QUITO, Ecuador — Foreign military bases will not reappear in Ecuador following a landslide referendum victory on Sunday over President Daniel Nóbua’s security agenda. A narrow majority of them voted “no,” according to a Reuters tally. Nov. 17, 2025.
A second question on whether to convene a constituent assembly also failed, with about 6 in 10 voting against, while proposals to reduce political parties’ funding and shrink Congress garnered poor support, The Associated Press reported. The slap-down brings further isolation to Noboa’s larger security program, which leans in part, but not entirely, on foreign military bases.
The end of the vote caps an eventful year in which voters approved stricter policing and extradition during an April 2024 security referendum, measures Noboa promised would help quell cartel violence. The rejection on Sunday suggests a limit to those tools when they involve hosting foreign forces.
Ecuador’s new ban on foreign military bases is not a new development. A 2008 Reuters dispatch captured the assembly’s threat to make foreign bases illegal, a stance that toughened after the U.S. vacated its Manta airfield.
Explicit is the prohibition: Article 5 of the 2008 constitution holds Ecuador to be a territory of peace and prohibits its use as a foreign military facility.
The politics are long-running. “If there’s no problem having foreign soldiers on their soil, surely they’ll let us park a base in Miami,” former President Rafael Correa joked to Reuters in 2007 about the U.S. agreement. The lease expired in 2009, and concerns about sovereignty have lingered.
The first counts reflected that a question on the basis was opposed by nearly two-thirds, a similar pattern supported by Al Jazeera’s early results. The setback punctures Noboa’s security agenda and resets the discussion toward intelligence-sharing, training, and joint operations, short of permanent basing.
