WITH attention rightly focused on mounting US military threats against Venezuela, another significant development in neighbouring Ecuador has gone under the radar.

Both are part of the same US project to reassert dominance over Latin America — a region Washington has long treated as its backyard, but where a generation of left-wing governments has challenged that control.

On Sunday, Ecuador will hold a referendum that could open the door to new US military bases — something explicitly prohibited by the country’s progressive 2008 constitution. The move marks a decisive step towards dismantling the achievements of the “Citizens’ Revolution” led by former socialist president Rafael Correa.

Ecuador previously hosted a US base until 2009, when the agreement was scrapped under Correa’s government. At the time, Correa quipped that the US could keep its base if “they let us put a base in Miami.” His administration was part of a continental wave that asserted sovereignty over natural resources, used those for social progress, and rejected foreign military presence.

But times have changed in Ecuador. Last week, ahead of the referendum, the US Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem made a high-profile trip there to tour its military installations — a visit that carried more than a whiff of colonial officials inspecting their territories.

Ecuador’s referendum does not only concern foreign bases. It also proposes slashing the number of members of parliament by nearly half and cutting state funding to political parties — measures designed to weaken the representation of indigenous movements and left-wing opposition to President Daniel Noboa’s neoliberal and anti-environmental agenda.

Even more fundamentally, it calls for a new constituent assembly to begin the process of entirely replacing the 2008 constitution itself — regarded as a global beacon for being the only one in the world to have enshrined rights for nature and which guarantees strategic sectors such as energy, telecommunications and water are under public ownership.

That constitution has always been an obstacle to Ecuador’s oligarchy and foreign corporations, who want to control the country’s resources and dismantle its social and environmental protections to maximise profits.

This referendum is just the latest stage in an unrelenting campaign to erase every trace of the gains achieved during Correa’s decade in office. That process has been utterly ruthless: the left systematically targeted through political persecution and “lawfare,” opponents jailed — including Correa’s former vice-president — and Correa himself forced into exile on trumped-up charges, while the country has been dragged back under IMF control and the neoliberal policies that follow.

President Noboa — the son of Ecuador’s richest man — moved quickly to call this referendum after his re-election in April. I was part of a Progressive International delegation to that election, which was conducted under a state of emergency, with a heavy military presence, and far from free or fair.

Nonetheless, the outcome suited Washington. A US intelligence assessment concluded that a Noboa presidency would best serve US national security interests.

Noboa’s government has framed Sunday’s referendum as a key step in improving security — a narrative designed to win support from a population weary of spiralling violence, as Ecuador has become a key route for the transnational drugs trade.

Ecuador is now the most violent country in Latin America, with its murder rate rising nearly tenfold since Correa left office. Under Noboa, this year is on track to record the highest number of murders in the country’s history — a shocking reversal for a nation that under Correa was one of the safest in the region.

Under the banner of restoring order, the Noboa government has declared a state of internal armed conflict and governed under near-permanent emergency rule — handing vast powers to the military and police while unleashing a crackdown on civil rights and basic democratic freedoms.

This has also provided a convenient pretext for the US to expand its military, security and intelligence presence — which has always been the real objective of Washington’s so-called “war on drugs.”

With Trump whipping up the idea of “narco-terrorists” in Venezuela, Colombia, and Mexico, a narrative is being built to justify interventions. Ecuador could soon serve as a key hub for military operations across the region.

The wider aim of this US strategy is clear: to reverse Latin America’s growing independence and its move toward multipolar co-operation. Over the past decade, the region has strengthened ties both within the continent and with the global South — particularly China and the Brics nations — challenging Washington’s traditional dominance.

This assertion of Latin American sovereignty is intolerable for the US, especially given the vast resources of the region. Venezuela has the world’s largest oil reserves and South America holds enormous deposits of the strategic minerals essential for the global energy transition and new technologies that will shape the 21st century. Over half of the world’s lithium, for instance, lies in Chile, Argentina, and Bolivia.

The drive for new US military bases in Ecuador, the recent deployment of a vast US naval presence in the Caribbean and threats of military action against Venezuela are all part of what the right-wing America First Policy Institute proudly describes as a “bold reassertion of American power” in Latin America.

This is a modern resurrection of the Monroe Doctrine — Washington’s long-standing claim to control the region.

Latin America’s struggle for sovereignty is once again colliding with the US determination to maintain control. Defeating this referendum would be a huge boost not just for Ecuador, but for all who stand for sovereignty, democracy and social justice across the region — and who refuse to see Latin America’s future dictated once again by Washington.