On Sunday, November 16, Ecuadorian voters decisively rejected President Daniel Noboa’s attempt to push the country further down a right-wing, authoritarian path. In effect, the referendum served as a public vote of no confidence in a conservative government closely aligned with the Donald Trump administration.
The results came amid a volatile regional backdrop. The arrival last week of the USS Gerald R. Ford aircraft carrier in the Caribbean signaled that the United States may be preparing a military strike against Venezuela, while Chile’s first-round presidential vote delivered a narrow lead for progressive candidate Jeannette Jara—setting the stage for a December 14 runoff that could hand victory to far-right contender José Antonio Kast.
In Ecuador, an escalating security crisis fueled by cartel violence, surging homicide rates, and a militarized response that has failed to stem the violence formed the immediate backdrop to Sunday’s vote. All of these factors have eroded public confidence in Noboa’s iron-fist approach.
The Questions
Noboa presented three referendum questions and one popular consultation item, packaged as measures to confront organized crime and accelerate his neoliberal economic program.
The first question would have lifted the 2008 Constitution’s ban on foreign military bases in Ecuador. This change would have opened the door for the return of the U.S. military to the Eloy Alfaro airbase in Manta, a site notorious for human rights abuses, the harassment of community activists, and opaque U.S. intelligence activities carried out during its earlier occupation.
Noboa’s goal was to replace the progressive 2008 Constitution written under the administration of Rafael Correa and draft a new charter more aligned with his neoliberal agenda.
The second question sought to eliminate public funding for political parties, a move that would have severely weakened smaller and left-leaning organizations while consolidating power among business-backed parties able to rely on private financing. The third would have reduced the size of the National Assembly from the current 151 legislators to 73.
The final question proposed elections for a constituent assembly to draft a new constitution. Noboa’s goal was to replace the progressive 2008 Constitution written under the administration of Rafael Correa and draft a new charter more aligned with his neoliberal agenda.
Voters rejected all four proposals by significant margins of about 60 percent against and 40 percent in favor. The narrowest defeat was on reducing the size of the National Assembly, rejected by 53 percent of voters. The strongest opposition—62 percent—was to convening a constituent assembly.
Noboa’s defeat came despite an overwhelming advantage in government resources and social media presence, with his administration reportedly outspending social movements, Indigenous organizations, and leftist groups nearly 10 to one.
While the “yes” vote benefited from significant resources and media exposure, the “no” vote reflected a popular social and class consciousness rather than a tightly coordinated opposition campaign. The stiffest resistance came from Indigenous communities, such as those in Imbabura, which had recently mobilized against Noboa’s extractivist policies, and from provinces like Manabí, a traditional stronghold of Correa’s progressive party Revolución Ciudadana.
The results echo an earlier rejection in April 2024, when Noboa failed to dismantle key progressive constitutional provisions. Ecuadorians again signaled both disillusionment with his governance and a desire to preserve the progressive aspects of the 2008 Constitution.
At 37, Noboa is the scion of Ecuador’s wealthiest family. His father, banana magnate Álvaro Noboa, built a vast corporate empire and is closely tied to a global right-wing ruling class. The younger Noboa unexpectedly surged in 2023 to complete the truncated term of former president Guillermo Lasso. He defeated Luisa González of the Revolución Ciudadana, then did so again in 2025 to secure a full four-year term.
A victory in Sunday’s vote would have strengthened both Noboa’s political project and his family’s economic interests, which have already drawn scrutiny over conflicts of interest, including their deep financial ties to a Canada-based mining firm. The family’s banana business has also been linked to cocaine seizures, creating tension between combating drug trafficking and potentially harming the family’s commercial ventures.
Security, Gangs, and U.S. Military Influence
There is no question that Ecuador has suffered a dramatic rise in gang violence in recent years. Long considered an island of peace between Colombia and Peru—both beset for decades by drug trafficking and guerrilla insurgencies—Ecuador became embroiled in the drug trade after trafficking routes through the Caribbean closed, redirecting flows south and west through Ecuador and out into the Pacific.
As competition between cartels has intensified, Ecuador now finds itself on track for the highest homicide rate in its history—and the highest in the hemisphere. U.S. policy under Trump has compounded the instability. The administration’s campaign of extrajudicial killings of alleged traffickers in the Caribbean has increasingly targeted vessels leaving Ecuador’s western Pacific coast. As with strikes on Venezuelan boats, the U.S. government has presented no evidence for its claims.
Noboa came to power promising a hardline, militarized approach to crime. Six months later, violence has only risen. Voters’ rejection of his proposals is best read as a repudiation of a security strategy that has produced human rights violations, mounting casualties, and little reprieve for Ecuadorians facing deepening insecurity, militarization, and rising costs of living.
