,936 Ecuadorians traveling without documents, but in 2024 that figure shot up to 124,023, government statistics show.
Still, Noboa’s courting of Trump may lead to little. He faces the run-off presidential election in April when the electorate will choose between him and his leftist rival, Luisa González. She also promises to tackle the security problems with crime and drugs, but says while Noboa represents fear, she stands for hope.
