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Daniel Noboa’s reelection in Ecuador on April 13 was remarkable. At thirty-seven, he is one of the youngest heads of government ever to have won reelection in a free and fair election, having obtained 55.7 percent of valid votes and beaten opposition leader Luisa González by more than eleven percentage points. In addition, Noboa overcame a long-standing anti-incumbency trend across Latin America: Of the twenty-seven free and fair presidential elections held in Latin America since 2018, incumbent parties and candidates were thrown out of office twenty-two times, reflecting voters’ dissatisfaction with governments irrespective of ideological orientation. Finally, Noboa’s first sixteen months in office (since he served the remainder of his predecessor’s term after a snap election in October 2023) were turbulent and controversial, shaped by blackouts that roiled the country, high-profile government infighting, clashes with the courts, and an unprecedented security crisis—far from the ideal scenario to win reelection.
Yet it was precisely Ecuador’s seemingly intractable security challenge, marked by high levels of violence, that allowed Noboa to project himself as a law-and-order candidate unafraid of implementing tough measures, even when rights groups pointed to human rights abuses by security forces and questioned the efficacy of his iron fist strategy. Noboa’s approach involved militarizing the fight against organized crime, declaring states of emergency that allowed soldiers to search homes without warrants, and constructing a security prison inspired by El Salvador’s notorious mega-prison built by President Nayib Bukele. Although jailing thousands led to a brief and incremental decline in violence, deadly crime has surged again to unprecedented levels, pointing to the deep structural challenges in Ecuador that Noboa must strive to address.
Over the past six years, Ecuador, not long ago one of Latin America’s safest countries, has seen its homicide rate surge eightfold, surpassing even Colombia and Mexico. Strategically located between Colombia and Peru, the world’s two largest cocaine producers, Ecuador has become a key transit point for drug shipments heading to international markets. A modern road system and ports to the Pacific have made Ecuador an attractive location for transnational criminal organizations.
The COVID-19 pandemic further complicated matters; with schools in Latin America closed longer than in any other region, criminal groups took advantage of the situation to recruit young people facing economic hardship. As in several other Latin American countries, a badly governed, overcrowded prison system with little state control offered an ideal environment for gangs to recruit new members. Former president Lenín Moreno (2017–2021) reduced public funding for prisons and dismantled the ministry responsible for running them. Hundreds of people have died in prison riots over the past five years. Even those who are wrongly detained or have committed minor offenses are often forced to join gangs as membership provides access to basic rights and minimal safety during their prison stay. Organized crime thus directly benefits from prisons where inmates feel their rights are at risk.
Additionally, because Ecuador has used the U.S. dollar as its official currency since 2000, it has become a particularly appealing destination for those looking to launder illicit funds. Given the Ecuadorian security forces’ limited experience with fighting powerful transnational drug cartels, policymakers have struggled to find a cohesive response. This weakness was most evident in the brazen assassination, eleven days before the 2023 elections, of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, who had made fighting the growing political power of organized crime his central campaign promise. Numerous other politicians have been killed in recent years, and several live in hiding.
Ecuador’s profound security crisis represents an acute threat to the country’s democracy and people’s human rights, in addition to negatively affecting the economy. Daniel Noboa thus rightly sees addressing the violence epidemic as a priority. However, his most complex challenge is to bolster security without opting for military repression, which in and of itself represents a potential threat to democracy. In El Salvador, for example, President Nayib Bukele may have successfully dealt with the security crisis, but he did so by turning El Salvador into an authoritarian police state, where tens of thousands are imprisoned without due process and where the judiciary has been fully co-opted by the president.
Some of Noboa’s proposals—such as building larger prisons—seem like sensible approaches. After all, only if the government can fully control the prison systems and guarantee inmates’ human rights, the gangs will have less influence over the prison population.
But critics have rightly pointed out that Noboa may at times have prioritized shaping the public narrative, for example by producing videos for his social media channels about raids, while not presenting specific strategies to reduce violence in a sustainable fashion. A partnership with Erik Prince, who founded the notorious U.S. defense contractor Blackwater, raises questions about accountability if Noboa were to invite foreign security forces to the country, and has been criticized by the opposition. It is understandable that the government invests heavily in influencing public opinion about the battle against criminal organizations, which was crucial to win a referendum in April 2024 on tougher security measures such as harsher penalties and joint military and police patrols. But Noboa’s government must now, with a full four-year mandate, walk the tightrope and pursue sustainable security policies without undermining democracy and human rights. Grave rights violations under Noboa’s presidency thus far—such as when four children were found dead after being detained by a military patrol—reflect how difficult this will be.
In addition to massive investments into the country’s security and intelligence apparatuses and a more modern and humane prison system, there are three broader policy goals that the administration should pursue to achieve this balance.
The first is commitment to the rule of law at all costs, a key concern when states of emergency are frequent and security forces are on a slippery slope when it comes to respecting individual rights. Even if Daniel Noboa has no authoritarian inclinations himself, the erosion of due process would profoundly undermine Ecuadorian democracy.
Secondly, beating transnational crime will require deepening regional cooperation with not only Ecuador’s neighbors Peru and Colombia, but also Brazil, Chile, Mexico, the United States, and China. Effective cooperation involves intelligence-sharing among criminal investigators, collaborative border security, and working together against money laundering and threats to port security.
Finally, Ecuador cannot win the war against cartels without reducing youth unemployment, strengthening primary and secondary education, and reducing the country’s poverty rate (which has surged to 28 percent). Unless youth see professional opportunities in the formal economy, they will be easy prey for organized crime, which often is their only way out of misery.
Given how profound Ecuador’s challenges are and how powerful transnational criminal operations have become, the odds are clearly stacked against Noboa. The president has sought to distance himself from Bukele and has pointed out that El Salvador’s approach is hardly replicable in a much larger country like Ecuador. Still, since many of the most sensible strategies—such as expanding prison capacity, amplifying international cooperation, and investing in education—are unlikely to yield immediate results, the pressure on the president will be enormous.
