Military cooperation: Ecuadorean navy vessels put together for an train off San Cristóbal, Galápagos islands, Ecuador, 4 March 2024
Ernesto Benavides · AFP · Getty
Ecuadorian naturalist Jorge Vázquez, who has lived on San Cristóbal, one in every of Ecuador’s Galápagos islands, for six years, was questioning if the Americans have been actually there to guard the islands’ biodiversity. He was main me alongside a steep path to indicate me the hanging sight of this protected pure space, close to a zone the place the US Coast Guard patrols. After a rocky climb, we reached a pure viewpoint overlooking the Pacific. Below, on this easternmost nook of the Galápagos, nothing disturbs the ocean lions’ mating shows on the seaside and the iguanas foraging for algae within the sea.
The archipelago was designated a nationwide park in 1959, a UNESCO World Natural Heritage web site in 1978 and a marine reserve in 1998. Ecuador’s 2008 structure established a particular regime imposing strict sanitary controls to forestall the introduction of illness and non-native plant and animal species, however US army personnel deployed there are exempt, formally as a part of a cooperation settlement with Quito.
‘The Americans make no try and hold a low profile right here,’ stated Vázquez. He gestured to the west, past a rocky outcrop the place port and airfield infrastructure was seen. ‘That’s the place their drones are stationed. And it’s their patrol planes that take off from the runway behind us,’ he defined. ‘Like the opposite residents, I’ve received used to the fixed roar of those plane.’ The airfield needed to be expanded to accommodate the newest additions: a Lockheed P-3 Orion, a Boeing E-3 Sentry (AWACS) and a De Havilland Dash 8 bomber. Even the port of this territory of simply 6,000 inhabitants now hosts a US flotilla.
It was Ecuador’s former president Lenín Moreno (2017-21) – successor to the leftist Rafael Correa (2007-17) – who made the US presence there official in 2019. At the time Moreno confronted a extreme financial disaster and sought nearer ties with Donald Trump. He secured a mortgage from the International Monetary Fund, imposed austerity measures and (…)
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(1) ‘Oceana finds China’s fishing fleet swarms Galapagos, then disappears from sight’, 22 December 2023, www.oceana.org/.
(3) ‘US Army corps of engineers conduct preliminary assessments to strengthen infrastructure and enhance financial ties’, 21 February 2025, gt.usembassy.gov/.
(4) See Didier Ortolland, ‘Panama reclaimed?’, Le Monde diplomatique, English version, July 2025.
