Ecuador looks isolated and without regional support after raiding the Mexican Embassy in Quito

BOGOTÁ (apro).- The government of Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa looked this Saturday like a country diplomatically isolated from the rest of the Latin American nations after raiding the Mexican Embassy in Quito on Friday night with a unit of armed police, which It was considered in the region an act that violated the Vienna Convention.

Until noon this Saturday, no Latin American government had supported the action ordered by Noboa and, on the other hand, the majority of countries in the area, and even the Organization of American States (OAS), which has had a rocky relationship with the Mexican president. Andrés Manuel López Obrador, had rejected the assault on the diplomatic headquarters.

The Latin American condemnation of the invasion of the Ecuadorian police into the Mexican Embassy went beyond the left-wing governments – such as those of Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Bolivia and Venezuela – and included Argentina, whose president, the far-right Javier Milei, In recent days, he had participated in a harsh exchange of disqualifications with López Obrador.

The Argentine Foreign Ministry said in a statement that it joined the countries of the region in condemning what happened on Friday night at the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador and called for “full observance of the provisions” of the Vienna and on Diplomatic Asylum.

Previously, countries such as Brazil, Colombia, Chile, Venezuela, Honduras, Guatemala, Dominican Republic, Bolivia, Cuba, Costa Rica, Panama, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay condemned the assault on the Mexican Embassy in Quito, which had the purpose of arresting the former vice president. Ecuadorian Jorge Glas, and asked to respect the right to asylum. Mexico had granted political asylum to the former official on Friday morning.

Colombian internationalist Mauricio Jaramillo Jassir tells Proceso that the widespread condemnation of the assault on the diplomatic headquarters is due to the fact that Noboa “very clearly” transgressed the rights to the inviolability of diplomatic headquarters and to asylum, which is a very sensitive issue in Latin America because it allowed hundreds of persecuted people from the military dictatorships of the 70s and 80s to go into exile in countries like Mexico.

The doctor in political science and master in international relations and security at the Institute of Political Studies of the University of Toulouse, in France, points out that this action will have an important regional effect and a “high cost” for Ecuador on the international stage since “it will “It will be very difficult for any State to decide not to condemn that fact.”

Ecuador, he points out, “is going to be diplomatically isolated,” which makes the “unusual” decision to assault a diplomatic headquarters with armed police look like a “hazing” by Noboa – a 36-year-old businessman with little political experience.

“This is as if the British government had assaulted the Ecuadorian Embassy in the United Kingdom when (WikiLeaks founder) Julian Assange took refuge there (who remained there for almost seven years),” says the internationalist.

The General Secretariat of the OAS proposed a meeting of the organization’s Permanent Council, which does not have a date, but does have an agenda. It would be to treat the events in Ecuador based on “the principles enshrined in international law, such as respect for sovereignty, the peaceful resolution of controversies (…) and faithful and strict compliance with international treaties, including those that They guarantee the Right to Asylum.”

The pro tempore president of the Community of Latin American and Caribbean States (Celac), the Honduran president Xiomara Castro, called an urgent meeting for this Monday, April 8, of the troika of that regional forum to address the issue of “the evident violation.” of the Vienna and Asylum conventions by the Government of Ecuador, “by forcibly taking over the Mexican embassy in Quito.”

And the Celac chancellors will meet virtually on Tuesday, April 9.

Former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas had taken refuge in the Mexican diplomatic headquarters in Quito on December 17. He is a member of the leftist Citizen Revolution party, led by former president Rafael Correa, and had regained freedom in 2022 after spending five years in prison for allegedly receiving bribes from the Brazilian construction company Odebrecht.

A judge denied him pre-release last December and issued an arrest warrant against him. Glas has always maintained that he is politically persecuted.

This Saturday morning, the former vice president was transferred from Quito to the southwestern Guayaquil, where he was held in the maximum security prison known as “La Roca.”