The US has designated Ecuador’s Los Tiguerones gang, which stormed a television station during a live broadcast in 2024, as a terrorist organisation as the Trump administration expands its campaign against narcotics traffickers it says are destabilising Latin America.
The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made the announcement in Quito, where he met Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa, one of several rightwing allies of Donald Trump whom Rubio is courting as a security partner during a three-nation tour through Latin America that began on Tuesday.
Rubio said the Los Tiguerones gang was linked to narcotics trafficking, as well as attacks on civilians, law enforcement officers and journalists.
“We are not talking about an ordinary mafia, nor are we talking about common criminals, we are talking about terrorists who, in many cases, possess weapons and equipment resembling the national armies of certain countries,” he said.
The heavily armed gang’s attack on the TC Televisión network in 2024 prompted Noboa to declare a state of “internal armed conflict”, amid claims foreign drug gangs had descended on Ecuador to take control of important routes for coca grown in neighbouring Colombia and Peru and then shipped to the US.
Live footage from the El Noticiero news programme showed men toting pistols, shotguns, machine guns, grenades and sticks of dynamite. The viral images quickly became a symbol of the drug violence destabilising the country.
In its efforts to fight against narcotics trafficking and illegal migration from Latin America, the Trump administration has also empowered a number of hardline leaders through its “Shield of the Americas” coalition that aims to tighten security cooperation with rightwing allies in the region.
During his trip, Rubio plans to visit several newly elected conservative leaders amid a significant political shift to the right in Latin America.
On Wednesday, Rubio hailed Ecuador as being the Trump administration’s most “aggressive” partner in its military campaign against alleged drug traffickers, including in the controversial strikes against boats that have killed at least 227 people whom the Trump administration has called drug traffickers without providing evidence.
Rubio said that he would seek $45m (£33m) in additional funding from Congress towards efforts aimed at “dismantling these terrorist groups”, although he did not go into details. He also told reporters that elite forces from both countries were “working jointly on a day-to-day basis in a way that has no precedent in order to try to dismantle these terrorist organisations”.
Rubio visited Colombia on Tuesday, where he met its newly inaugurated president Abelardo De La Espriella, who narrowly won a June election against leftist leader Gustavo Petro with whom the Trump White House had cold relations.
During his remarks, Rubio took something of a victory lap, saying that the two sides would seek to “[confront] the mistakes of the past four years” and called Petro’s leadership of the country “unnatural”. Colombia joined the Shield of the Americas initiative only after its change in government.
During the meeting, the two men discussed security and counternarcotics policy, and signed memorandums of understanding on critical minerals and nuclear energy.
Rubio is expected to next travel to Peru, where he will meet Keiko Fujimori, who defeated a leftwing candidate by a margin of just 50,000 votes during a close election in July. She has promised to fight crime with an “iron fist” and adopt some controversial policies from neighbouring El Salvador, which has been a close ally of the US on security policies.
