Analysis of: US claims it is not responsible for strikes on Ecuadorian fishing boats – so who is?
The Guardian | June 13, 2026
TL;DR
The US denies bombing Ecuadorian fishing boats despite overwhelming survivor testimony, revealing how imperial militarism operates through plausible deniability. Eight fishermen are missing as Washington's "war on drugs" becomes a war on Latin American workers.
Analytical Focus:Contradictions Historical Context Interconnections
The bombing and detention of Ecuadorian fishing crews exposes the fundamental contradiction at the heart of US imperial operations in Latin America: military violence presented as humanitarian intervention, extrajudicial killings framed as law enforcement, and accountability diffused across a deliberately fragmented bureaucratic structure. Nearly 200 people have been killed since September 2025 in a campaign that the Trump administration simultaneously claims credit for and denies responsibility for, depending on which victims are under discussion. This pattern represents the mature form of neoliberal-era imperialism, where direct colonial administration has been replaced by what might be termed "kinetic sovereignty"—the assertion of lethal force across another nation's territory while maintaining the formal architecture of diplomatic respect. The fact that Ecuadorian fishermen were hooded, handcuffed, and transferred to Salvadoran custody without charges demonstrates how the infrastructure of the "war on drugs" has become a transnational apparatus operating beyond any single nation's legal framework. The revelation that drone strikes don't require evidence of narcotics aboard reveals the program's true function: territorial control and the violent maintenance of US hegemony over maritime corridors. The material stakes are clear: Ecuador sits between Peru and Colombia, the world's largest cocaine producers, making its waters strategically critical to US control over regional drug flows. But the deeper logic is one of imperial discipline. When Ecuadorians rejected US military bases in a November referendum, Washington demonstrated that formal democratic processes pose no obstacle to the exercise of American power. The fishing crews represent a working class caught between imperial violence from above and the structural poverty that forces them into these dangerous waters in the first place.
Class Dynamics
Actors: Ecuadorian fishing crews (artisanal workers), US military apparatus (Pentagon, Coast Guard, DEA, contractors), Salvadoran state (functioning as auxiliary to US operations), Ecuadorian government (caught between popular mandate and imperial pressure), Congressional Democrats (limited opposition faction), Human rights organizations (civil society monitors)
Beneficiaries: US military-industrial complex through expanded operations budget, Defense contractors operating surveillance and drone systems, US geopolitical interests in controlling Pacific maritime corridors, Salvadoran government gaining favor through cooperation with US operations
Harmed Parties: Ecuadorian fishing workers—eight missing, multiple injured and traumatized, Fishing families and coastal communities losing providers, Broader Latin American working class subject to arbitrary imperial violence, Ecuadorian national sovereignty undermined despite democratic referendum
The power asymmetry is total: working-class fishermen in small boats face the world's most powerful military with drones, aircraft carriers, and a transnational detention network. The US exercises what Lenin identified as the characteristic power of imperialist states—the ability to project violence globally while maintaining legal impunity at home. The fragmentation of responsibility across Pentagon, Coast Guard, DEA, and contractors creates a structure where everyone can deny culpability while the violence continues unabated. Ecuador's government, despite holding a democratic mandate against US bases, proves incapable of protecting its own citizens, illustrating how peripheral states function as subordinate elements within the imperial system.
Material Conditions
Economic Factors: Ecuador's geographic position between major cocaine-producing nations, US interest in controlling Pacific maritime drug trafficking routes, Artisanal fishing as economic survival for coastal communities, Military-industrial profit from expanded counter-narcotics operations, Ecuador's economic dependence limiting its diplomatic options
The fishing crews represent a form of petty commodity production—small-scale independent workers owning their means of production (boats) but operating within a capitalist market structure. Their labor extracts value from the sea, yet they remain vulnerable to forces entirely beyond their control: both the market volatility that determines fish prices and the imperial violence that now threatens their lives. The US military apparatus, by contrast, represents state-monopoly capitalism at its most developed—public resources deployed to secure private accumulation, with the "war on drugs" functioning as ideological cover for territorial control.
