What to Expect From the Shield of the Americas

The “brand-new military coalition” is likely to result in a massive U.S. military buildup in Latin America and the Caribbean

Recently, President Donald Trump created the Shield of the Americas, a consortium of 12 Latin American nations and the United States, officially focused on targeting cartels with military force, curbing “illegal” immigration, and countering China in the region. Of the countries invited to the inaugural summit hosted at Trump’s Doral golf resort in Florida, Brazil, the largest economy in Latin America and the Caribbean, Colombia, with the fourth-largest economy, and Mexico, the second-largest economy in the region and the U.S.’s largest trading partner, were not invited.

Those invited were Argentine President Javier Milei, Bolivian President Rodrigo Paz Pereira, Chilean President-elect José Antonio Kast, Costa Rican President Rodrigo Chaves, Dominican Republic President Luis Abinader, Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa, Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, Guyanese President Mohamed Irfaan Ali, Honduran President Nasry Asfura, Panamanian President José Raúl Mulino, Paraguayan President Santiago Peña, and Trinidad and Tobago Prime Minister Kamla Persad-Bissessar.

The partner countries involved, unsurprisingly, have presidents who are sympathetic to Trump and are indebted to him in various ways. Several owe their elections to him. Milei owes Trump for helping elect his party members to Argentina’s National Assembly in late 2025. Kast, Pereira, and Asfura owe Trump for helping them get elected last year by his meddling in their elections, and in several cases, threatening voters with isolation from U.S. partnerships and investment. It comes as no surprise that Trump would try to meddle in this year’s elections in the region as well.

The Shield of the Americas summit resulted in the creation of the Americas Counter Cartel Coalition (ACCC) through a proclamation. According to Trump, five additional countries signed the ACCC proclamation: Guatemala, Peru, Uruguay, Venezuela, and Suriname. Officially, the agreement is meant to “address grave dangers by use of any necessary resources and legally available authorities” to counter drug trafficking. While Mexico has an existing bilateral agreement with the U.S., excluding countries in the region with much more at stake than those represented through a commitment to “lethal military force,” calls the Trump administration’s motivations into question.

“My Administration has designated a number of cartels and transnational gangs as foreign terrorist organizations and has since dedicated unprecedented resources towards their destruction,” reads the proclamation. “These international entities control territories and commerce, extort political and judicial systems, wield arms and field military capabilities, and use assassinations and terrorism to achieve their ends.”

To achieve the aims of the “brand-new military coalition,” the White House will likely seek to install U.S. military bases in participating countries or use their existing bases to host U.S. military assets. In return, the U.S. is poised to offer a $50-$100 billion investment pool through the U.S. International Development Finance Corporation for U.S.-backed infrastructure projects to counter Chinese investment in the region. The agreement is also rumored to lay the groundwork for securing supply chains and isolating China from the region through tariffs.

While the full details of the arrangement or the roles each country is expected to play have yet to be released, signing a working agreement and openly committing a country to an open-ended partnership with the United States have historically proven detrimental. The White House argues that cartels can only be defeated through military power rather than legal solutions, thus opening the door for the continued use of targeting that has killed innocent civilians in the Caribbean and Pacific Ocean while denying due process under the law.

The presence of the U.S. military in Latin America is largely unwelcome by most populations in the region, as noted by a recent vote in Ecuador to keep U.S. military bases out of the country. Despite that, Ecuador’s president, who signed onto the ACCC, ignored the will of his people and allowed the U.S. to conduct a military operation in the country in the week leading up to the Shield of the Americas summit. The operation, done under the guise of counter-narcotics operations, was conducted in an area known for Indigenous resistance to Noboa’s government, lying very close to Ecuador’s border with Colombia.

The White House and Noboa’s government claim the attack was against Comandos de la Frontera, a dissident group of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC). However, the U.S.-led attack targeted coastal and border areas like Guayas and El Oro, where the Ecuadorian military previously deployed heavily to Imbabura to break Indigenous-led blockades. The Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (CONAIE) condemned the military operation as an “unprecedented military occupation” and a “siege” on the city of Otavalo. Two days later, many Indigenous activists had their bank accounts frozen.

Map of ACCC participating countries as of March 10, 2026

The military intervention in Ecuador highlights what the future will likely look like under the ACCC. The populations of these countries will be unaware of who is doing what as bombs drop in various areas. With former Department of Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem at the helm, providing fusion between the Department of State and the Department of Defense, and her history of cruelty and inhumanity while shirking the law, U.S. actions in Latin America are unlikely to consider human life in any of its actions.

A brief look at the map of participating countries highlights where the U.S. will likely position military assets, putting many of the countries Trump has previously targeted in the U.S.’s crosshairs.

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Arturo is an independent freelance journalist based in Houston, Texas. He has written hundreds of articles on policing, immigration, race, and Latin America. His work has been featured in Unicorn Riot, Latino Rebels, Capitol Press, Momentum, in the U.S., and outlets abroad. He is the Editor-in-Chief at the Antagonist Magazine and is a co-leader of the Writers and Editors of Color.