Children were left without the person who brought food home
Over eight months, the United States military has killed nearly 200 people aboard boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific, framing the campaign as a strike against narco-terrorism. A five-month investigation by twenty Latin American and Caribbean journalists has now named sixteen of the dead — drivers, fishers, fathers — most of them drawn from communities so impoverished that survival itself blurred the line between legal and illegal work. The operation raises an ancient and unresolved question: when a state kills in the name of order, how certain must it be of who it is killing, and who bears the weight of being wrong?
- Nearly 200 people have been killed in US military boat strikes over eight months, yet the administration has provided no evidence that any victim was verifiably involved in drug trafficking before they died.
- A coalition of twenty journalists spent five months breaking through walls of fear and official silence to name just sixteen of the dead — revealing fishers, drivers, and desperate laborers, not cartel kingpins.
- Entire coastal communities have stopped fishing out of terror of being bombed, threatening the food security of families already living at the edge of survival.
- Legal challenges are mounting as families of victims with no apparent drug ties sue the US government, while experts warn the strikes are militarily ineffective and risk becoming a normalized, unaccountable practice.
- The operation continues, with US Southern Command defending strikes as lawful and precise even as critics call it political theater — a show of force that destroys lives without meaningfully disrupting drug flows.
A five-month investigation by journalists from twenty outlets across Latin America and the Caribbean has put names to thirteen previously anonymous victims of US military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific — a campaign that has killed nearly 200 people in eight months. Until now, only three victims had been publicly identified, and only because their families took the White House to court.
Among the newly named: Juan Carlos Fuentes, 43, a driver from Venezuela; Luis Ramón Amundarain, 36, also Venezuelan; Chad Joseph, 26, from Trinidad and Tobago; Pedro Ramón Holguín Holguín, 40, from Ecuador; and nine others whose identities had vanished from the public record. All sixteen identified victims came from extremely poor neighborhoods across Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, and Saint Lucia.
Fuentes and Amundarain had crossed the Gulf of Paria after someone promised them work at a car wash. Days later, they were offered a job on a small boat. On October 3rd, that boat was bombed. Their widows told investigators the men had no involvement in drug trafficking — though the report acknowledges signs they may have been about to transport illicit cargo. Still, a basic geographic question lingers: boats carrying drugs move northward from South America, not back toward Venezuela.
Other victims were simply fishers. Three men — one Colombian, two Trinidadians — had no apparent connection to the drug trade at all. Even those who may have been involved generally turned to it out of desperation. In eight months of strikes, the US has offered no evidence that any of the 194 people killed were verified traffickers before they died.
María Teresa Ronderos, director of the leading investigative center, was direct: the US is not taking down cartel leaders. What is happening is that young people in precarious conditions are being killed, drug flows remain unaffected, and communities already fractured by poverty and organized crime are fracturing further. In some places, people stopped fishing for weeks — and if they don't fish, they don't eat.
The investigation was itself an act of courage. Journalists faced fear from families, communities, and local authorities alike. Government sources refused to speak. Everyone feared damaging relations with Washington or inviting retaliation. Yet the team persisted, with a simple but devastating goal: to show that the dead were flesh-and-blood people.
A US Southern Command spokesperson defended the strikes as deliberate, lawful, and precise. But former State Department lawyer Brian Finucane described the operation as military spectacle — a way to appear tough on drugs while the administration pursues other ventures. He warned the killings risk becoming normalized, fading into background noise. Nearly 180 victims remain unnamed. The strikes continue.
A five-month investigation has put names to 13 previously anonymous victims of US military strikes on boats in the Caribbean and eastern Pacific—a campaign that has killed nearly 200 people over eight months. Until this week, only three victims had been publicly identified, and only because their families sued the White House. Now, journalists from twenty outlets across Latin America and the Caribbean have documented who these people were: Juan Carlos Fuentes, 43, a driver from Venezuela. Luis Ramón Amundarain, 36, also Venezuelan. Eduard Hidalgo, 46. Chad Joseph, 26, from Trinidad and Tobago. Ricky Joseph from Saint Lucia. Pedro Ramón Holguín Holguín, 40, from Ecuador. And nine others whose names had been erased from the public record.
The Trump administration has justified these killings as strikes against narco-terrorists moving drugs toward the United States. But the investigation, led by the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism and published this week, reveals a more complicated picture. Some of the dead showed no signs of involvement in drug trafficking at all. Others—fishers, drivers, men desperate for work—fit a different profile entirely: young people from communities so poor that any job, legal or illegal, looked like survival. All sixteen victims identified so far came from extremely poor neighborhoods across Venezuela, Colombia, Ecuador, Trinidad and Tobago, and Saint Lucia.
