Noboa met with Trump ahead of runoff
March 31, 2025
Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa met with U.S. President Donald Trump in Florida on Saturday, an encounter characterized as being of “a friendly and private nature," according to Noboa’s press office. Ecuadorian officials have told allies of Trump that they are interested in hosting a U.S. military base and have expressed interest in a bilateral free trade deal like those already in place for Colombia and Peru. (Reuters)
Noboa is vying for reelection in a runoff vote on April 13 — Mark Feierstein, a former senior official in the Biden and Obama administrations, told Reuters that the timing of the meeting suggested both sides believed it could help Noboa.
Separately, CNN reports that Ecuador is laying the groundwork for U.S. forces to help battle powerful gangs. “According to a high-level Ecuadorian official familiar with the planning, construction of a new naval facility in the coastal city of Manta is part of that preparation, with barracks-style housing and administration offices designed to support sustained operations and US military personnel.”
Noboa had announced earlier this month a "strategic alliance" with Erik Prince - founder of the private military firm Blackwater and prominent Trump supporter - to reinforce his controversial “war” on crime. (Guardian)
More Ecuador
Noboa appointed Cynthia Gellibert, secretary general of public administration, as interim vice president on Saturday, replacing the elected-Vice President Veronica Abad, with who he has had a long-running feud. (Reuters)
InSight Crime’s 2024 Homicide Round-Up was cited by Ecuadorian presidential candidate Luisa González during a fiery debate with Noboa.
Regional Relations
New U.S. tariffs are scheduled to start on Wednesday. Brazilian president Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva said the country’s first line of defense against tariffs will be negotiation rather than immediate retaliatory measures, reports Bloomberg.
Lula wrapped up a state visit to Vietnam, announcing that the Asian country may buy as many as 50 planes from Embraer, the Brazilian planemaker, and that another Brazilian company may invest $100 million in a meat-processing plant there, reports Reuters.
Chinese reaction against the sale of Panamanian port interests to a U.S. company is just one example of pushback against Trump’s Latin America agenda, writes James Bosworth in World Politics Review. Beyond the rhetoric, China has offered Cuba debt relief, increased oil purchases from Caracas, signed new lithium deals in the Southern Cone and have expanded strategic commodities purchases from South America, among others. “All these actions by China reflect those of a country that is not voluntarily backing down in the face of Trump’s threats.”
Deportations
A U.S. federal judge temporarily blocked the Trump administration Friday from deporting people who have exhausted legal appeals to countries other than their own without first being allowed to argue that it would jeopardize their safety, reports the Associated Press.
The U.S. government deported more alleged Venezuelan and MS-13 gang members to El Salvador over the weekend, sending 17 more people it says were foreign criminals, reports Reuters. El Salvador's President Nayib Bukele said in a post on X that the deportees were "confirmed murderers and high-profile offenders, including six child rapists."
It is widely believed that Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele sought to have the U.S. deport Cesar Humberto Lopez-Larios, an MS-13 leader, in order to avoid details of an alleged negotiation between the government and the street gang from coming to light in U.S. federal court. Drop Site News reviews the case and also reveals that the Salvadoran government provided U.S. agents with the location of César Eliseo Sorto-Amaya, a lower-ranking MS-13 member that was among those deported by the U.S. earlier this month.
The American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU) has submitted in a court filing what they believe is a document that the U.S. Trump administration uses to identify members of a Venezuelan gang and remove them under the Alien Enemies Act. (ABC)
U.S. “Secretary of State Marco Rubio estimated that he had signed perhaps more than 300 letters revoking the visas of students, visitors and others to force their expulsion from the United States because of their foreign policy views or criminal activities,” reports the New York Times.
Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro spoke to U.N. officials to ask for support for the release of hundreds of Venezuelan migrants deported by the United States to a notorious El Salvador prison, reports Reuters.
Venezuela
The U.S. is revoking a number of permits and licenses that enable western oil companies to do business in Venezuela, reports the Financial Times. Companies notified of changes include Italian oil major Eni, Spanish oil company Repsol and Global Oil Terminals. (See also Reuters).
Honduras
Former Honduran Armed Forces chief Romeo Vásquez, called former President Manuel Zelaya a "dictator" on Saturday and accused him of having ties to drug trafficking, reports EFE. Vásquez is a fugitive from justice, he is accused of the death of a protester during 2009 demonstrations against the interruption of constitutional order.
Mexico
The leftist Sheinbaum administration has become a major champion of the USMC agreement, though Morena has historically criticized the effects of the NAFTA freetrade agreement. “Speaking to people in her close economic team, The Mexico Political Economist has instead found that the reason Sheinbaum continues to defend the commercial status quo is because it ensures the business support her administration needs to carry out its economic plans.”
Hurricanes Otis and John exposed Acapulco’s big social divide: the main tourist hub ois mainly fixed and back in business, while working-class communities around the coastal city feel forgotten and highly vulnerable as another hurricane season approaches, reports the Guardian.
A government-sponsored junk food ban in schools across Mexico took effect on Saturday, as the country tries to tackle one of the world’s worst obesity and diabetes epidemics, reports the Associated Press.
Brazil
Brazil created more formal jobs than expected in February, handing Lula a win, reports Bloomberg.
A malware that steals users’ banking access codes, and then their funds, was born out of Brazil’s online criminal underworld, and then spread around the world, reports InSight Crime.
Coffee farms in Brazil are increasingly dependent on irrigation, as climate change affects rainfall, reports Reuters.
Argentina
Argentina is seeking a first disbursement of more than 40% under a $20-billion program it is negotiating with the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Economy Minister Luis Caputo said on Sunday. (Reuters)
“Julio Simón, a police enforcer and torturer during Argentina’s military dictatorship who remorselessly defended the atrocities before being convicted in a landmark 2006 trial that reopened prosecutions from the “Dirty War” of the 1970s and ’80s, died March 25 at a prison near Buenos Aires. He was 84.” - Washington Post.
Chile
Efforts to reuse the discarded brand clothing in Chile’s Atacama desert. (Guardian)
Histories
Paul Lashmar’s Drax of Drax Hall is a study of colonial economy narrowed focused on a single British family, showing that the Drax dynasty did not just profit from slavery but pioneered its brutal processes, reports the Guardian.