RT — Documentary
20260920 193000 UTC
420 transcript segments
Google Cloud Speech-to-Text API (Chirp) + Gemini 2.5 Flash Non-Thinking
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Machine transcription. Treat it as a searchable index of what was broadcast, not a verbatim quotation record.

[00:00:29] Kesease.
[00:00:30] Perera
[00:00:33] perera here.
[00:00:35] 25,
[00:00:43] become, as Washington puts it, one of the predera district of Manta a
[00:00:46] Pacific port
[00:00:47] city,
[00:00:51] every morning at dawn to feed their families, local fishermen head
[00:00:54] out to sea hoping for modest catch to take to the local
[00:00:58] market.
[00:01:05] Maria's life was like everyone else's in the village, but one
[00:01:09] day her husband louise set sail and never
[00:01:12] returned.
[00:01:16] his fishing boat and its crew of 18 vanished into the ocean without
[00:01:22] not, I i trace.
[00:01:27] for 24 years she's waited for Louis. searching for
[00:01:30] answers, she barely made and meet while
[00:01:34] raising her son
[00:01:35] alone,
[00:01:39] only now is she breaking her silence to tell her
[00:01:43] story.
[00:01:49] needed to sustain forces already in Our Father who art in heaven, hallowed be your name, your kingdom
[00:01:52] come, your will be done on earth as it is in heaven,
[00:01:56] give us this day our daily bread.
[00:02:01] Luis, wherever you are, I hope
[00:02:05] you are well, I know we promised
[00:02:08] to take care of and raise our children, our
[00:02:11] children together, but God
[00:02:14] decided that it
[00:02:16] shouldn't be so, your son misses
[00:02:20] you, he needs you and it
[00:02:24] hasn't
[00:02:27] I have, I been easy, because neither he nor I were.
[00:02:30] Because you said you were only going to fish and that you would return, that we
[00:02:34] would baptize him, that we would celebrate his 2
[00:02:38] years,
[00:02:47] this is a book, this is the boat, here
[00:02:50] it is clearer, here it looks
[00:02:52] better,
[00:02:56] this is the name of the 18 crew members, this one
[00:02:59] here, they are all here, Luis
[00:03:02] Quigije, my son is named
[00:03:04] after him, yes, you can
[00:03:06] show it, this is here, this
[00:03:10] photo here
[00:03:12] begins the clippings
[00:03:14] from here begin the newspaper
[00:03:18] clippings,
[00:03:25] on June 5, 2002, they depart
[00:03:28] from the port of Manta. at night, 8
[00:03:32] PM, 18 people to carry
[00:03:35] out fishing activities with the positive
[00:03:39] mentality that for Father's Day they
[00:03:43] would return to spend time with their family, they did
[00:03:46] not return, they raised the
[00:03:49] alarm through some colleagues, through
[00:03:53] the captain's wife of the vessel who
[00:03:56] indicated, after June 7,
[00:04:00] that contact had been lost with the
[00:04:01] vessel,
[00:04:05] the crew members had disappeared without a trace, without
[00:04:08] leaving any marks, and we presumed
[00:04:11] it was a forced disappearance because the American
[00:04:15] base was here, that we are not in the Bermuda
[00:04:18] Triangle where a vessel
[00:04:22] of 120 tons disappears overnight
[00:04:25] and leaves no trace whatsoever for
[00:04:28] it not to have left traces, it must
[00:04:32] have been with some type of
[00:04:36] weapon, some bombing that sank the vessel with all
[00:04:40] its crew members, because there is no other
[00:04:43] logic that
[00:04:46] they either drilled it and sank the
[00:04:50] vessel completely so as not to leave
[00:04:53] evidence because they found nothing, they had
[00:04:56] nothing, there is nothing, there is no in the reports
[00:05:00] they made, there is no that they have seized a gram of
[00:05:04] drugs on any vessel,
[00:05:07] but damages are reported, so son
