Prince is making bank as a security consultant for US-friendly governments in Latin America just months after trying to crowdfund a coup against a less friendly one.
With Donald J Trump back in the White House, business could soon be booming for Erik Prince, the former Blackwater CEO, arms trafficker, shadow Trump advisor and wannabe colonialist. According to Politico, Prince was among “a group of prominent military contractors” who had “pitched the Trump White House on a proposal to carry out mass deportations through a network of ‘processing camps’ on military bases, a private fleet of 100 planes, and a ‘small army’ of private citizens empowered to make arrests.”
Prince was also directly involved in the Trump team’s negotiations with El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele that culminated in the highly controversial deal that would see the small Central American nation house allegedly violent US criminals and deportees in the legal black holes of its mega-prisons.
As CNN Español reported in March, the agreement was confirmation that Prince, a former Washington pariah, had returned to the Trump fold. At the end of Trump’s first term, Prince had effectively been ousted and banned from the Pentagon and CIA by officials who felt that his ideas to use mercenary forces around the world overstepped the bounds of legality. But now he’s back on side, and making the most of it.
Combatting “Narco-Terrorism”
Prince is currently making bank as a security consultant for friendly governments in Latin America while trying to crowdfund coups against less friendly ones. Last year, he launched “Ya Casi Venezuela”, a social media-based fundraiser aimed at toppling Venezuela’s President Nicolás Maduro with an army of private mercenaries. Though the initiative fizzled to nothing, it did attract attention from opposition groups, bringing in millions of dollars in donations. But that money has magically disappeared while Maduro remains firmly in power.
Now, Prince is in Ecuador, currently the most violent country in Latin America, just as its citizens prepare to vote in the second round of neck-and-neck presidential elections. On Saturday, the Daniel Noboa government announced Prince’s arrival in the country in order to strengthen the country’s internal security, combat “narco-terrorism” — the term du jour in Washington and its vassal state governments in Latin America — and protect Ecuadorian territorial waters against the growing threat of illegal fishing, particularly from China.
Nobody (apart from government insiders) knows how much Prince is being paid out of the public purse for his advice. In a tweet replete with flexed biceps emojis, the Ecuadorian Ministry of Defence described Prince’s arrival as a “historic chapter for the security” of Ecuador:
The security bloc and US President Erik Prince are already on the ground fighting narcoterrorism.
From Portete in Guayaquil, we are carrying out operations against the mafias.
Defence Minister Gian Carlo Loffredo said Prince and his team are providing training and advice to Ecuadorian security forces, but added that their scope of action could be expanded. “They might not be limited to just those actions,” Loffredo said.
The timing of Prince’s visit is, to put it mildly, concerning. Ecuador is currently in the grip of arguably its worst ever security crisis and next weekend, Ecuador’s US-born-and-raised President Daniel Noboa will be facing off against Luisa González, the leader of the left-leaning, Correista Citizen Revolution Movement, in the second round of Ecuador’s presidential elections. And those elections look likely to go down to the wire: in the first round, held on February 9, the difference between first and second place was just 17,000 votes.
In recent weeks, however, González has pulled slightly ahead in many of the polls. Crucially, her candidacy has received the backing of the Pachakutik indigenous movement, the political arm of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie). In exchange for this expression of support, González pledged to protect the interests of indigenous communities in certain key areas in the event of her election.
The outcome of the election will have big ramifications for Ecuador’s social and economic development. During its 16 months in office, the Noboa government has applied orthodox neoliberal policies (privatisation of state-owned industries, elimination of public subsidies, anti-labour measures, deregulation…) with all too predictable consequences: surging poverty, high unemployment, rolling energy blackouts, and rampant insecurity. By contrast, Luisa González is proposing to adopt run-of-the-mill social democratic policies (more state intervention, increased investment in social welfare as well as judicial and security reforms).
