The FBI in Ecuador

• In Event: The FBI and United States counter intelligence networks in Latin America

Abstract

In the 1940s, the FBI maintained a total of 45 agents who conducted political surveillance in Ecuador. Despite this large FBI presence, Ecuador never was the target of German, Japanese, or Italian espionage networks that might justify such a dedication of resources as happened in Mexico, Brazil, Chile, and Argentina. With the decline of the Nazi threat by 1943, the FBI shifted its entire intelligence apparatus to focus on FBI director J. Edgar Hoover’s primary obsession with communism. The field reports that Hoover forwarded from Ecuador to the Department of State in Washington, D.C. were unsigned, and based on a combination of newspaper articles and confidential and anonymous sources. The sources often appeared to have immediate and intimate contact with communist leaders. Why would a small and insignificant communist party in a small South American country become the focus of surveillance by the US embassy and the target of an FBI investigation? Surprisingly, over the course of the subsequent years the FBI reports would improve and reveal a surprisingly close reading and understanding of the Ecuadorian left.

Author

• Marc Becker, Truman State University