[00:05:10] says: no it can't be, you can't, it doesn't
[00:05:14] make sense, having a base
[00:05:16] here,
[00:05:22] at some point they found a gas cylinder and a
[00:05:26] vest and it was presented to the press and the
[00:05:29] captaincy and the port captain says it is
[00:05:32] presumed that they have been there for 15 to 22 days because the
[00:05:36] seashells were stuck, but that's what I
[00:05:39] always say, it wasn't to presume, there is a... an investigation
[00:05:42] unit here which is the judicial police that could do
[00:05:46] the expert report on that and determine truly how long
[00:05:50] that had been in the water and they never
[00:05:53] did it, finally after a few
[00:05:55] years they handed over those evidences to a
[00:05:59] junk dealer and they were found discarded on the
[00:06:03] Abarbasquillo road,
[00:06:07] mountain passes were found, wallets, evidence of
[00:06:11] violations, and it was said that there were
[00:06:14] documents of our
[00:06:15] relatives,
[00:06:23] well, the first story begins in Galapagos, with the
[00:06:27] military base in Baltra, during the Second World
[00:06:30] War, the pretext that existed there was
[00:06:33] that Ecuador was going to be attacked and that
[00:06:37] the base was placed in Galapagos to prevent attacks on
[00:06:41] Ecuador. What it did from Galapagos was monitor the Panama
[00:06:45] Canal,
[00:06:54] another US military base was established
[00:06:58] in the city of Manta through an international
[00:07:02] agreement, this base had a
[00:07:05] duration of 10 years, that's what the
[00:07:08] agreement said and it could be renewed by the parties.
[00:07:29] It wasn't only used to monitor the eastern Pacific, but supposedly to
[00:07:33] conduct anti-narcotics operations in the
[00:07:35] region.
[00:07:42] As... the war on drugs, the US military patrols the areas
[00:07:45] around Cocos Island in Costa Rica, the Gargona and Melpelo
[00:07:49] islands in Colombia, and Koiba in
[00:07:51] Panama,
[00:07:54] but the Galapagos islands, where America hopes to have new military
[00:07:57] base, are a long way from traditional South American cocaine trafficking
[00:08:01] roots. All of this suggests that the true
[00:08:05] goal is to expand the US military
[00:08:07] presence.
[00:08:12] my investigation was a compilation
[00:08:16] of the agreements that were
[00:08:18] made, how the agreement for the base was
[00:08:22] reached, what the objectives were,
[00:08:25] so we started to investigate, to see what was offered to
[00:08:28] Manta so that the Manta base would
[00:08:32] be accepted and there would be no protest, there was a
[00:08:35] discourse of
[00:08:37] seduction, not for the
[00:08:41] elites, they evaded it, but they were sold
[00:08:44] that, that they were going to disavow, many people
[00:08:47] went into debt to open nightclubs, to open
[00:08:50] restaurants, but the Greeks never left,
[00:08:54] they never went and it broke, the
[00:08:57] portfolio of loans increased
[00:09:01] by almost 300%. to the poor, the
[00:09:05] working people, they were told they would have
[00:09:09] employment, that there would be jobs at the base, seats
[00:09:13] of work, the only people who had employment at the base
[00:09:16] were domestic workers,
[00:09:19] cleaning, with very basic salaries,
[00:09:23] no,
[00:09:30] the negative thing about the base here in Manta was that
[00:09:33] it generated prostitution,
[00:09:36] uh, many women were deceived that they would be given
[00:09:40] citizenship, that did not happen. a
[00:09:44] I believe a US military hit
[00:09:47] someone, he was kept at the base, he was sent to the United States and there
[00:09:51] was no justice for that person, so it was
[00:09:55] a mini United States within our
[00:09:58] territory.
