Trump's 'Shield of the Americas' is more fragile than it seems

Trump's 'Shield of the Americas' is more fragile than it seems

President Donald Trump likes to say he is "nine for nine" with the candidates he has backed in Latin America and the Caribbean, and Brazil's Oct. 25 runoff could make it ten. Senator Flávio Bolsonaro led the first round on Oct. 4, and Brazil under his leadership could seek to join the Shield of the Americas, the security coalition Washington launched in March and now presents as proof that the hemisphere has turned its way. How much support do the coalition's current members have at home? Less than Trump's scorecard suggests. In eight of the 11 Shield countries measured by the 2026 round of LAPOP's AmericasBarometer, fielded between October 2025 and June 2026, more respondents would vote for an opposition party than for the president's party or candidate, and in seven of them the gap reached 20 points or more. Survey results indicate that voters grade governments on crime and the cost of living, and the lukewarm voters who once stayed with incumbents have stopped doing so. El Salvador and Costa Rica, where voters have rewarded hard-line security policies, are the clear exceptions, along with Honduras, surveyed in President Nasry Asfura's first months in office. What does a government do when its voters are walking away? Across the coalition, the answer has been to build up the security apparatus, with more military operations, more prisons and wider emergency powers. Washington is covering the bill. On Sept. 15, the State Department told Congress it would shift $52 million in foreign military financing — money budgeted for allies in Europe and the Middle East — to Colombia, Ecuador, Panama and Peru to fight what it called "narcoterrorism in our backyard." Washington had announced plans in August for $1 billion in security assistance to Colombia's new president, Abelardo de la Espriella, whom Trump calls a "worthy champion." U.S. forces also began supporting Ecuadorian military operations in March against groups Washington designates as terrorist organizations. Voters did ask for tougher policing, and these governments are supplying it in the form El Salvador made famous, with mass prisons and emergency law. Costa Rica opens a maximum-security prison for 5,100 inmates on Oct. 14, built at a cost of $35 million on the pattern of Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele's CECOT; Bukele himself helped lay its first stone in January. Honduras's Congress approved El Salvador-style prison measures in September at Asfura's request, including isolation for high-risk prisoners. In Chile, José Antonio Kast sent Congress a reform in August that would create a new state of exception for "grave alterations to public security," letting the armed forces deploy in affected zones, along with separate prison regimes for organized crime, but withdrew it in October after it failed to secure enough votes in the Senate. In Ecuador, Daniel Noboa has governed under an "internal armed conflict" declaration since 2024, and on Sept. 16 he decreed another 60-day state of exception across eight provinces, suspending the inviolability of the home and imposing the year's third curfew. Of the 5,023 people arrested during the May curfew, only 717, about 14%, had ties to organized crime, according to Ecuador’s own interior minister. Judging by the survey, two years of emergency rule have bought neither security nor support: 35% of Ecuadorians said they had been crime victims in the past year, the highest rate in the coalition, and 63% felt unsafe in their own neighborhoods. Only 17% said they would vote for Noboa's side. Five of the eight flagging presidents — those in Panama, Guatemala, Paraguay, Chile, and the Dominican Republic — are barred from consecutive terms, so what they entrench is a set of institutions that their successors will inherit. Paraguay's Congress ratified a status-of-forces agreement in March that places U.S. military personnel under U.S. criminal jurisdiction. In January, Guatemala's Bernardo Arévalo declared a 30-day state of siege that suspended the right to protest and allowed detentions without a judicial order. Only Bukele has entrenched himself personally. He secured an indefinite reelection in 2025 after running for a second term despite a constitutional ban, and his state of exception has resulted in about 92,000 arrests without judicial warrants since 2022. Washington's own standing has slid along with its partners'. LAPOP has asked about the trustworthiness of the U.S. government in nine Shield countries every year since 2012, and the answers have risen and fallen with the occupant of the White House. In 2012, an average of 72% called the U.S. government very or somewhat trustworthy. The share fell to 45% during Trump's first term, recovered to 60% under Joe Biden, and has dropped back to 45% in the latest round. Some of the steepest declines since 2012 have come among Washington's most dependable partners, from 87% to 40% in Panama and from 71% to 36% in El Salvador. In Panama, an 18.5-point drop in popularity since 2023 is specific to Washington. Over the same period, trust in the National Assembly, the presidency, the Supreme Court, and elections held steady or rose slightly, while only the police lost ground by about 6 points. The decline also cuts across political lines, from 57% to 34% among Panamanians on the left, from 62% to 43% on the right, and from 66% to 44% among those who approve of President José Raúl Mulino. In Argentina, Chile, and Bolivia, 60% to 69% of those who approve of the president trust Washington, compared to about 10% of those who disapprove. Across the 16 Latin American countries surveyed in 2026, 40% consider the U.S. government trustworthy. The administration reads its partners' election wins as a mandate at a moment when the publics in those countries trust Washington as little as they did at the low point of Trump's first term. In most of these countries, the next government will be chosen by voters who distrust Washington and are already looking past the incumbent. When Noboa asked Ecuadorians in November 2025 to allow foreign military bases, about 61% said no. Emergency decrees also expand the armed forces' role in policing, and militaries rarely relinquish prerogatives once civilian governments have granted them. Successors may try to unwind what they inherit, or they may keep the prisons and emergency powers for their own purposes — the more dangerous of the two outcomes in a model that treats the state of exception as ordinary government. Washington, in either case, is tying its hemispheric strategy to commitments made by governments that their own citizens are preparing to replace, and millions of Latin Americans will live inside the security apparatus those governments leave behind. Note: Vote-intention figures cover the 11 Shield governments that LAPOP surveyed under their current administrations; Peru and Colombia were surveyed under earlier governments and are excluded. Trust figures average the nine Shield members surveyed in every round since 2012: Colombia, Costa Rica, the Dominican Republic, El Salvador, Guatemala, Honduras, Panama, Paraguay and Peru. AmericasBarometer estimates are weighted and exclude "don't know" and "no answer."