Andean Group - April 2026

With the war in the Middle East capturing most of the world’s attention, US air strikes in Ecuador on 3 March largely slipped under the radar. But the operation, carried out in coordination with President Daniel Noboa’s government, may mark an inflection point in the battle against organised crime in Ecuador, as we explore in the first article of this April 2026 edition of the Latin American Regional Report: Andean Group. The US support came ahead of an escalation of Noboa’s security crackdown in mid-March, which saw night-time curfews imposed in four provinces as the military carried out security operations that Noboa said involved further US support.

A second article on Ecuador then explores the mounting legal pressure on the country’s political opposition, with the left-wing Revolución Ciudadana (RC) of former president Rafael Correa (2007-2017) suspended and likely to be barred from the November regional elections. This would upend Ecuadorean politics, given that RC currently holds the largest number of governorships and mayoralties. The party has accused Noboa of undermining democracy with the help of a cooperative judiciary.

We then turn to Bolivia, where the alleged leader of the Primer Cartel Uruguayo, Sebastián Marset, was captured on 13 March and extradited to the US. The Uruguayan’s arrest marks an early boost for President Rodrigo Paz, who has pledged to make counter-narcotics a top priority and a core plank of a new, Washington-oriented foreign policy. Retaining our focus on Bolivia, the next article discusses Paz’s visit to Brazil in mid-March, where he met with President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva and signed cooperation agreements on areas including energy, tourism, and confronting transnational crime. Brazil was Bolivia’s second-largest export market after China in 2025, receiving goods worth US$1.24bn. However, Bolivian exports to Brazil are down sharply from US$4.04bn in 2013, at the height of the country’s long-gone natural gas boom.

Shifting our attention to Venezuela, we then explore further changes in the country’s oil policy and its relationship with the US. A new hydrocarbon minister, Paula Henao, was appointed in March and will be a key point of contact between Caracas and Washington, which continues to ease its sanctions on Venezuela.

For the final article we return to Ecuador to discuss a new law which requires municipal and provincial governments to allocate nearly two-thirds of their budgets to investment, which President Noboa says will reduce wastage but the opposition warns will force spending cuts in other key areas.