Attacks on Latin American drug cartels are “just the beginning” Joseph Humire, the acting assistant secretary of war for homeland defense and Americas security affairs, told members of the House Armed Services Committee last week.
An attack on Cuba is also on the cards. Humire’s meeting came a day after Trump said:
I do believe I’ll be the honor of — having the honor of taking Cuba. Whether I free it, take it, I think I can do anything I want with it.
You can read our reporting on the Cuba blockade and US aggression here.
The build-up to the 3 January attack on Venezuela was characterised by unlawful drone strikes on alleged ‘narco-terrorist’ boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific. This pattern has continued. The last strike was on 19 March, bringing the death toll to 157 across 44 strikes since 2 September 2025.
Latin America: Total Extermination
Humire told the House Armed Services Committee:
that the Department of War supported “bilateral kinetic actions against cartel targets along the Colombia-Ecuador border” — Pentagon-speak for March 3 strikes on unnamed “Designated Terrorist Organizations”.
“The joint effort, named ‘Operation Total Extermination,’ is the start of a military offensive by Ecuador against transnational criminal organizations with the support of the U.S”.
The American commander for operations in the so-called Southcom region, General Francis Donovan, said the strikes were only a small part of what the US had planned:
What we’re moving for right now might be an extension of Southern Spear, but really a counter-cartel campaign process that puts total systemic friction across this network. I believe these kinetic [boat] strikes are just one small part of that.
As in Iran, the US appears to have issues with targeting or telling the truth – likely both.
Blew up a dairy farm
In early March US officials released a video of a bombed location in Ecuador. They bragged that it showed how their strikes at sea had now shifted into strikes against cartels on land.
This is utterly extraordinary.
If Hegseth et al got this wrong, think what else is happening with the drug boat strikes and much more.
The U.S. Said It Helped Bomb a Drug Camp. It Was a Dairy Farm.
Gets worse as you read it.
— Ryan Goodman (@rgoodlaw) March 25, 2026
The New York Times (NYT) has since reported that the strike hit a dairy farm:
The military strike appears to have destroyed a cattle and dairy farm, not a drug trafficking compound, according to interviews with the farm’s owner, four of its workers, human rights lawyers and residents and leaders in San Martín, the remote farming village in northern Ecuador where the strike took place.
The US and the Ecuadorian military are working together on ‘counter-cartel’ operations. As the Canary reported on 9 March, the country’s president is a Trump-style politician:
Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa has pushed through ‘urgent’ neoliberal reforms, cutting public spending while clamping down on civil liberties, workers’ rights, and indigenous environmental activism against mining and fossil fuel extraction.
Workers arriving at the farm on 3 March told the NYT:
Ecuadorean soldiers arrived by helicopter on March 3, doused several shelters and sheds with gasoline and ignited them after interrogating workers and beating four of them with the butts of their guns.
Workers tortured at the farm
The workers also said they were tortured:
Three of the workers, who requested anonymity for fear of retaliation by the government, said the soldiers later choked and subjected them to electrical shocks before letting them go.
Three days later, on 6 March, the Ecuadorian – not US – military allegedly bombed the site from a helicopter:
Ecuadorean helicopters returned to the farm three days later, on March 6, and appeared to drop explosives on the farm’s smoldering remains.
At this point, Ecuadorian forces recorded the footage that was later shown by American officials. Other buildings, including nearby abandoned houses, were reportedly burned too.
Trump has become bogged down in a war with Iran. Yet this is a major diversion from the 2025 National Security Strategy, which had a major focus on hemispheric control. But while the news cycle focuses on the more explosive war with Iran – with its deep implications for the global energy economy – the US dirty war is still exacting a heavy toll in Latin America.
Featured image via the Canary