[00:10:05] A call to the national police, to the CONSEP,
[00:10:08] to the narcotics police to give us information about drug seizures
[00:10:12] in coordination with the United States,
[00:10:16] the report we have there says,
[00:10:19] we had no coordination with the United
[00:10:22] States, the seizures we made. from the anti-narcotics
[00:10:26] police are our
[00:10:29] seizures without US support and
[00:10:33] they seized around 250 tons per
[00:10:37] year,
[00:10:42] and we also analyzed the
[00:10:44] plans, here are the plans of the base
[00:10:48] that is, the plan and finally the complaints about
[00:10:52] the sinking of the ships were built. the
[00:10:55] runway with a thick layer of
[00:10:58] cement, of asphalt, and of course
[00:11:01] when we started looking at that, we said well, why
[00:11:05] is that layer necessary,
[00:11:09] if only monitoring aircraft like the Agua
[00:11:13] or the Orion are going to come,
[00:11:16] a structure of that thickness of that layer is not necessary, which
[00:11:20] was the first thing that caught our attention, and
[00:11:22] of course, when we finally learned about the agreement, it
[00:11:26] established that not only the Orion and Agua
[00:11:30] would land in Manta, and the first thing that caught our attention was, if it is a
[00:11:34] cooperation to fight drugs, why do we have
[00:11:37] planes like these, not
[00:11:41] the Galaxies and all that
[00:11:44] stuff, and it established
[00:11:47] that not only the Orion and Agua would land, but
[00:11:51] also the Galaxies, the Contelios, the DC3s, which are the cargo planes
[00:11:58] The C5 Galaxy is a military transport jet designed to carry
[00:12:01] very large cargo. It can rapidly deploy fully
[00:12:05] equipped combat ready units, including tanks
[00:12:08] anywhere in the world, providing vital field logistics
[00:12:14] a combat area.
[00:12:25] here we have documented the sunken boats, that
[00:12:28] is, copies of the legal processes
[00:12:31] that were
[00:12:33] initiated where the ownership
[00:12:37] of the boats, the number of boats, the IDs
[00:12:40] of the fisherman owners, the
[00:12:43] complaints, no, so here are
[00:12:47] documented the boats that were sunk.
[00:12:51] "I'm a fishing boat
[00:12:56] captain. A
[00:12:59] US chopper spotted us, flew around our vessel many times and
[00:13:03] ordered us to stop. A US
[00:13:05] frigate arrived. I was alone at the helm. They were
[00:13:09] following me. They signaled for me to stop. They
[00:13:13] intended to sink our ship. I complied and boarded the
[00:13:16] frigate. After that, they fired about
[00:13:20] 150 cannon shots and the boat
[00:13:23] sank."
[00:13:27] 'While my vessel was in Ecuadorian territorial waters,
[00:13:30] 160 miles off the island of San Cristoval of the
[00:13:34] Galapacus Islands, it was intercepted by a US Navy
[00:13:37] frigate. After evacuating my crew, the frigate opened fire
[00:13:41] and sank our
[00:13:42] ship.
[00:13:48] My boat was intercepted and boarded by a US Navy
[00:13:51] unit. Once on board, the American sailers'.
[00:13:55] began searching and destroying the ship's
[00:13:57] hole. Finding no evidence, they proceeded to damage
[00:14:01] all communication and navigation equipment.
[00:14:18] Gentlemen, I confess myself increasingly disconcerted by the
[00:14:21] Russians rather alarming advances in Asia.
[00:14:25] Indeed, word has reached us that they have of late dispatched
[00:14:28] their first steamship to Bombay.
[00:14:32] India must remain
[00:14:35] hours.
[00:14:41] Their fears came true, the Russians really did come to
[00:14:45] India, but not as colonizers and we
[00:14:48] quickly found a common
[00:14:50] language.
[00:14:56] Growing domestic resistance to and criticism of the US
[00:14:59] military presence, viewed as violation of Ecuador's
[00:15:03] sovereignty led to President Rafael Korya,
[00:15:07] declining to renew the United States's lease in
[00:15:09] 2008. Article 5 of the new
[00:15:13] Constitution declared Ecuador, the
[00:15:16] territory of peace, and explicitly prohibited the
[00:15:20] establishment of foreign military
[00:15:21] bases.
[00:15:25] I confirm the national government's steadfast position not to
[00:15:29] extend the agreement on the use of the manta base by the United
[00:15:33] States of
[00:15:33] America.
[00:15:38] Little did us Ecuadorians know what the Manta base
[00:15:40] was for and what it specifically
[00:15:44] did, to the point that when first Minister of
[00:15:47] Economy and then President of Ecuador, I am
[00:15:50] referring to former President Rafael Correa, puts
[00:15:54] sovereignty in conversation on the table, no,
[00:15:57] and that is an important issue, because that was the point that allowed
[00:16:01] him to say, I am not against the Manta base,
[00:16:05] if you want you can stay, but you leave me.
