Political relations, rhetoric in Latin America get personal
Ecuador was once famous for sheltering a man on the lam: For seven years, it allowed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to hole up in its embassy in London, invoking an international treaty that makes diplomatic premises places of refuge.
Then, last week, the South American nation appeared to tear that treaty to shreds, sending police into the Mexican Embassy in Quito, Ecuador – over Mexico’s protests – where they arrested a former vice president accused of corruption.
President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador defended the decision to detain the former vice president, Jorge Glas, calling him a criminal and citing the country’s growing security crisis to justify the move.
But his critics said it was one of the most egregious violations of the treaty since its creation in 1961. They saw a more personal motive: Noboa’s political agenda.
Ecuador has been engulfed in record levels of violence, and Noboa, a young center-right leader, is eager to look tough on crime. He is just days away from a national referendum that, if approved, would give him sweeping new powers to tackle insecurity – and potentially help him get reelected next year.
Noboa characterized the embassy raid and arrest of Glas as a way to show Ecuador that he is working hard to go after accused criminals.
But, several analysts say, his government’s decision to forcibly enter the embassy is among the most flagrant examples of a dynamic that has become all-too-familiar around the world, with Latin America being no exception: foreign policy driven less by lofty principles or national interest, and more by the personal aims of leaders hoping to preserve their own political future.
“Foreign policy has never been pure; it’s often been motivated by domestic or individual political interests,” said Dan Restrepo, who served as President Barack Obama’s top adviser on Latin America. “But in the Americas there certainly has been an intensification of the personal in recent years.”
Across the region, the diplomatic rhetoric has deteriorated, with presidents lashing out at one another with a barrage of insults that may appear petty on the world stage but have the potential to play well at home, particularly with their ideological bases.
President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s left-wing leader, has clashed since last year with El Salvador’s right-wing president, Nayib Bukele. Petro accused Bukele of running prisons as “concentration camps,” and Bukele spotlighted corruption allegations against Petro’s son.
“Everything ok at home?” Bukele wrote tauntingly on the social media platform X.
Argentina’s right-wing president, Javier Milei, has sparred with Petro, whom he recently called a “murderous terrorist,” leading Petro to expel Argentine diplomats. (He later reinstated them.)
Milei has also tussled with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, calling him an “ignoramus” and once referring to his supporters as members of the “small penis club.” López Obrador in turn has labeled Milei an “ultraconservative fascist.”
The dispute between
Mexico and Ecuador first emerged in December, when the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador allowed Glas to stay there after being welcomed “as a guest,” Mexico’s Foreign Ministry said.
López Obrador then incurred Ecuador’s wrath when he publicly questioned the legitimacy of its presidential election, leading Noboa’s government to expel the Mexican ambassador. It was the third time a Latin American country had expelled a Mexican ambassador since López Obrador took office in 2018.
The spat continued to escalate, until finally police raided the embassy and arrested Glas last week.
At his daily news conference Tuesday, López Obrador called the embassy arrest in Ecuador “a violation not just of the sovereignty of our country, but of international law.” (Ecuador’s action has been broadly condemned, including by the United States, the Organization of American States and countries across Latin America.)
Ecuador’s arrest of Glas seemed a stark departure from its own willingness to harbor Assange in its embassy in London for so long.
Assange is accused of violating the U.S. Espionage Act with WikiLeaks’ publication of classified military and diplomatic documents.
He was allowed into Ecuador’s Embassy by its president at the time, Rafael Correa, a leftist who had an antagonistic relationship with the United States.
But then President Lenin Moreno took office in Ecuador, and he sought to distance himself from Correa and build warmer relations with the United States. It was Moreno’s government that permitted Assange’s eventual arrest.
The WikiLeaks founder remains in British custody and is fighting extradition to the United States.
Glas served as vice president under Correa, who in 2020 was convicted on corruption charges and has escaped prison by living abroad. López Obrador recently praised Correa for his “very good government.”
(Following Glas’ transfer to a detention center, authorities in Ecuador said Monday that they found him in a coma. On Tuesday, the prison authority announced that his condition had improved and he was returned to jail.)
The diplomatic spats have the potential to have real-world effects at a moment when tackling some of the region’s biggest issues – migration, climate change and transnational crime – requires regional cooperation.
In Ecuador, police say that Mexico’s most powerful cartels, Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, are financing a ballooning narco-trafficking industry that has fueled violence and death.