Manta, Ecuador – Jose Hernan Flores is still trying to recover from what he describes as a hostile encounter with United States forces at sea. Flores is a fisherman from the town of San Mateo, along Ecuador’s Pacific coast. In March, he was out on the water with his crew of 16, piloting his vessel, La Negra Francisca Duarte II, to chase schools of fish.
Suddenly, a group of military-style drones appeared in the sky. They swooped towards La Negra Francisca Duarte II. Two of our sailors were injured,” Flores told Al Jazeera.
As La Negra Francisca Duarte II caught fire, Flores and his crew abandoned ship, escaping onto smaller boats, known as skiffs, used to help with their fishing. But as they approached what appeared to be a nearby tuna vessel, Flores realised its occupants were not fishermen at all. They handcuffed and blindfolded us.
They had drones and all sorts of military equipment,” Flores said. The soldiers helped treat those injured in Flores’s crew and then handed them over to a navy unit from El Salvador. The fishermen were at sea for at least another week until they were brought ashore.
Later, they were deported back to Ecuador. Flores says his boat, valued at around $400,000, was completely destroyed. He is still paying off the loan he took out to buy it.
His story is one of dozens from Ecuadorian fishermen who claim they too were attacked by the US at sea. While the US military has denied responsibility for the sinking of Flores’s boat, the North American country has adopted an increasingly aggressive approach to what it considers to be maritime drug-trafficking. Since the start of US President Donald Trump’s second term, the Pentagon has carried out dozens of strikes on small vessels in the eastern Pacific Ocean and Caribbean Sea, many of them lethal.
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