BOGOTÁ (process.com.mx).-The president of Ecuador, Daniel Noboa, faces widespread internal political rejection for the assault he ordered on the Mexican Embassy in Quito to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas, but he has the support of the Armed Forces and the “blessing” of the United States, say Ecuadorian academics consulted by Process.
The coordinator of the International Relations Laboratory of the International University of Ecuador (UIDE), Santiago Carranco, and the doctor in political sociology, Franklin Ramírez, also agree that the irruption of police forces to the diplomatic headquarters of Mexico will have a “ high cost” for the Noboa government and for the country.
“The international repercussions will affect Ecuador in the medium and long term and, without a doubt, diplomatic isolation will occur because all countries and organizations are condemning this assault, which is clearly in violation of the Vienna Convention.” says Carranco.
According to the academic, at an internal level there is also “a rejection” of the police operation against the Mexican Embassy, particularly in political and academic circles and among enlightened public opinion, although Noboa has the support of the military and the local far-right, which is deeply anti-Correísta (Glas is very close to former leftist president Rafael Correa).
For Franklin Ramírez, who is a professor and researcher at the Department of Political Studies of the Latin American Faculty of Social Sciences (Flacso) in Ecuador, it is likely that the international community’s repudiation of the police raid on the Mexican diplomatic headquarters will not matter to anyone. Noboa.
“Outside of the relationship with the United States, he doesn’t care about anything else,” says the academic.
And he says that it is “very unlikely” that Noboa’s decision to storm the Mexican diplomatic headquarters to apprehend Glas was not consulted, “at least, with the United States Embassy” in Ecuador.
Although the US State Department condemned the raid on the Mexican Embassy in Quito, it did so in very generic and careful terms, without mentioning the Noboa government.
“The United States – indicated State Department spokesperson Matthew Miller – condemns any violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and takes very seriously the obligation of host countries under international law to respect the inviolability of diplomatic missions. ”.
He added that “Mexico and Ecuador are crucial partners of the United States” and encouraged both nations to resolve their differences in accordance with international standards.
Professor Carranco maintains that this was “a fairly light statement” and considers that “if something like this had happened, for example, in Venezuela, we would have seen an extremely forceful response.” He also believes that it is possible that the decision to storm the Embassy was consulted with the United States before being carried out.
Franklin Ramírez points out that, beyond the public position of the State Department, “there is a relationship of enormous closeness” between Washington and the government of Ecuador and there is “a line of subordination and submission” from Noboa to the United States, which is a key actor in the war waged by the Ecuadorian president against drug trafficking groups.
The first external visit that Noboa received after declaring a “state of internal armed conflict” on January 9, was that of the head of the United States Southern Command, General Laura Richardson, with whom she agreed on a plan that includes the presence of personnel military and US “contractors” in Ecuadorian territory in order to combat drug trafficking.
The Colombian expert in drug policy and doctor in social sciences from the UNAM, Estefanía Ciro, considers that, in this way, Noboa “formalized a mechanism for direct intervention by the United States” in Ecuador at a time when Washington observes with concern the China’s growing presence in the region through investment and trade.
An inexperienced government with a business soul
Noboa was born in Miami, Florida, 36 years ago; He has American nationality, in addition to Ecuadorian, and was academically trained in the United States.
The young president, who is the son of banana magnate Álvaro Noboa, the richest man in Ecuador, has been a businessman since he was 18 and has little political experience. Only in 2021 did he become an assembly member and decided to run for president in last year’s early elections.
Like the president, his chancellor, Gabriela Sommerfeld, comes from the business world. She was president of the defunct Aerogal airline, owned by her family, and has been director of several companies in the tourism, energy and aviation sectors.
As chancellor, this graduate in finance from the Universidad San Francisco de Quito and a master’s degree in business administration from the Instituto Tecnológico y de Estudios Superiores de Monterrey, in Mexico, has tried to compensate for her inexperience in foreign relations by surrounding herself with experienced retired Ecuadorian diplomats.