Resources at Stake: Maritime corridors for drug trafficking and legitimate commerce, Fishing grounds in Pacific waters, Military base access in strategically located Ecuador, Regional hegemony over Latin American security architecture
Historical Context
Precedents: US intervention in Latin America spanning two centuries (Monroe Doctrine to present), Operation Condor's transnational repression network (1970s-80s), US war on drugs as mechanism for Latin American military intervention since 1980s, Extrajudicial drone killings normalized in Middle East 'war on terror', Historical pattern of attacking fishing vessels (Gulf of Tonkin incident fabrication)
This represents the convergence of two long-term imperial patterns: the Monroe Doctrine's assertion of US dominance over the Western Hemisphere, and the post-9/11 normalization of extrajudicial killing through drone warfare. The "war on drugs" has served since the 1980s as the primary legitimating framework for US military intervention in Latin America, replacing anti-communism after the Cold War's end. What's new is the integration of Middle Eastern-style "kinetic operations" into the Latin American theater—the willingness to conduct bombing campaigns that kill civilians while maintaining the legal fiction that these are law enforcement rather than military operations. The transfer of detainees to El Salvador mirrors the CIA's extraordinary rendition program, suggesting the same infrastructure of lawless detention has been extended to the Americas.
Contradictions
Primary: The US simultaneously claims legal authority for lethal operations ('every strike involves a legal officer making a determination') while denying involvement in specific incidents, creating an impossible situation where accountability vanishes: if they claim it, they're responsible; if they deny it, no one is.
Secondary: Ecuador's democratic rejection of US bases versus continued military cooperation (naval training with Nimitz strike group), Strikes justified as counter-narcotics but not requiring evidence of drugs aboard, Survivors treated as 'shipwrecked crew' after being bombed by the rescuers themselves, War on drugs rhetoric claiming to protect civilian populations while killing civilians, Congressional oversight hearings that document crimes but produce no consequences
These contradictions are unlikely to resolve through existing institutional channels. Congressional letters demanding answers will likely receive evasive responses; Ecuador's government has already demonstrated unwillingness to seriously investigate. The contradictions may deepen as more incidents occur and survivors testify, potentially building international pressure through UN mechanisms. However, the fundamental contradiction between imperial violence and democratic accountability cannot be resolved within the current system—it requires either the US accepting meaningful constraints on its power (historically unprecedented) or affected populations building sufficient countervailing force to impose such constraints from below.
Global Interconnections
This incident connects to a global pattern of imperial powers conducting lethal operations in peripheral nations while maintaining legal impunity. The same logic that allows US drone strikes in Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan now operates in the Pacific—populations in the Global South become legitimate targets by virtue of their geography. The involvement of El Salvador reveals how the regional architecture functions: smaller states serve as auxiliaries in the US security apparatus, providing bases, detention facilities, and legal cover in exchange for military aid and diplomatic support. President Bukele's government, celebrated for its authoritarian crackdown domestically, now functions as a node in the US's transnational detention network. The broader systemic dynamic is one of declining US hegemony requiring increasingly violent maintenance. As Latin American nations have asserted greater independence—Ecuador's referendum being one example—Washington responds not with accommodation but with demonstration of its continued capacity for violence. The fishing crews become object lessons in the price of defiance, even indirect defiance. This connects to similar dynamics globally: from US sanctions regimes that starve civilian populations to military interventions justified by humanitarian rhetoric. The common thread is the subordination of peripheral populations to imperial interests, enforced through violence when ideological consent proves insufficient.
Conclusion
For workers and oppressed peoples, this incident demonstrates that the legal and diplomatic frameworks supposedly protecting national sovereignty provide no meaningful shield against imperial violence. The path forward requires building international solidarity networks capable of documenting these crimes, supporting survivors, and imposing political costs on the perpetrators. More fundamentally, it requires understanding that the "war on drugs" was never about drugs—it's about maintaining the conditions for capitalist accumulation in a region long designated as the US's "backyard." The struggle against such violence is inseparable from the broader struggle against the imperialist system that produces it. The fishermen of Ecuador, like workers everywhere, face a choice that the system would prefer remain invisible: accept their designation as acceptable casualties, or organize collectively to challenge the power that treats their lives as expendable.
Suggested Reading
- Imperialism, the Highest Stage of Capitalism by V.I. Lenin (1917) Lenin's analysis of how advanced capitalist states project military power globally to secure markets and resources directly illuminates US operations in Latin American waters as a form of contemporary imperialism.
- The Wretched of the Earth by Frantz Fanon (1961) Fanon's examination of colonial violence and the psychology of domination speaks directly to how peripheral populations become legitimate targets for imperial powers, and how such violence functions to maintain hierarchies.
- The Shock Doctrine by Naomi Klein (2007) Klein's documentation of how crises and violence are used to implement unpopular policies provides framework for understanding how the 'war on drugs' serves as cover for expanding military infrastructure despite democratic opposition.
- The Divide: A Brief Guide to Global Inequality by Jason Hickel (2017) Hickel's analysis of how global inequality is maintained through military and economic coercion contextualizes these attacks as part of systematic extraction and control of the Global South.