On Sunday, Ecuador launched a massive anti-cartel offensive involving 75,000 troops, armored vehicles, and helicopters, with support from the U.S., in what Interior Minister John Reimberg described as a "very strong offensive," according to BBC News.

"We're at war," Reimberg said. "Don't take any risks, don't go out, stay home."

The cartel crackdown is part of a new 17-country alliance against cartels, unveiled by President Trump earlier this month.

While authorities have not said whether U.S. troops will directly participate in the operation, the two countries have already carried out joint strikes earlier this month, and the FBI is opening a field office in Ecuador to help target organized crime, money laundering, and corruption.

Last week, the U.S. and Ecuador signed a trade agreement that will unlock "commercially meaningful market access" for U.S. agricultural and industrial exports to 18 million consumers, Trade Representative Jamieson Greer said in a press release.

Ecuador's President Daniel Noboa, one of Trump's top allies in the region, has spent the last few years targeting drug cartels and criminals.

For context, about 70% of the cocaine produced in Colombia and Peru transits Ecuador.

Before the operation, Latin American leaders attended an international meeting, called "Shield of the Americas", and hosted by Trump in Mar-a-Lago. At the summit, Trump said cartel gangs were "cancer" and urged Latin American counterparts to eradicate the cancer.

"We don't want it spreading," Trump added.

Shortly after the summit, Noboa wrote on X:

"For too long, the mafias thought that America was their territory. That they could cross borders, move drugs, guns and [spread] violence without consequences. Their time has run out."

Meanwhile, on Tuesday, as the operation is underway, Noboa rejected allegations that the military operation against cartels was bombing targets in neighboring Colombia.

Noboa said on X that his government "is fighting narco terrorism in all its forms" and "bombing places that serve as hideouts for those groups, of which many are Colombian," but only within Ecuadorian territory.

Noboa was responding to Colombian President Gustavo Petro, who said on X on Monday, "We are being bombed from Ecuador, and it's not rebel groups who are doing it."

We suspect the hostilities in South America would not have been lost in the news cycle if it weren't for the US-Iran conflict, which makes headlines around the clock.

The anti-cartel operation in Ecuador comes weeks after Mexican special forces killed a top cartel leader. Earlier this year, the U.S. conducted a regime-change operation in Venezuela, and communist Cuba increasingly appears to be the next domino at risk of falling. Taken together, the Trump administration is dismantling the old order across the Americas - one long defined by drug cartels, leftist rule, and economic decay.