Regional security forces are bombing jungle encampments, capturing drug kingpins and killing drug couriers with Washington’s help.

Published on: Sep 12, 2026, 10:00:46 IST

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LIMA, Peru—The U.S. military has helped Ecuador bomb suspected drug traffickers along its border with Colombia. Peru says it is eager to deepen military cooperation with American antidrug efforts.

And last week, Colombia used U.S. intelligence to hunt down and kill an alleged leader of a narcotics-smuggling syndicate. A few hours later, Colombian President Abelardo de la Espriella gave a speech beside the bodies of the dead man, his girlfriend and associates stuffed in white bags.

A sprawling military alliance that reaches from the Caribbean across the Andes to the Pacific is taking shape a year after the Trump administration began bombing alleged drug-smuggling boats in the region. The tactics are sometimes unapologetically and intentionally brutal, like President Trump’s drug-boat campaign, designed to send a message that narcotics traffickers now face local forces backed by U.S. firepower.

The emerging coalition is a bloc of largely right-wing governments across the region that could receive U.S. intelligence, equipment and surveillance technology. Sometimes they work jointly with American troops. Regional security forces are bombing jungle encampments, capturing drug kingpins and killing drug couriers with U.S. help, American officials said.

On a swing through Colombia, Ecuador and Peru that ended Thursday, Secretary of State Marco Rubio highlighted the campaign alongside a trio of Trump-friendly leaders. In Lima, Peru’s new President Keiko Fujimori announced to applause that her country was joining the Shield of the Americas, a U.S.-led coalition of over a dozen countries that has adopted the Trump administration’s hard-line playbook for taking on drug traffickers and armed groups.

“God willing, it will expand to even more countries,” Rubio said at the presidential palace. “There are criminal groups today that have more money and better military equipment than the military forces of a state.”

Increasingly, he said, these countries could take the lead on the front lines.

“We’ll still blow up ships if need be,” Rubio said Wednesday in the Ecuadorean capital of Quito, but “our elite forces are operating alongside one another.”

On Tuesday, Rubio met with de la Espriella at a military compound that the Colombian president has turned into a presidential headquarters in the Caribbean coastal city of Barranquilla. He ticked off his wishlist for American firepower: upgraded aircraft, drones, radars, air defenses, cyber defenses and special-forces capabilities.

“The threats of the 21st Century require new capabilities,” the Colombian leader told reporters. “Criminals who don’t submit will be taken down.”

The embrace of a more muscular U.S. role in Latin America—long controversial in a region shaped by U.S. interventions and military coups—comes as a surge of violence has benefited leaders who promise a hard-line response to organized crime. Crime ranked as citizens’ top concern in all Latin American countries, except Argentina, surveyed in a global Ipsos poll in February, with respondents saying the problem was worsening in several countries.

Two-thirds of Peruvians in the poll said violence and insecurity was their biggest worry while 43% said the same in Colombia.

Political analysts who study the region said Trump’s security strategy was heavily militarized in a region that has had difficult experiences with the armed forces operating at home. Hard-line tactics backed by Washington as part of the war on drugs have long drawn criticism from rights advocacy groups over human-rights violations, extrajudicial killings and forced disappearances by state-security forces.

“That goes to show you just how desperate leaders are to show progress fighting organized crime,” says Benjamin Gedan, director of the Latin America Program at the Stimson Center, a Washington-based policy group.

Working with friendlier governments, the U.S. has expanded its capacity to reach high-priority targets in far-flung corners of the region. U.S. forces in June worked with the interim government in Venezuela, a new U.S. ally, to carry out a strike that killed the leader of the Tren de Aragua gang deep in the country’s southern mining territory.

In Colombia, de la Espriella has pursued a hard-line security agenda with zeal, ordering airstrikes on armed groups.

One of his first high-profile targets was Nain Perez, whom Colombian authorities accused of extortion and drug running. Perez taunted de la Espriella with videos and photos of the 20-something dressed in fatigues and showing off guns.

“We’re good, chilling,” Perez could be heard in one cellphone video, riding his motorcycle along a beachside road with his girlfriend.

Colombian authorities say intelligence provided by the U.S. helped locate Perez at a luxurious mansion in the city of Riohacha, where an elite Colombian police commando unit conducted a raid on Sept. 4, killing Perez, his girlfriend and two alleged members of his syndicate.

De la Espriella’s video announcement with Perez’s corpse, posted on X, was the second time the president addressed the nation alongside those killed in operations. The practice has alarmed de la Espriella’s political opponents and human-rights groups, who accuse him of displaying the dead as trophies and violating international rules that prohibit desecrating those killed in operations.

Juanita Goebertus, Americas director for Human Rights Watch, said the U.S. security effort lacks emphasis on fighting money laundering and shifting crime dynamics in Latin America. She cited a decision this week by Ecuadorean officials to eliminate judges from a specialized judicial unit focused on anticorruption and organized crime.

“The same time we’re talking about security partnerships, we’re seeing a dismantling of the judicial tools to fight crime,” she added.

The prospect of growing U.S. involvement in security operations on their soil has drawn concerns about sovereignty and accountability. In Ecuador, human-rights groups have raised alarms over joint operations with U.S. forces after allegations of torture, arbitrary detention and destruction of local property. In Peru, the Senate recently voted unanimously to summon the foreign minister to explain what the country was committing to by joining the Shield of the Americas, and the extent of U.S. involvement.

Meanwhile, Latin American countries that have resisted allowing deeper U.S. involvement are receiving more ominous signals. Rubio’s trip carried an implicit warning to countries such as Mexico, whose government has drawn a more firm line against deeper U.S. military involvement in fighting cartels

“Eventually, that threat will have to be confronted,” Rubio said. “One way or the other.”

Watch: Inside the Cocaine Corridors Fueling Colombia’s Latest War

Write to Vera Bergengruen at vera.bergengruen@wsj.com and Kejal Vyas at kejal.vyas@wsj.com

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