Take Fuentes and Amundarain. Both were drivers from Güiria, Venezuela, who crossed the Gulf of Paria to Trinidad and Tobago after someone promised them work at a car wash. Days later, they were offered a job on a small boat. On October 3rd, that boat was bombed. Their widows told investigators the men had no involvement in drug trafficking. Yet the report notes that all signs suggest they were about to make a run—the local term for transporting illicit cargo. Still, something doesn't fit: boats carrying drugs move from South America northward, not the reverse. Why would a boat travel from Trinidad back toward Venezuela to pick up narcotics?
Other victims were simply fishers. Three men—one Colombian, two Trinidadians—had no apparent connection to the drug trade at all. Their families have sued the US government. Yet even those who may have been involved in trafficking generally turned to it out of desperation, the investigation found. In eight months of strikes, the US has provided no evidence that any of the 194 victims were actually involved in drug trafficking before they were killed.
María Teresa Ronderos, director of the investigative center, put it plainly: "The US is not taking down any Pablo Escobar or Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán." What is happening instead is that young people living in precarious conditions are being targeted. The strikes have not reduced the flow of drugs to the United States. They have torn apart communities already fractured by organized crime and state neglect. In some places, people stopped fishing for weeks because they were terrified of being bombed. If they don't fish, they don't eat.
The investigation itself was grueling. Journalists faced fear from relatives, from communities, from local authorities. Government sources and prosecutors' offices refused to speak. Everyone feared damaging relations with the United States and facing retaliation. Yet the team—twenty journalists from outlets in Colombia, Venezuela, Trinidad and Tobago, supported by NGOs from the UK and Colombia—persisted. The main finding was simple but devastating: putting names and faces to victims, to show that these were flesh-and-blood people, even if the vast majority remain unidentified.
A US Southern Command spokesperson defended the strikes as "deliberate, lawful and precise, directed specifically at narco-terrorists and their enablers." But Brian Finucane, a former US State Department lawyer now at the International Crisis Group, called the operation something else entirely: a military spectacle, a way for the administration to appear tough on drugs. He warned that the killings risk becoming normalized, turning into background noise while the administration pursues other military ventures—the ongoing war with Iran, for instance.
Meanwhile, the human cost accumulates in silence. Whether the men killed were doing legal work or illegal work, children were left without the person who brought food home. Families that were already extremely poor became poorer. Communities that were already fractured became more so. The investigation has named sixteen victims. Nearly 180 remain unknown. And the strikes continue.
Citas Notables
The US is not taking down any Pablo Escobar or Joaquín 'El Chapo' Guzmán. Young people living in extremely precarious conditions, doing whatever work they can to support their families, are being targeted.— María Teresa Ronderos, director of the Latin American Center for Investigative Journalism
This was in part a military spectacle to give the illusion of the administration doing something 'macho' about drugs. The boat strikes were never a serious counter-drug operation.— Brian Finucane, International Crisis Group and former US State Department lawyer
La Conversación del Hearth Otra perspectiva de la historia
Why does it matter that we know their names now, when the strikes are still happening?
Because a name is a claim on reality. When someone is just a number—194 victims—they're abstract. They're a policy problem. But when you know that Juan Carlos Fuentes was 43 and drove cars, that he crossed the gulf looking for work at a car wash, he becomes a person whose absence means something specific to someone. His widow knows he's gone. His family knows. Now the world does too.
But the US says these were narco-terrorists. Doesn't that change things?
The investigation found no evidence the US verified that before striking. And even if some of them were involved in trafficking, they weren't kingpins. They were desperate people. Ronderos made the point clearly: there's no death penalty for cocaine trafficking. These men were killed without trial, without warning, without a chance to defend themselves.
The strikes haven't stopped the drug flow, though. So what's actually happening?
That's the question that haunts the whole thing. If the strikes aren't reducing drugs reaching the US, and they're not targeting major traffickers, what are they doing? One expert called it a military spectacle—a way to look tough. But the real effect is that fishing communities stopped going out to sea. People went hungry. The strikes fractured communities that were already broken.
Why was the investigation so hard to do?
Fear. Everyone feared retaliation from the US. Government officials wouldn't speak. Families were terrified. It took twenty journalists from multiple countries, working for months, just to name sixteen people and piece together their stories. That's how much silence surrounds this.
What happens now?
The strikes continue. The victims remain mostly unnamed. And there's a risk, as one expert warned, that this becomes normalized—just background noise while the administration does other things. But now at least some of these people have names. That's not nothing.