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Ecuador is facing a wave of condemnations over a late-night raid on the Mexican embassy in its capital Quito, which saw the Andean nation's former vice president arrested and sparked a diplomatic crisis between the two countries.
The United States, the European Union and a group of Latin American countries joined the growing chorus of criticism directed at Ecuador over Friday's raid, an act previously unheard of even in military dictatorships.
The Foreign Ministry in Madrid described the move as a “violation” of the 1961 Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, while its Brazilian counterpart said the move “must be subject to strong rejection, whatever the justification for its implementation.”
Left-wing leaders in Colombia, Cuba, Venezuela and Honduras also condemned Ecuador's behaviour, with Nicaragua following Mexico's lead in severing diplomatic relations with Quito. Conservative governments in Argentina and Uruguay also criticized Ecuador.
The ultra-conservative government of President Daniel Noboa ordered officers to enter the embassy building on Friday evening after Mexico's leftist administration granted asylum to Jorge Glas, who served as Ecuador's vice president from 2013 to 2018 and was later sentenced to 14 years in prison.
Pictures from the raid showed police storming the embassy while heavily armed forces guarded outside. Videos also showed two police jeeps leaving the diplomatic building with sirens blaring, as Acting Mexican Ambassador Roberto Canseco shouted: “No, no, this is a violation, this is not possible!” Before the police threw him to the ground.
“This is absolutely unacceptable,” Canseco told reporters afterward. “They searched the Mexican embassy in Quito like criminals.”
Andrés Manuel López Obrador, Mexican President, accused Ecuador of “a flagrant violation of international law and Mexican sovereignty” and said he ordered the immediate suspension of diplomatic relations.
Martha Bárcena, Mexico's former ambassador to Washington, said the incident was a reflection of a region deeply divided along ideological lines.
“It is the growing ideology of foreign policy throughout Latin America,” she said. “These verbal battles and verbal arrows lead to the abandonment of diplomacy and culminate in these events that we have not seen in Latin America for many years.”
Noboa's government said in a statement that “the immunities and privileges granted to the diplomatic mission that housed Jorge Glass had been abused” and that his political asylum was “contrary to the legal framework.”
The statement added: “We will not allow any criminal to remain in a state of impunity.”
Ecuador's prison agency said Glass has now been transferred to a high-security prison in Guayaquil, Ecuador's main coastal city.
The dispute between Ecuador and Mexico has been escalating since Glass took refuge in the embassy in December. He fled there after prosecutors posted chat messages suggesting he was released early from his long prison terms in 2022 because a prominent Ecuadorian drug trafficker bribed a judge.
Lopez Obrador angered Ecuador's government this week when he suggested that Noboa's election victory last year against a leftist opponent was thanks to his opponent being unfairly blamed for the killing of another candidate during the campaign.
The Mexican president, like many other leftist leaders in Latin America, remained loyal to former Ecuadorian President Rafael Correa, who ruled the country for a long time. The authoritarian leftist leader fled to Belgium in 2018 after an arrest warrant was issued against him on corruption charges. Glass was Vice President of Korea.
These events reminded many observers of WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange, who was granted asylum by Correa and took refuge in the Ecuadorian embassy in London to avoid arrest for rape in Sweden. After Correa left office, the new Ecuadorian government charged Assange with violating his asylum conditions, revoked his status and allowed UK police to enter the embassy and arrest him.
Noboa (36 years old) enjoys increasing popularity among Ecuadorians and strong support from Washington after declaring a comprehensive war on drug trafficking. The scion of a wealthy banana export family, he used emergency powers to deploy troops on the streets and sent the army to take over gang-infested prisons, using tactics partly borrowed from El Salvador's powerful leader Nayib Bukele.
Ecuador, a former haven between the two major cocaine-producing nations, Colombia and Peru, has suffered escalating violence and rising murders in recent years, as drug cartels turned it into an important shipping point for cocaine bound for Europe.