The security debate is inseparable from renewed U.S. interest in reestablishing a military presence in the country. Since Trump’s inauguration, Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem and Secretary of State Marco Rubio have made multiple trips to Ecuador to press for a U.S. military base in the region. The United States has operated military facilities in Ecuador twice before. During World War II, it maintained bases at Salinas on the Pacific coast and on the Galápagos islands; both were shuttered after sustained protests over abusive labor practices, the perceived violation of Ecuadorian sovereignty, and fears of entanglement in Cold War conflicts.
In 1999, President Jamil Mahuad allowed the United States to establish a Forward Operation Location (FOL) at the Manta airbase on the Pacific coast, ostensibly to combat drug trafficking in neighboring Colombia. Critics contended that its real purpose was counterinsurgency surveillance of leftist guerrilla movements in that country. Popular protests led Correa to decline renewal of the lease in 2009, famously declaring that Ecuador would host a U.S. base only if Washington allowed an Ecuadorian base in Miami.
Noboa’s proposal to lift the constitutional ban on foreign military bases thus revived a long-standing sovereignty dispute, one voters clearly rejected.
Constitutional Rollback
Although pitched as a response to insecurity and gang violence, three of the four questions in the referendum sought to revisit and rewrite constitutional provisions.
Voters’ rejection of Noboa’s proposals is best read as a repudiation of a security strategy that has produced human rights violations, mounting casualties, and little reprieve for Ecuadorians.
Unlike in the United States, Latin American countries routinely rewrite their constitutions. In fact, Ecuador’s 20 charters in two centuries rank second only to Venezuela’s 27. A new constitution every 20 years is about par for the course. In some ways, writing a new constitution for a new era makes logical sense. As some constitutional scholars have argued, it’s no more rational to cling to a dated constitution than it would be to teach from a 200-year-old textbook or perform surgery guided by a similarly dated medical text.
The rise of Pink Tide governments at the dawn of this century propelled progressive charters in Ecuador, Bolivia, and Venezuela. Leftist leaders such as Hugo Chávez argued that neoliberal economic policies had been left in the dustbin of history. With the resurgence of an emboldened right, however, it now appears that this prediction had been premature.
For Noboa, whose family’s economic interests stand to benefit, rewriting Ecuador’s foundational text promised a return to an earlier political-economic era. His objective was not modernization but rollback—to dismantle the most progressive aspects of the 2008 Constitution promulgated under Correa. Among its innovative provisions, the current constitution grants rights to nature, advances an economic model based on sumak kawsay (good living) that privileges collective wellbeing over corporate power, strengthens labor protections, and bans foreign military bases as part of declaring Ecuador a land of peace.
In a similar form, many observers criticized the proposal to reduce the size of the National Assembly as an antidemocratic move. Presented by Noboa as a measure to curb excessive government spending, it would have disproportionately stripped representation from rural and less populated provinces and eliminated the presence of small political parties. Doing so would have pushed Ecuador toward a U.S.-style two-party model, one of the least democratic ways of organizing a parliamentary system.
The beneficiaries would have been Noboa’s right-wing Acción Democrática Nacional (ADN) and Correa’s progressive Revolución Ciudadana, the two forces that already dominate Ecuador’s increasingly polarized political landscape. In terms of popular support, both parties have high floors and low ceilings, leaving many voters eager for alternatives.
Ironically, the three-step process that produced the 2008 Constitution—approval to convene an assembly, election of delegates, and ratification of the final draft—each passed with margins similar to or greater than Sunday’s “no” vote.
Protests and Indigenous Power
The referendum followed a month-long wave of protest against Noboa’s plan to cut fuel subsidies, a policy that would have disproportionately harmed poor and rural communities dependent on public transportation. Facing sustained mobilization led by Indigenous organizations, Noboa ultimately retreated, partially preserving the subsidies.
On Sunday, the Indigenous-majority areas that led the protests also delivered the strongest rejection of the referendum. For many, the vote confirmed that their mobilization had not been in vain.
For now, Ecuadorians have opted to defend workers’ rights, Indigenous communities, and the environment—and to block Noboa’s attempt to consolidate an authoritarian, neoliberal turn aligned with Washington’s hemispheric agenda.
Marc Becker is the author, among other works, of Indians and Leftists in the Making of Ecuador’s Modern Indigenous Movements (2008) and Pachakutik: Indigenous Movements and Electoral Politics in Ecuador (2011). He is currently writing a book on Philip Agee and the CIA in Ecuador in the early 1960s. He observed the 2025 Ecuadorian elections with a delegation from the Democratic Socialists of America (DSA).