The Waorani leader says millennia of living in harmony with their surroundings give Indigenous groups unique insights into the consumerist west

Every Waorani child knows the story of the boa’s mouth. How the snake inches forward, watching, its movements almost imperceptible, before it strikes, swallowing its victim whole.

Nemonte Nenquimo knows the boa’s bite. Beguiled as a young girl by the blue eyes and bright dresses of an American missionary child in her Amazon village in Ecuador, she consented to be baptised and left home to study at a church school.

Cocaine seizures in Europe are up more than fivefold in 10 years as a host of cartels take root. A four-month Guardian investigation reveals the true scale of a continent-wide shift

A four-month investigation by the Guardian has revealed that the surge in cocaine trafficking to Europe is directly linked to the expanding presence of Latin American criminal networks in Europe, where they have forged close ties with local mafia organisations.

The investigation, utilising databases, police and intelligence agencies, along with interviews with judges, prosecutors and experts from eight countries, shows that cartels and factions from Colombia, Brazil, Ecuador, Venezuela, Mexico and the US are active in at least 12 European countries. Between 2014 and 2024, there was a 471% rise in the quantity of cocaine seized and more local laboratories processing cocaine derivatives were dismantled.

Attorney says fishers ‘losing their livelihoods’, but Marco Rubio maintains US still willing to ‘blow up ships if need be’

While the US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, was being decorated in Quito by Ecuador’s president for “helping to promote peace in the region”, 10 Ecuadorian fishers whose boat had been blown up by US forces were adrift in the eastern Pacific.

On 8 September, a day before Rubio arrived, a US patrol vessel intercepted the fishing boat Don Rufo in international waters near Ecuador.

Wildfire forces evacuations and burns through mountains surrounding Villa de Leyva in the north-east

Colombian authorities declared a public calamity as a wildfire burned through mountains surrounding one of the country’s best-known colonial towns in the north-east, scorching large swaths of vegetation and forcing evacuations.

Nearly 20 active fires are burning across the South American country. Dry conditions have increased fire danger in Colombia as it braces for the effects of El Niño, which can help wildfires spread.

Thirty years after a US ornithologist first sighted a jocotoco antpitta, the foundation he set up to restore biodiversity is a model for conservation globally

I have to confess that I rarely enjoy birding in montane cloud forests. The birds that live in these mountainous, cool and humid habitats are masters of disguise, usually passing themselves off as a leaf or other form of foliage. But if I want to see antpittas – elusive, ground-dwelling birds that rarely show themselves – then I have no choice.

So, on a cool, cloudy morning my guide, Juan Carlos Crespo, Fredy Ramón Castillo, a local ranger, and I are standing on a steep, muddy path close to Tapichalaca Lodge, 2,500 metres above sea level in the eastern Andes, waiting for the jocotoco antpitta to emerge from the undergrowth.

Trump administration to seek extra funding from Congress to ‘dismantle’ Los Tiguerones over narcotics trafficking

The US has designated Ecuador’s Los Tiguerones gang, which stormed a television station during a live broadcast in 2024, as a terrorist organisation as the Trump administration expands its campaign against narcotics traffickers it says are destabilising Latin America.

The US secretary of state, Marco Rubio, made the announcement in Quito, where he met Ecuadorian president Daniel Noboa, one of several rightwing allies of Donald Trump whom Rubio is courting as a security partner during a three-nation tour through Latin America that began on Tuesday.

Tour comes amid Argentinian president’s declining popularity and far-right victories across Latin America

Argentina’s president, Javier Milei, is not particularly fond of travelling to multilateral forums – it is not unusual for him to skip Mercosur summits, as he did a few weeks ago.

But on Saturday he begins a tour of Latin America to meet far-right leaders, starting in Brazil with the launch of Senator Flávio Bolsonaro’s presidential campaign against the leftwing incumbent, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva, ahead of October’s election.

They were held up by an electric storm but, after the skies had cleared, Mexico kept the lightning bolts coming. This was a climactic night that utterly engulfed the senses and its ramifications will be far reaching. El Tri have broken a hex that had nagged and gnawed at the nation’s football psyche across four decades, winning a World Cup knockout game for the first time since 1986, and the head turner will be the manner in which it happened. Javier Aguirre’s players cut Ecuador apart in a stunning first-half performance and, on this evidence, woe betide whoever runs into them next.

As it happens that will be England if they overcome the Democratic Republic of the Congo. The last-16 tie will take place on Sunday; it will be the last of this summer’s matches to take place in Mexico, whose co-hosting has felt dwarfed by the behemoth further north. So what a thrill that the Azteca, with all its majesty and mystery, delivered an occasion of genuinely epic quality here. The atmosphere roared, rocked and pulsated throughout. It was an evening that should, for a few days at least, shift the tournament’s focus to a hotbed that sits apart from the self-imposed sterility elsewhere.

Matthew Ashley Foster-Smith, from Dorset, is accused of killing Natalia Villalba in an apartment in Bogotá

A British man has been arrested in Ecuador after the body of a woman was found inside a suitcase in Colombia.

Matthew Ashley Foster-Smith is alleged to have caused the death of 36-year-old Natalia Villalba in an apartment in the Chicó neighbourhood of Bogotá on 18 June, local authorities said.

Sí, se puede – yes, we can – was the chant that rang out from the 55,000 Ecuador fans as their team’s final group match kicked off. Despite a flat start to their World Cup campaign, there was a genuine belief that an upset against a full-strength Germany was possible. They had no other choice: having been shut out by Eloy Room’s heroics for Curaçao, Sebastián Beccacece’s side had to win to progress.

This time, a stirring performance earned La Tri a famous victory against an error-prone Mannschaft. Gonzalo Plata’s 77th-minute strike sparked wild and emotional celebrations, assuring their place in the last 32 as one of the eight best third-placed team.

⚽️ World Cup kick-off: 4pm EDT/9pm BST/6am AEST
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Ecuador’s match pennant is a thing of genuine beauty. Full disclosure: there was another photo on the wires with a better angle of it, but it cropped out the heads of the subjects in the framed picture, which seemed kind of wrong, so giving due respect to the artist Luigi Crosio, the Refugium Peccatorum Madonna and the baby Jesus, I’m going with this one instead.

Ecuador make two changes to their starting XI after the goalless draw with Curaçao. Joel Ordóñez comes into the defence while Nilson Angulo joins the attack. Pervis Estupiñán and Jordy Alcívar drop to the bench.