Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa has defended stronger military cooperation with the United States to combat drug trafficking, File Photo by Gian Ehrenzeller/EPA
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa defended stronger military cooperation with the United States to combat drug trafficking, while Colombian President Gustavo Petro questioned the effectiveness of decades of drug prohibition policies, reflecting a growing regional debate over how to address the problem.
In an interview with N+ Univision about Saturday’s regional security summit near Miami and known as “Shield of the Americas,” Noboa said Ecuador faces increasing pressure from drug trafficking networks that use the country as a transit point to international markets.
“More than 70% of the drug that enters Ecuador comes from Colombia,” Noboa said.
Ecuador is not a cocaine-producing country, but in recent years it has become one of the main routes for drugs heading to the United States and Europe because of its Pacific ports and its location between Colombia and Peru, the two largest cocaine producers in the world.
Noboa also said some criminal networks that operate in the region maintain links with international militant organizations.
“The cartels work with narco-terrorist groups trained by Hezbollah, Hamas and by Iran’s Revolutionary Guard,” he said.
The Ecuadorian president also defended security cooperation with Washington and confirmed that Ecuador recently carried out a joint operation with U.S. forces near the border with Colombia.
“We are open to collaboration and joint operations,” he said.
However, Noboa insisted that any foreign military action in the country must be conducted alongside Ecuadorian forces.
“They cannot work independently. They must operate together with Ecuador’s armed forces,” he said, rejecting criticism that describes the cooperation as interventionism.
While Noboa promotes a strategy centered on security and military cooperation, Petro presented a different view during remarks in Austria at the Annual Session of the United Nations Commission on Narcotic Drugs.
The Colombian president said drug prohibition has strengthened criminal organizations and generated violence in producing countries.
“Prohibition creates the mafia and the mafia creates violence and death,” Petro said.
He also questioned traditional strategies of the war on drugs, and suggested the problem should be analyzed through broader social and economic factors.
Petro described cocaine as a product associated with societies dominated by economic competition.
“Cocaine is the drug of the elites,” he said. In contrast, he said the rise in fentanyl consumption reflects a deeper social crisis.
“Fentanyl is the drug of death,” he said.
He argued that coca cultivation in Colombia is linked to decades of social inequality and land concentration in rural areas.
Petro said many farmers who cultivate coca were displaced from fertile land during decades of armed conflict and economic exclusion.
Instead of relying on forced eradication, he said his government is promoting voluntary crop substitution programs.
Petro also highlighted Colombia’s security efforts and said the country has seized 3,300 tons of cocaine, a record amount.
However, he questioned new regional alliances that seek to confront drug trafficking without Colombia’s participation.
“With 17 small and weak countries you cannot build a shield against cocaine,” he said.
The positions of the two leaders reflect two different approaches within Latin America to drug trafficking.
While Noboa is betting on a security strategy based on military cooperation and alliances with the United States, Petro has defended revising prohibition policies and addressing the social and economic roots of the problem.
For the Colombian president, combating drug trafficking also requires targeting the international financial networks that sustain the business.
“The real bosses of drug trafficking are not in the south,” he said. “They are in the luxury cities of the world.”
