‘We were terrified they were going to kill us’: fishers who survived US boat strike speak out

An Ecuadorian fishing crew describe their ordeal as victims of Trump’s purported war on ‘narcoterrorists’

By 4pm, the light was softening over the Pacific, and the crew of the Don Maca were finishing a long day hauling in lines of swordfish and albacore. Down in the hold, the mood had settled into the familiar rhythm of a fishing day drawing to a close.

“We were just working, waiting for the last trawler to return,” Jhonny Sebastián Palacios, one of the fishers, told the Guardian. “Everything was perfectly fine.”