[00:16:17] Under his leadership, Ecuador has
[00:16:21] the strongest partners for the United
[00:16:22] States.
[00:16:25] Daniel Neboa, a US citizen born in Miami in
[00:16:28] 1987. He's the son of one of Ecuador's wealthiest men, the
[00:16:32] banana king, Alvaro Naboa. Daniel is one of the Donald
[00:16:35] Trump administration's most notable.
[00:16:40] President Neboa wanted to host US military bases in his
[00:16:43] country, but when a November 2025
[00:16:47] referendum rejected the
[00:16:49] idea,
[00:16:52] the US still sent an air force contingent to the manta base under the
[00:16:55] old pretense of being a temporary mission to fight drug
[00:16:58] trafficking.
[00:17:02] On June 16th, 2026, the country's president also declared a state
[00:17:06] of emergency.
[00:17:17] and part of that hypocrisy is saying that with military bases Ecuador's security
[00:17:20] will improve, no, that when we had the
[00:17:23] Manta base, homicides per 10,000 inhabitants were 16
[00:17:26] to 18, when I left the government I left it at
[00:17:30] 5.8, we were the second safest country in Latin America, if
[00:17:33] we truly want to fight drug trafficking, organized crime,
[00:17:37] for example, detect the money trail, tax havens, prohibit tax
[00:17:41] havens, detect the route of weapons that
[00:17:45] come from the United States, detect the ports where drugs
[00:17:48] leave, in the Ecuadorian case these are the private ports of
[00:17:52] banana company Novoa, the company of the president of the republic and absolutely
[00:17:55] nothing is done.
[00:18:08] but US troops don't take part in anti-drug rates, the
[00:18:12] Ecuadorian military seems to conduct those operations
[00:18:15] alone.
[00:18:18] The US military is again stationed at ilo, now a
[00:18:22] dual use airport, a small part is dedicated to civilian
[00:18:26] aircraft, while the rest is used as a US military
[00:18:29] base.
[00:18:33] The Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense has signed an agreement with the Manta
[00:18:36] authorities to
[00:19:07] officers here have been spotted sporting a US army combat aviation
[00:19:11] units in Signia.
[00:19:26] A 30 second video of a military helicopter taking off at Dawn was
[00:19:29] posted on social media. No
[00:19:32] details regarding the targets, area of operation or
[00:19:36] casualties were disclosed.
[00:19:39] The Ecuadorian Ministry of Defense stated that the operation was
[00:19:42] classified.
[00:19:46] Officially, this mission was part of Operation Southern Spear, under
[00:19:50] which the United States has carried out at least 44 strikes on ships in the
[00:19:54] Caribbean and Pacific over the past six months, killing more than
[00:19:57] 150 people that Washington accused of trafficking
[00:20:01] drugs, and it's not just about Ecuadorian
[00:20:04] vessels.
[00:20:17] another story here, fishermen are criminalized and
[00:20:21] they are told that they are all drug traffickers, if all
[00:20:24] fishermen were drug traffickers as
[00:20:28] as the United States says, where would
[00:20:32] we get fish for the local
[00:20:33] market?
[00:20:41] The fish has not decreased in the
[00:20:44] packaging factories,
[00:20:47] the fish has not decreased in the markets. two
[00:20:50] local ones, that means that there is still
[00:20:53] fishing activity by fishermen
[00:20:57] who are dedicated to it, but they are
[00:21:00] bombing them saying they are traffickers.
[00:21:07] At the same time, lawyers and human rights activists claim that
[00:21:11] those actions violate international
[00:21:13] law,
[00:21:16] by using armed force against people, not participating in
[00:21:19] hostilities, "the military is putting them in mortal
[00:21:22] danger with no lawful investigation or
[00:21:25] trial, this is a clear
[00:21:29] violation of human rights,
[00:21:32] no, this has happened in the Caribbean, it has happened in the
[00:21:36] Mexican Pacific, it has happened in the South
[00:21:39] American Pacific also in Ecuadorian
[00:21:41] ecuatorianas.
