War / Americas
Colombia Insurgency
De la Espriella's runoff win collapses both peace tracks and launches a Bukele-style military campaign against groups controlling half.
Ecuador is at war with its own cartels.
In January 2024, President Daniel Noboa declared an "internal armed conflict" and designated more than 20 gangs as terrorist organizations, deploying the military nationwide after gunmen seized a live television broadcast in Guayaquil. The fight traces to 2021, when prison massacres killed over 300 inmates and exposed how thoroughly groups like Los Choneros, Lobos, and Los Tiguerones had captured the state's institutions. No foreign government backs either side. The gangs are sustained by Colombian and Mexican cartel supply chains, FARC-EMC dissidents to the north and Sinaloa and CJNG networks moving cocaine through Pacific ports.
A country once considered Latin America's safe corner has become one of its deadliest.
Colombia's June 21 runoff delivered a decisive hard-right victory for Abelardo de la Espriella, closing out the Petro negotiation era and putting Bogota on a collision course with FARC-EMC and Gulf Clan networks that have long used Ecuador's northern border as a pressure-release valve.
It matters because the war continues to tie down the main belligerents, pull in outside backers, and shape the security balance across Americas.
Weekly net escalation pressure, last 90 days
Criminal fragmentation is the defining structural trend: Noboa's decapitation campaign has produced more armed groups, not fewer, redistributing capacity into smaller, more mobile.
De la Espriella's election is the most consequential near-term inflection point for Ecuador's conflict.
Operation Southern Spear is strategically self-defeating: $4.7 billion spent, 200-plus killed, no measurable supply shock, and traffickers have already adapted by shifting to land corridors and container shipping.
Colombian FARC-EMC supply channels sustain cross-border trafficking and provide weapons and logistics to Ecuadorian armed groups along the northern border.
Gulf Clan cross-border logistics support gang financing and supply chains in Ecuador's northern border zones.
Sinaloa Cartel networks coordinate Ecuadorian gang access to Pacific cocaine export flows and embed in port transit infrastructure as a durable upstream broker.
CJNG franchise nodes operate within Ecuadorian port and overland transit networks to manage northbound drug shipments.
Illegal gold mining networks function as a structurally independent criminal financing layer for armed groups across Ecuador's Amazon.
GANGS
Colombian cartel supply chains (FARC-EMC, Gulf Clan), Mexican cartel connections (CJNG, Sinaloa).
US
counter-narcotics cooperation. No direct state sponsor.
War / Americas
De la Espriella's runoff win collapses both peace tracks and launches a Bukele-style military campaign against groups controlling half.
War / Americas
Cartel fragmentation deepens as U.S. kinetic precedent reshapes enforcement architecture and northward crime displacement reaches the U.S.-Canada corridor.