Burning documents. That’s how diplomats from the Castro regime left Ecuador after President Daniel Noboa declared Ambassador Basilio Antonio Gutiérrez and 21 other officials persona non grata. He gave them 48 hours to leave Ecuadorian territory.

And shortly after the announcement, smoke began to billow from the roof of the Cuban embassy. Neighbors complained about the smoke, according to local reports. The last image of the diplomatic headquarters in Quito, which went viral in the press, shows a man burning documents in front of a metal structure.

Was Gutiérrez hiding close ties with members of the Ecuadorian leftist political group known as RC5, a frequent defender of the communist regime in Cuba? Were there any conversations during the multiple meetings with legislators like Héctor Rodríguez and Liliana Durán, supporters of former President Rafael Correa, a fugitive from justice?

Cuban embassies have historically served as a contact center for Castro’s intelligence services, and their ambassadors are generally high-ranking officials within those military structures. This role they still maintain.

It is no coincidence that Fidel Castro invested so much in expanding the Revolution’s diplomatic network through diplomatic missions and the so-called “solidarity groups with Cuba,” which are proliferating in almost every corner of the planet.

For the moment, the Daniel Noboa government has not offered any explanation for the expulsion, but the measure comes just days before the president is scheduled to travel to the United States to participate in a summit of Latin American presidents with Donald Trump.

Starting in 2025, the region’s alignment with the White House’s foreign policy, rebranded as the Donroe Doctrine, has politically drawn Noboa and his cabinet into this alliance.

Last November, it came as no surprise when the president of Ecuador confirmed that the Armed Forces were conducting operations against illegal mining, which generally fuels the cartels, in the north of the country.

Spectacular images circulated on social media of cannon fire against mountains that billowed smoke in the distance, in the Andean province of Imbabura. There were arrests, including a member of the Oliver Sinisterra Front, a dissident group from the former socialist guerrilla group Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).

That alliance has recently been strengthened by another development. Last week, military personnel from Ecuador and the United States began joint operations in an attempt to combat organized crime groups and ensure security in the region.

U.S. Southern Command stated on X that it “is actively working with social partners in Latin America and the Caribbean to combat narco-terrorism,” and that “collaborative efforts, such as the current operations between Ecuador and the United States” against such organizations, “are essential to ensuring security and stability in the Western Hemisphere and protecting the homeland.”

In that context, the expulsion of the Cuban ambassador from Quito is entirely understandable. Trump has further tightened the noose around Castroism since capturing Venezuelan dictator Nicolás Maduro this January, thus cutting off the island’s constant supply of oil at preferential prices.

“Cuba’s going to fall,” he said in a recent interview with Politico.

In November 2025, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced that Carlos Zamora, Cuba’s ambassador to Peru, had to leave the country permanently. The measure was announced after a meeting with Deputy Minister Félix Denegri Boza, who summoned him to discuss matters related to his administration.

Zamora, known as “El Gallo” (The Rooster), has served in the Castro regime’s foreign service for over five decades. According to the newspaper Infobae, he “joined Cuba’s intelligence structure in 1968 and subsequently represented his country in various nations of the region,” in the embassies of Ecuador, Panama, Brazil, El Salvador, and Bolivia.

In December 2021, he had been accredited as ambassador to Peru during the administration of then-leftist President Pedro Castillo, who is imprisoned for an attempted coup. Former Cuban agents, such as Enrique García, warned at that time that Zamora and his wife, Maura Juampere Pérez, held the rank of colonel in Cuba’s Directorate of Intelligence.

Although shrouded in secrecy, Zamora’s departure once again supported Washington’s policy of diplomatic isolation and weakening of the socialist regime.

When consulted for this article, Peruvian congresswoman Milagros Aguayo stated that Zamora was asked to leave the country “because of his constant interference in national politics.”

Whatever the reason, Havana is clearly not at its most popular in the region, where refreshing winds from the right are blowing to dispel old political clouds.