Ecuador Rebuked in Latin America for Mexican Embassy Raid

(Bloomberg) -- Ecuador’s government drew condemnation across Latin America for storming the Mexican embassy to arrest a former vice president, a breach of diplomatic protocol that President Daniel Noboa linked to his fight against criminal gangs and cartels.

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Mexico broke off diplomatic ties after Ecuadorian police raided the embassy late Friday. Governments including Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay, Peru and Honduras denounced the storming and the Organization of American States called for a meeting. Nicaragua’s government accused Ecuador of “neofascist political barbarism” and said it’s ending relations.

The raid inflames tensions that began soon after Noboa’s inauguration last year, after he defeated a candidate backed by former President Rafael Correa, an ally of Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador. Noboa, 36, campaigned on a crackdown against violent gangs in Ecuador that security experts have linked to Mexican crime syndicates.

Police moved hours after Mexico granted political asylum to former Ecuadorian Vice President Jorge Glas, who had been sheltering at the embassy since December.

Ecuadorian judicial authorities had issued an arrest warrant for him after the Prosecutor General’s Office released chat messages suggesting that a drug trafficker bribed a judge to obtain Glas’ early release in November from a prison sentence for graft. Glas has said the cases against him are political persecution. He was transferred to a prison in Guayaquil after the raid.

Ecuador’s presidential office accused Mexico of granting asylum “contrary to the conventional legal framework” and abusing the privileges of a diplomatic mission.

“Ecuador is facing a non-international armed conflict, whose repercussions on democracy and citizen peace will only increase if acts that interfere with the rule of law, national sovereignty or interference in the internal affairs of the country continue or are condoned,” Noboa’s office said in a statement.

Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Barcena called the raid a “flagrant violation” of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations and announced an immediate halt to diplomatic relations. Diplomatic staff are returning to Mexico from Quito, she said on X. The ministry said late Saturday it will address the press Sunday when the plane carrying the staff arrives from Ecuador.

AMLO, as the Mexican president is known, called for restraint in a statement.

Read more: Cocaine Crackdown Turns Ecuador’s Young Leader Into a Superstar

The US State Department, saying that it values both countries as partners, condemned the raid for violating the Vienna Convention and added that it “takes very seriously” respect for diplomatic missions. It called on Mexico and Ecuador to resolve the matter following international norms, according to a statement by spokesman Matthew Miller.

Noboa, who hails from a fruit-exporting dynasty and was the favored candidate of investors in last year’s election, is seeking to shore up his standing in a referendum on April 21.

He’s asking voters to back new anti-crime measures as well as economic reforms, including allowing temporary work contracts and increased international arbitration of contract disputes between companies and the Ecuadorian state. Polls suggest the economic measures will be a tough sell.

The dispute calls into question diplomatic standards that have been in place since the Vienna Convention in 1963, which Ecuador and Mexico have signed. It forbids host countries from entering the premises of a foreign diplomatic mission without permission. Mexico will bring the matter before the International Court of Justice, Barcena said.

Lopez Obrador previously granted asylum to the family of former Peruvian President Pedro Castillo after calling him the victim of a “coup.” That sparked tension with his successor Dina Boluarte, who took office after Castillo was ousted and arrested for illegally trying to dissolve Congress and rule by decree.

Under the Correa administration, Ecuador famously hosted WikiLeaks publisher Julian Assange in its London embassy for seven years after he sought asylum to avoid extradition to Sweden on a rape allegation he denied.

(Updates with US State Department comments in 10th paragraph)

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