The electoral outcome could also have major implications for US security interests in the region, which is why Prince’s arrival at this time, fresh from his failed attempts to crowdfund a coup in Venezuela, is so inauspicious. Lest we forget, Ecuador’s last elections were marred by the assassination of the presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.
Together with Milei’s Argentina and Bukele’s El Salvador, Ecuador is one of relatively few countries in Latin America that has completely subordinated itself to US strategic interests in the region. One thing all three countries have in common is that they are all beholden to the Washington-based IMF. Like Milei, Noboa has paid tens of thousands of dollars of presumably public funds to pay homage to Trump 2.0 at Mar-a-Lago where they were both given the silent treatment by Trump.
Internationalising Ecuador’s Security Crisis
The Noboa government has even violated Ecuador’s constitutional ban on foreign military bases in order to allow the US to use the Galapagos Islands, one of the world’s most precious nature reserves, as a military outpost. In March, Noboa invited the armies of the United States, Europe and Brazil to join his “war” against criminal organisations operating in his country.
A Luisa González government is unlikely to continue such policies — after all, it was her mentor, Rafael Correa, who made foreign military bases illegal in the first place. González has talked about cooperating with the US but has ruled out subordinating her government’s policies to US interests. She has also said she will recognise Venezuela’s Maduro government, which Erik Prince was trying to topple just a few months ago.
Since setting up his private security firm Blackwater in 1997, Prince has made a habit of meddling in the security affairs of other countries, from Iraq to Afghanistan to Libya and Venezuela, often with ugly consequences. Most notoriously, Blackwater was responsible for the Nisour Square massacre in Iraq (2007) in which 17 civilians were killed. The four Blackwater Worldwide contractors were prosecuted and found guilty of multiple criminal acts committed during that massacre were ultimately pardoned by Trump’s first administration in late 2020.
Prince has also been investigated for illegal arms trafficking, money laundering and, as already mentioned, has proposed the mass deportation of migrants using an army of loosely regulated private companies. If anything, Prince’s ideas appear to have hardened in recent years. Just over a year ago, he spoke on his aptly named podcast, Off the Leash, of the need for the US to “put the imperial hat back on” and take over and directly run large swathes of the globe. From The Intercept:
Here’s are Prince’s exact words:
If so many of these countries around the world are incapable of governing themselves, it’s time for us to just put the imperial hat back on, to say, we’re going to govern those countries … ’cause enough is enough, we’re done being invaded. …
You can say that about pretty much all of Africa, they’re incapable of governing themselves.
Prince’s co-host Mark Serrano then warned him that listeners might hear his words and believe he means them: “People on the left are going to watch this,” said Serrano, “and they’re going to say, wait a minute, Erik Prince is talking about being a colonialist again.”
Prince responded: “Absolutely, yes.” He then added that he thought this was a great concept not just for Africa but also for Latin America.
Having arrived in Ecuador just a few days ago, Prince has already begun meddling in the country’s political processes.
“Next Sunday, the people of Ecuador can choose law and order and choose Daniel Noboa, or they can choose to make Ecuador look just like Venezuela, a narco-state with massive drug processing, with all the socialism and despair that comes with that,” Prince said in an interview on the streets of Guayaquil. “I hope that Ecuador chooses law and order, and we are here to help combat the gangs and provide the tools for the government to restore law and order, peace and prosperity.”
In another televised interview, Prince accused the opposition leader, Luisa González, of being “a surrogate” of former President Rafael Correa, of mothering one of his children and of serving the interests of Venezuela’s Chavista government.
You’ve got to hand it to Prince — it takes some chutzpah to go to a foreign country whose language you don’t even speak and tell the locals who they should vote for in the coming elections, especially when the family of the candidate you’re proposing is currently embroiled in a cocaine trafficking scandal. According to an investigative report by the magazine Raya, Noboa Trading Co., a banana producing and trading firm belonging to the Noboa family, one of the richest in the country, has been caught on three occasions concealing hundreds of kilos of cocaine in cargos of bananas destined for Europe.
