The raid by the Ecuadorian National Police of the Mexican embassy in Quito has unleashed a diplomatic typhoon. The police operation has provoked the almost unanimous rejection of all Latin American countries, including Brazil, and the Organization of American States (OAS), whose president, Luis Almagro, has proposed an urgent meeting of the Permanent Council of the international organization based in Washington.
In an action without known precedents on the continent, the police forces yesterday broke into the building of full Mexican sovereignty and forcibly took away the country’s former vice president Jorge Glas, who since last December had been taking refuge as a political asylum in the diplomatic legation Mexican.
Despite the opposition of the Mexican embassy staff and the personal intervention of its chancellor, Roberto Canseco, who ended up being overwhelmed by the police forces, the Ecuadorian agents, after jumping over the walls of the property, extracted the former vice president from the embassy. Glas, who late yesterday was already imprisoned in the maximum security prison in the city of Gauayquil, known as La Roca, where he arrived on a special flight chartered for the aforementioned transfer.
Speaking to reporters outside the embassy, ??Foreign Minister Canseco said he hit his head on the ground. “Like criminals they raided the Mexican embassy in Ecuador. This is not possible. It just can’t be. “It’s crazy,” he said. Canseco also expressed his concern for Glas “because they could kill him.” “There is no basis for doing this,” he asserted, indicating that there was no prior warning about the police’s entry. “This is totally unacceptable, this cannot be, it is barbarism,” he said and assured that the agents hit him when he confronted them to try to prevent them from violating the space of the diplomatic legation.
The raid on the Mexican embassy occurs at a time of maximum tension, after the Ecuadorian Government had expelled the Mexican ambassador, Raquel Serur, for statements by the president of that country, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, in which he related the assassination of the candidate Fernando Villavicencio with the electoral victory of Daniel Noboa, who prevailed in the second round over the Correista candidate Luisa González.
Glas, precisely, was vice president during the long term of Rafael Correa, from 2007 to 2017.
“We hold Daniel Noboa responsible for the safety and physical and psychological integrity of former vice president Jorge Glas. To Mexico, its people and its Government, our apologies and eternal admiration. Until victory always!” proclaimed, precisely, former president Rafael Correa.
Glas, once again accused of corruption charges, has spent most of the more than six years since he left politics involved in convictions and accusations for illegal dealings from power that he denounces as political persecution and lawfare.
The immediate consequence of what Mexico considers an violation of international legality and the Vienna Convention has been the breaking of diplomatic relations with Ecuador, as López Obrador himself confirmed. However, the reaction in other Latin American countries has not been long in coming. The condemnation has come from Colombia, Venezuela, Cuba, Paraguay, Peru, Argentina, Chile, Uruguay and Brazil, in addition to the OAS, which in a statement, in addition to rejecting such a hostile maneuver by Ecuador, has urged its Government and the Mexico to designate representatives to sit at a table to rebuild the dialogue.