In diplomatic circles in Quito it is said that the chancellor’s advisors have a pronounced anti-Correa bias since in most cases they were displaced from top-level diplomatic positions during the governments of Rafael Correa (2007-2017).
“These advisors, who are very ideologized, were the ones who convinced the chancellor that the assault on the Mexican Embassy to capture Jorge Glas (former former vice president of Correa) could be justified by invoking the Caracas Convention on asylum, which was a great clumsiness that no country has supported; On the contrary, the condemnation has been unanimous,” a diplomatic source tells Proceso.
The truth is that the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry has insisted that, in accordance with the Caracas Convention, “it is not lawful to grant asylum to people convicted or prosecuted for common crimes and by competent ordinary courts,” thereby seeking to justify the assault of the past. Friday to the Mexican Embassy to arrest Glas.
With that argument, “they made the president (Noboa) believe that the international community would support the raid, but the result was diametrically opposed to that naive presumption guided by the anti-correism of the people who surround the chancellor,” says the consulted source.
Professor Santiago Carranco, doctor in international studies from Flacso, maintains that the Noboa government “cannot legally justify what it did, which was to violate a diplomatic building, and this has been made very clear by the unanimous reaction of condemnation from the community.” international”.
The assault on the Mexican Embassy, furthermore, “puts all Ecuadorians in a quite complicated position, because if we see that the public force can enter a diplomatic headquarters in this way, in an act that violates international law, what “Can it wait for us as citizens?” says Carranco.
And he affirms that it is not the first time that Noboa shows a “somewhat Creole authoritarianism” that has undermined his popularity, which reached very high levels after he declared war on drug trafficking groups last January.
The president has been criticized for granting mining exploitation titles to the Canadian company Solaris Resource without caring about the opinion of the Amazonian indigenous communities that inhabit the area where the copper, gold and molybdenum deposits that interest that company are located.
The president of the Confederation of Indigenous Nationalities of Ecuador (Conaie), Leonidas Iza, has accused Noboa of having interests in mining through his family’s companies.
After the assault on the Mexican Embassy in Quito, Conaie, the largest and most influential social organization in Ecuador, issued a statement in which it “strongly” condemned that act and in which it described the Noboa government as “authoritarian and fascist.” ”.
The rejection of this raid has been so transversal at the internal level that even Christian Zurita, political successor of the assassinated presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio and a strong critic of Glas’s Correism, has condemned the fact.
“At this time the world sees us as the worst,” he wrote on his X account on Friday night, minutes after the assault took place.
Like Bukele
Franklin Ramírez, doctor in political sociology from the University of Paris VIII, considers that Noboa is also engaging in internal politics with the assault on the Mexican Embassy since this occurs two weeks before a popular consultation is held in which the president seeks to have the Voters approve a package of measures to strengthen the fight against drug trafficking, including authorizing the extradition of Ecuadorians.
“He is sending a signal of strength, because he began to fall in the polls and there are polls that indicate that he may lose in some key questions of the consultation. Then he got nervous and he wants to show off his power, the support he has from the Armed Forces, from the Prosecutor’s Office, and the message is that he can govern beyond the law and international legal frameworks,” Ramirez says.
Noboa, says the Flacso researcher, “is acquiring a Bukele-like tone (Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele, who is accused by his country’s opposition of being a populist).”
According to the sociologist, Noboa continues to have high popularity but his unfavorability in the polls increases every day “due to those gestures that lead him to show off as a rich and capricious child who doesn’t care about anything, who has no limits.”
He says that not only has he shown disdain for Latin America, for his neighbors, but that “there is in him an arrogance, an arrogance, a lack of knowledge of public ethics, of the norms of the international system and the rule of law.”
Ramírez believes that the Ecuadorian president “got drunk with power and arrogance” when his popularity increased after declaring war on drug trafficking last January, but now that his image has declined “he wants to demonstrate all his power, his alignment with the military.” , with the United States…”.