This is the way by which much, or even most, of the cocaine transported from Ecuador reaches Europe: through the banana trade. Although the police seized the shipments in flagrante delicto, those allegedly involved, including members of the Noboa family, have not faced justice. From Progressive International:
“Part of the investigation was revealed last weekend by Ecuadorian journalist Andrés Durán, who, after disclosing several official documents containing reports on the drug seizure, had to leave the country due to death threats and legal harassment from the ruling political party, Movimiento Acción Democrática Nacional (ADN). In an interview with Revista RAYA, Durán spoke about his investigation and his departure from Ecuador:
“This is the first documented case in Ecuador’s history in which a presidential family is allegedly involved in cocaine trafficking. The Noboa family controls the entire chain of the banana export business, from planting and harvesting to transportation and private ports. There is no doubt that the death threats are closely linked to this investigation.”
When questioned about the scandal during the last presidential debate, Noboa denied having any direct links with the company in question but admitted that other members of his family did. Since then, an investigation by the Brazilian independent journalism agency Agência Pública has revealed that documents leaked in the Pandora Papers show that the majority shareholder of Noboa Trading Co, Lanfranco Holdings S.A., is joint-owned by Daniel Noboa and his brother, John.
Ecuador’s Internal Armed Conflict
As readers may recall, in January 2024, within weeks of coming to power, Noboa declared an “internal armed conflict” against the country’s criminal gangs following a wave of violence in the country, labelling more than 20 of them as “terrorist organisations” and “belligerent non-state actors”. Noboa ordered the deployment of the country’s armed forces onto the streets of Ecuador’s cities to assist the Police in combating the drug cartels and restore law and order in the crime-ravaged country.
As we warned at the time, the result would likely be an even larger explosion of violence, just as happened in Colombia and Mexico when their governments declared all-out war on their drug cartels, in 1984 and 2006 respectively. And so it has proven: although the violence did subside in the first half of 2024, it has surged back to record levels in the first months of this year. As the Spanish news agency EFE reports, Ecuador just registered the most violent January of any year on record:
According to figures from the Ministry of the Interior, 781 homicides were registered in January of this year, 276 more than the 505 recorded in 2024, and 247 more than the 534 in 2023, the year in which Ecuador led the rate of violent deaths in Latin America.
This latest surge in violence once again cements Ecuador’s position as the most violent country in Latin America, reports El País:
In the first 50 days of the year, the country has recorded 1,300 murders, which is equivalent to one crime per hour. This figure represents a 40% increase on 2023, a year that already holds the title of being the most violent in the country’s recent history. In the midst of this bloodbath, at least 50 minors lost their lives in January alone. Among them were at least three babies, victims of excessive violence that shows no sign of waning. With these figures, 2025 is shaping up to mark a new milestone in the tragedy of insecurity, getting closer and closer to a record number of deaths that no one wants to see…
Ecuador now faces a new configuration of criminal gangs, better armed, better trained and more violent than ever — an outcome that had already been anticipated by several security experts, when the government granted them the status of enemies of war, with the intention of stopping the advance of these organizations.
The Noboa government may have massively escalated the War on Drugs in Ecuador since taking office in late 2023, but the initial escalation was the brainchild of his presidential predecessor, Guillermo Lasso, a Guayaquil-based banker-cum-politician whose presidential term was cut short in 2023 by a flurry of scandals. Like Venezuela’s former “interim president”, Juan Guaidó, Lasso is now living it large in Florida.
Like Noboa, Lasso has been closely tied with drug traffickers, specifically the Albanian drug gangs that have come to dominate the cocaine routes between Ecuador and Europe and which allegedly financed Lasso’s presidential campaign. Lasso also came up with the proposal of setting up a security agreement with the United States modelled on Plan Colombia. Unsurprisingly, Washington was happy to oblige…
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Nick Corbishley 