Foreign ministries clash publicly even as both governments outline security, energy, and trade steps to defuse escalating dispute. Ecuador’s government has formally rejected Colombia’s decision to maintain a 30% tariff on Ecuadorian products, arguing that Bogotá is...
Fear spreads across East Coast communities as enforcement intensifies where most Ecuadorians in the US live. New York and New Jersey, long considered places of refuge and opportunity for Ecuadorian migrants, have become the main focus of Immigration and Customs...
Opened as a symbol of order, the Santa Elena facility adopts extreme restrictions while drawing sharp criticism from rights advocates. Ecuador’s newest maximum-security prison on the Santa Elena coast has been presented by the government as a turning point in...
Suspension of transit services stalled deliveries nationwide, with losses mounting as authorities promise gradual normalization. Ecuador’s automotive sector has spent the past week in limbo, as the suspension of vehicle registration services rippled through dealerships, importers, and buyers, stalling sales and freezing deliveries across the country. What began as an institutional intervention at the National […]
There’s a certain comfort governments take in the appearance of control. Big gestures. Hard lines. Locked doors. Tariffs. Raids. Polygraphs. Mega-prisons. They photograph well, they sound decisive, and they give officials something solid to point at when everything else feels like it’s slipping through their fingers. This week’s TCD reads like a catalog of those […]
Colombian president links border security, drug trafficking, and energy integration while tariffs deepen a regional standoff. Colombia’s president Gustavo Petro has doubled down on the idea that borders must remain open to people even as governments coordinate security, a message delivered from Washington just as a trade dispute with Ecuador hardened into reciprocal tariffs and […]
Oversight delays and weak enforcement leave key questions unanswered long after ballots are counted. Ecuador’s presidential campaigns continue to operate inside what election officials themselves describe as a financial gray zone, where spending is reported late, incompletely, or not at all, and where accountability often arrives years after voters have moved on. A growing list […]
Government approval advances a long-delayed copper mine despite legal battles, community resistance and lingering consultation disputes. The Ecuadorian government has formally granted an environmental license to the La Plata mining project, a decision that clears a major regulatory hurdle for one of the country’s most contentious mining developments and reignites tensions in rural Cotopaxi. The […]
Government removes dozens of officials after failed trust tests and internal alerts. A sweeping purge across Ecuador’s mining oversight institutions has removed dozens of senior officials, as authorities move to confront what they describe as deep-seated complicity with illegal mining networks. The shake-up was confirmed by Energy and Mines Minister Inés Manzano, who said officials […]
Foreign seizures outpace domestic interceptions as scanner overload, delayed alerts, and offshore contamination reshape trafficking routes. Two out of every three cocaine seizures tied to Ecuadorian maritime exports are being made far from the country’s docks, underscoring a widening gap between detection at origin and enforcement at destination. In 2025, authorities seized 96.1 tons of […]