Mexico breaks ties with Ecuador as its embassy in Quito stormed
Mexico ended diplomatic relations with Ecuador after police stormed its embassy in Quito where former Ecuadorian vice-president Jorge Glas had been sheltering and detained him. Mexican foreign minister Alicia Barcena announced the “immediate breaking” of ties, citing a “flagrant violation” of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations. The embassy’s Mexican personnel suffered injuries, she said.
The raid occurred hours after Mexico granted political asylum to Glas, who had been in the embassy since December due to an arrest warrant against him from Ecuadorian authorities. Mexico’s foreign affairs ministry earlier said it rejected the increased presence of Ecuadorian police agents outside its embassy and asked for its sovereignty to be respected.
Glas fled to the embassy last year after chat messages published by Ecuador’s Prosecutor General’s office suggested that a drug trafficker bribed a judge to obtain his early release while serving a conviction for graft.
The arrest further inflames tensions that date back to Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa’s election last year. The 36-yearold defeated a candidate backed by former president Rafael Correa, a political ally of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Noboa campaigned on a crackdown against violent gangs in Ecuador that security experts have linked to Mexican crime syndicates.
The dispute also calls into question diplomatic standards that have been in place since the Vienna Convention in 1963. Ecuador and Mexico are among the 182 countries that have signed the treaty, which forbids host countries from entering the premises of a foreign consulate without permission. Mexico will bring the matter before the International Court of Justice, Barcena said.
The Ecuadorian government said that Mexico had “granted political asylum contrary to the conventional legal framework”, without going into detail. “Ecuador is a sovereign country and we will not allow any criminal to go unpunished.”
Ecuador had declared Mexico’s ambassador to the country, Raquel Serur Smeke, “persona non grata”, on Thursday. The Ecuadorian foreign ministry said the move was a result of Lopez Obrador’s recent and “very unfortunate” comments on Ecuador’s 2023 election.
On Saturday, Latin American governments, including regional heavyweight Brazil, rallied around Mexico on Saturday.
Four leftist governments in Latin America — Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba — criticised the arrest of Glas.
Brazil’s government condemned Ecuador’s move as a “clear violation” of international norms prohibiting such a raid on a foreign embassy, in a statement from the country’s foreign ministry. Colombian President Gustavo Petro, meanwhile, argued in a post on X that Latin America “must keep alive the precepts of international law in the midst of the barbarism that is advancing in the world”.