Little Marco Rubio (aka U.S. Secretary of State) did not expect trouble on the first two stops of his Sept. 8-10 three-nation tour in South America. The Presidents of both Colombia and Ecuador hold dual U.S. citizenship; Ecuador’s Daniel Noboa since his birth in Miami; Colombia’s Abelardo de la Espriella having sworn his naturalization oath of allegiance to the United States ("I absolutely and entirely renounce and abjure all allegiance and fidelity to any foreign… State….") in 2023—only three years prior to assuming the Presidency of Colombia, under Washington’s watchful and approving eye.
Both those nations were already members of the Trump administration’s “Shield of the Americas” operation to get U.S. troops into the region. In Ecuador, Rubio hailed Noboa’s government as the U.S.’s “most aggressive partner” in the region, because U.S. “elite forces” now operate on Ecuadorian territory. Colombia, as EIR News reported, is discussing approving a U.S. military base on its territory.
Rubio announced that Peru had agreed to join the Shield of the Americas. This came as an op-ed he penned for publication Sept. 8 in different media in the three nations—before Peru’s new President, Keiko Fujimori, had announced it herself. In their joint Sept. 10 press conference, she repeated several times that what Peru expects to get out of joining is intelligence needed to fight the drug cartels.
Rubio’s op-ed made clear, however, that the main concern of his trip is the policy to drive China out of the region, as stated in the National Security Strategy document of late 2025. While both Colombia, and even more so Ecuador, have significant economic ties to China, severing ties between China and Peru is going to be particularly difficult. For starters, China has been Peru’s top trade partner for the last 12 years, and Peru runs a sizable trade surplus, amounting to $52 billion over those twelve years. Furthermore, Peruvians are excited about the opportunity for the country to industrialize and develop through the Chancay Port, which China helped build. Rubio specifically singled out China’s role in Peru in his op-ed, claiming that “while projects backed by the Chinese Communist Party circumvent Peru’s legal frameworks and threaten transparency and data security, the U.S. private sector is bringing open, market-driven investments that preserve Peruvian ownership and protect the security interests of our hemisphere.”
Rubio does have a credibility problem when he charges that China carries out “predatory practices” while the U.S. defends the national sovereignty of the countries of the region! As in its military invasion to seize Venezuela’s President and oil?
When asked in the joint press conference if her government is prepared to work more closely with the U.S. despite China’s massive investment in Peru, including the Port of Chancay, President Fujimori replied that Peru is part of APEC, and intends to continue opening trade with different countries from Asia, from the Pacific, and from Europe. Before Rubio arrived, Senator Juan del Aguila, from Fujimori’s Popular Force party, had insisted in a Sept. 7 Senate hearing that China is “Peru’s main ally in the Asia-Pacific axis,” as he instructed Foreign Minister Carlos Espá (an open U.S. asset) that closer ties with the United States must not come at Beijing’s expense.
