Latin America’s so-called “pink tide” seems to be receding. That momentous change can be seen in one of its smallest countries.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa recently told Bloomberg that he would “welcome” U.S. troops to help confront the “security crisis” plaguing his country, provided that they operate with Ecuador’s own armed forces.

“It’s not an invasion,” Noboa told reporters, “it’s not an intruder coming to our country.” Rather, “it’s actually international collaboration against crime,” Noboa said of U.S. forces deploying to help combat the country’s narco-terrorists and gangs.

Noboa’s comments are a sea change.

Just a decade prior, the country’s then-president, Rafael Correa, had ruled with an iron fist and unscrupulous hands.

Correa now lives in exile in Belgium, having been convicted in absentia in 2022 for corruption. In 2007, in his mid-40s, he came to power as part of a wave of leftist, anti-American ideologues helming and often sinking their respective ships of state. In that same year, Argentina’s Cristina Kirchner took office as president, succeeding her now deceased husband. Kirchner herself was also convicted of corruption in 2022 and banned from holding any public office. Among other crimes, she was accused of colluding with the Islamic Republic of Iran, the world’s leading state sponsor of terrorism, whose proxies have a long presence in the region.

Correa and the Kirchners were some of the Latin American leaders fawned over in leftist filmmaker Oliver Stone’s 2009 “documentary,” South of the Border. Others included Bolivia’s Evo Morales, Brazil’s Lula, and Venezuela’s Hugo Chavez, whom Stone called a “great hero.”

Now, only Lula remains. Chavez died of cancer in 2013 and was replaced by Nicolas Maduro, who now sits in an American jail cell. Morales, charged with corruption, briefly sought asylum in Mexico. He has since returned but is barred from holding public office and faces arrest warrants for statutory rape.

It is an appropriately grimy end for leaders who substituted anti-American tirades and populism for effective governance.

SEAN DURNS: HOW THE US LOST LATIN AMERICA

Latin America’s so-called “pink tide” emerged in the late 1990s and early 2000s as a counter, both literally and figuratively, to Washington’s consensus. At the time, the United States was riding high and enjoying the so-called “unipolar moment.” America had won the Cold War, and freedom seemed to be on the march. Neoliberalism and unfettered free trade seemed to be the future.

In retrospect, the election of Chavez in 1998 was a harbinger that the moment wouldn’t last. A few years before the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks ushered in the War on Terror epoch, Chavez took power in one of the world’s top oil-producing nations. In many respects, Chavez was a prototypical leftist caudillo, or strongman. He came from the military, had sought power in a coup, and looked to America’s enemies for support.

Chavez’s success proved to be a disaster for Venezuela. Chavez turned the state into a repressive apparatus, imprisoning those who dared to question his rule. As importantly, he transformed Venezuela into a forward operating base for foes such as Russia, China, and Iran. Chavez’s model, Cuba’s Fidel Castro, had done precisely that half a century prior.

Notably, by the late 1990s, the failures of the Castro regime were undeniable. The Soviet Union, which kept the regime afloat, had collapsed, exposing the catastrophe of the Castro government’s economic and political model for all to see. Castro and his apparatchiks called this period of shortages and suffering the “Special Period,” but the euphemism couldn’t obscure the fact that communism was in the doldrums. The era of Cuba “exporting” its revolution seemed to be over.

The rise of Chavez provided Cuba and his fervently anti-American ideology with a lifeline. The Venezuelan dictator gave the aging Cuban kleptocrat the lifeblood that he sorely needed. Soon, other countries in the region followed suit, falling prey to the siren calls of anti-Americanism and anti-capitalism. For most of the last quarter-century, these regimes sprang up throughout the Western Hemisphere.

The reasons for the pink tide were multifold. To be sure, portions of Latin America have long hosted a latent dislike and distrust of the U.S. Indeed, a number of American presidents, notably Franklin D. Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy, sought to shore up America’s position in its hemisphere, believing that a century and more of military interventions had damaged America’s standing.

But appeasement and inattention were perhaps the foremost reasons for the deterioration of America’s position in Latin America.

After 9/11, America’s attention and energies were focused on the dangers posed by Islamist terrorism. The Obama administration, which took office right as the new wave of Latin American leftism was gaining force, tried to cast itself as its predecessor’s polar opposite. In one of his first trips abroad, the new president shook Chavez’s hand at the Summit of the Americas. This so-called “handshake diplomacy” signaled that the new administration would be taking a different approach. Indeed, in 2012, Obama dismissed the idea that Chavez’s Venezuela could pose a “serious security threat” to America and its interests.

SEAN DURNS: WHY TRUMP TRAINED HIS SIGHTS ON VENEZUELA

Chavez returned the favor, declaring on live TV: “If I was from the U.S., I’d vote for Obama.” The American president, the dictator said, was a “good guy.”

The Obama administration’s appeasement of Latin American dictators arguably reached its apex with a trip to Cuba at the tail end of his presidency. In 2014, Obama eased the decades-old embargo on the island and lifted bans on travel and remittances. In 2015, the administration removed Cuba from its list of state sponsors of terrorism. In July of that year, the two countries restored diplomatic relations.

In March 2016, Obama even visited Cuba. As his deputy national security adviser Ben Rhodes proudly recounted in his memoir, absurdly titled The World As It Is, as Air Force One approached the island, Obama remarked, “That doesn’t look like a national security threat to me.” Shortly thereafter, Obama disgracefully attended a baseball game with then-Cuban leader Raul Castro, Fidel’s brother and erstwhile enforcer, a dictator with the blood of innocents on his hands. Obama and Castro even did “the wave” while taking in the game.

But Cuba was, and is, a national security threat. While Obama and his aides were sharing America’s pastime with their new dictator friends, Cuba was aiding America’s enemies. Indeed, in 2014, nearly two years before Obama’s infamous comment to Rhodes on Air Force One, Russia had reopened its spy base in Cuba, a mere 90 miles from American shores. China also has spy bases in Cuba and has reportedly upgraded them in recent years.

A decade later, Cuba’s government is on the ropes. Cuban security forces, long feared for their prowess, nonetheless failed to protect Venezuelan strongman Maduro from being remanded into American custody in a daring U.S. military operation over Caracas.

Since Chavez, Venezuela and its oil had kept Cuba’s lights on. Now the island is in dire straits, enduring frequent blackouts and extensive rationing. While nominally defiant, Cuba no longer has the leverage or strength that it once possessed.

To be sure, a number of countries in the Western Hemisphere continue to present serious security challenges to the U.S. and its allies, including Mexico, Nicaragua, and Guatemala, among others.

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But the trendlines seem clear: Latin America is becoming more free, more prosperous, and, not coincidentally, more pro-American. Argentina is perhaps the best example. Instead of the corrupt Kirchners, the country is now ruled by Javier Milei, a free-market economist whose support for the West and capitalism is a breath of fresh air in a region long polluted by the toxins of leftism and state control.

This new birth of freedom has largely gone overlooked in the U.S., overshadowed by conflicts in Europe, the Middle East, and elsewhere. But its importance is likely to extend for years to come. Freedom, the old Cold Warrior Hubert Humphrey famously observed, is contagious.