[00:21:53] As the years go by, it's still
[00:21:57] tough, it's 24
[00:21:59] years, where my son has always
[00:22:03] asked, they have always asked me,
[00:22:06] Mom,
[00:22:09] what would it have been like if my dad were with us,
[00:22:12] Mom,
[00:22:17] how nice,
[00:22:21] and he took you, he took you, he took you to
[00:22:24] work, and tomorrow he will
[00:22:27] work,
[00:22:30] Belén wrote to Jorge and Jorge sent me because I told him
[00:22:33] I wanted, my friends please tomorrow a person
[00:22:37] works in nine trucks and or
[00:22:41] serious things, son,
[00:22:43] wash your hands, come here,
[00:22:47] come, he is approximately. people 6
[00:22:50] years old, this 6 years old, but he is special, he
[00:22:54] is albino,
[00:22:56] albino,
[00:23:03] difficult because my dad was our support.
[00:23:05] for us, she had to work for
[00:23:08] me until now, support me in everything
[00:23:11] because she is the only one
[00:23:17] found strength in my mother. The only one
[00:23:20] I have
[00:23:25] the versions that the Gringo military had sunk the
[00:23:28] boat, that's what is
[00:23:30] known, as there are several
[00:23:33] cases, that's what is known, nothing
[00:23:36] else,
[00:23:43] that they continue investigating and give us an answer, what happened to the
[00:23:46] boat, that they would investigate the case for us.
[00:23:52] yes, there would be an answer,
[00:23:54] but
[00:23:57] they still wouldn't bring him back.
[00:24:15] I would tell him that I love him and that I'm still
[00:24:17] waiting for him.
[00:24:25] Despite that response, fishermen are still
[00:24:27] being mistreated on the high seas, their rights are still being
[00:24:31] violated out there and the
[00:24:34] state still fails to defend them, two
[00:24:37] vessels were intercepted
[00:24:40] within 200 nautical miles, they were
[00:24:44] bombed by drones, that's in the
[00:24:46] news, it's on the channels, but the news doesn't
[00:24:50] say that drugs were seized, we can
[00:24:53] say that history repeats itself, but thank
[00:24:56] God they are alive because of the social
[00:25:00] pressure that was exerted, because the family
[00:25:03] came out and reported that they were missing,
[00:25:06] securitization or militarization of the
[00:25:09] fight against drugs is a tradition that is almost 60
[00:25:13] years old and has failed in the United States and throughout the
[00:25:17] hemisphere, drug trafficking has not been able to be controlled by
[00:25:20] military means and will not be able to be in the foreseeable
[00:25:24] future, there was no fight
[00:25:27] against drugs at all, the fight against drugs for
[00:25:31] us from our perspective is a
[00:25:34] pretext for military intervention in the countries of
[00:25:37] America, sometimes very subtle, sometimes very
[00:25:41] grotesque, other times, but a process of US military
[00:25:44] intervention to control the social processes
[00:25:48] that occur in Latin America. that is the intention of a military
[00:25:51] base, at this moment we are experiencing a
[00:25:54] restructuring of the world, a new
[00:25:58] order is being born and it is a new multipolar
[00:26:00] order
[00:26:02] where the United States no
[00:26:06] longer has the power of an
[00:26:08] empire,
[00:26:13] and many times they are pushing it back by force, as in the
[00:26:15] case of the Middle East, the case of Iran, no, the
[00:26:19] process we have now has no turning back, we are going to a multipolar
[00:26:23] world.
[00:26:38] While this film was being edited, a massive fire broke
[00:26:42] out in Ecuador's main fishing port, Manta,
[00:26:45] destroying dozens of ships. This is the
[00:26:48] second major marine fire in the city in the past
[00:26:50] year, the cause remains
[00:26:53] unknown.
[00:30:22] Russia's first parliamentary election since the beginning of the
[00:30:26] Ukraine conflict have wrapped up and the counting of the votes has
[00:30:29] commenced. There's still a lot to see and to... discuss as the final
[00:30:33] figures won't be officially confirmed until next Friday. We're
[00:30:37] bringing you our special coverage as the world's geographically biggest
[00:30:40] country has its democratic
[00:30:42] say.
[00:30:44] And with the first preliminary results coming in, the ruling
[00:30:48] United Russia party is firmly top with solid
[00:30:52] majority. The runner-up is the Communist Party with almost
[00:30:55] 14 percent and the Liberal Democratic Party is in
[00:30:59] third.