From unpleasant insults to an embassy attack: Latin American relationships get personal

Ecuador was once famous for hosting a fugitive:

for seven years, the WikiLeaks founder admittedJulian Assangetook refuge in his embassy in London, invoking a international treaty which transforms diplomatic structures into places of refuge.

Then, last week, the South American nation appeared to tear up that treaty, sending police to the Mexican embassy in Quito, Ecuador (due to protests in Mexico), where They arrested a former vice president accused of corruption.

President Daniele Noboa of Ecuador defended the decision to arrest former Vice President Jorge Glas, calling him a criminal and citing the country’s growing security crisis to justify the measure.

But his critics said it was one of the violations more atrocious of the treaty since its creation in 1961. They saw a more personal reason: Noboa’s political agenda.

Ecuador has been embroiled in record levels of violence and Noboa, a young center-right leader, is eager to appear tough on crime.

He is days away from a national referendum that, if approved, would give him sweeping new powers to tackle insecurity and potentially help him get re-elected next year.

Noboa described the embassy raid and arrest of Glas as a way to show Ecuador that he was to work hard prosecute those accused of crimes.

But, several analysts say, his government’s decision to forcefully enter the embassy is one of those clearest examples of a dynamic that has become very familiar around the world, and Latin America is no exception:

a foreign policy guided less by high principles or national interests, and more by Personal goals of leaders hoping to preserve their political future.

“Foreign policy has never been pure; “It was often motivated by internal or individual political interests,” said Dan Restrepo, who was the president’s top adviser. Barack Obama on Latin America.

“But there has definitely been an intensification of personal activity in America in recent years.”

Throughout the region, diplomatic rhetoric has worsenedand presidents attack each other with a barrage of abuse which may seem petty on the world stage, but have the potential to work well domestically, especially with their ideological underpinnings.

President Gustavo Pietrothe leader of the Colombian left, has clashed with the right-wing president of El Salvador since last year, Nayib Bukele.

Petro accused Bukele of running prisons like “concentration camps” and Bukele highlighted the corruption charges against Petro’s son.

“Is everything okay at home?”

Bukele wrote mockingly on social media platform X.

He right-wing president from Argentina, Javier Milei, confronted Petro, who recently called “murderous terrorist,” which led Petro to expel Argentine diplomats. (He later reinstated them.)

Milei also argued with the president Andrés Manuel López Obrador from Mexico, calling him “ignorant” and once referring to his followers as members of the “small penis club.”

López Obrador, in turn, described Milei as “ultra-conservative fascist”.

The dispute between Mexico and Ecuador arose in December, when the Mexican embassy in Ecuador allowed Glas to stay there after he was received “as a guest,” the Mexican Foreign Ministry said.

López Obrador then drew the ire of Ecuador when he publicly questioned the legitimacy of its presidential election, prompting Noboa’s government to expel Mexico’s ambassador.

It is the third time a Latin American country has expelled a Mexican ambassador since López Obrador took office in 2018.

The dispute continued intensifyinguntil last week the police finally raided the embassy and arrested Glas.

In his daily press conference Tuesday, López Obrador called the embassy shutdown in Ecuador “a violation not only of our country’s sovereignty, but of international law.”

(Ecuador’s action was widely condemned, including by the United States, the Organization of American States, and Latin American countries.)

Background

Mexico has a long history of offering refuge to dissidents.

But the government did not provide much clarity on why it ultimately granted Glas asylum, leading critics to question whether Mexico’s president, a veteran standard-bearer for the country’s left, was simply trying to protect an ideological ally.

Glas served in a left-wing administration.

“What national interest is being served here in terms of Ecuador or Mexico’s position in the world?

This is a question that no one has an answer to, because there isn’t one,” said Carlos Bravo Regidor, a political analyst based in Mexico City.

“There are the personal or ideological reasons of the leaders, and that’s it.”

Ecuador’s arrest of Glas seemed a clear departure from its own desire to provide refuge Assange in its embassy in London for so long.

Assange is accused of violating the US Espionage Act with the publication WikiLeaks of confidential military and diplomatic documents.

Ecuador’s then-president, Rafael Correa, a leftist who had an antagonistic relationship with the United States, allowed him into the Ecuadorian embassy.

But then the president Lenin Moreno he assumed power in Ecuador and sought to distance himself from Correa and build warmer relations with the United States.

It was the Moreno government that allowed Assange’s final arrest.

The founder of WikiLeaks remains in British custody and fights against his parents extradition In the United States.

Glas was vice president during the Correa government, which in 2020 was convicted on corruption charges and escaped prison by living abroad.

López Obrador recently praised Correa for his “very good government”.

(After Glas was transferred to a detention center, Ecuador authorities said Monday that he was found in a coma. On Tuesday, prison authorities announced that his condition had improved and he was returned to prison.)

Overall, López Obrador has prioritized domestic politics, traveling little abroad and instead focusing on large infrastructure projects and social programs at home.

Much of López Obrador’s foreign attention has been absorbed by his own relationship with the United Statesin which it gained significant influence due to its role in managing the migration crisis.

However, López Obrador has also been a strong defender of governments associated with the left across the region.

In 2022, he snubbed the Biden administration by refusing to attend a U.S.-hosted summit because it excluded Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.

In a dramatic episode, López Obrador’s government sent a military plane to bring the former Bolivian president with it Evo Morales in Mexico City in 2019.

Mexico also protected Morales’ allies at its diplomatic facilities in Bolivia’s capital, prompting the country to expel the Mexican ambassador.

Then, in late 2022, Mexico granted asylum to the family of Peru’s deposed left-wing president, Pedro Castello, who was in prison after an attempt to dissolve Congress. Peru responded by expelling the Mexican ambassador.

López Obrador later insisted that Castillo was the “legal and legitimate president” of Peru and accused the country’s government of “racism” for imprisoning Castillo.

The provocative comments, experts say, were part of a pattern.

Although López Obrador has said that the pillar of his foreign policy is not to interfere in the internal affairs of other countries (and to expect others to treat Mexico the same way), he has not been afraid to expressre your points of view on the internal politics of some of its neighbors.

“It is surprising that a president who claims that the principle of nonintervention guides Mexico’s foreign policy gives his opinion on the internal political affairs of these two countries without justification,” said Natalia Saltalamacchia, head of international studies at the Technological Institute Autonomous of Mexico, referring to Peru. and Ecuador.

Diplomatic disputes have the potential to have real-world effects at a time when addressing some of the region’s most important problems – migration, climate change and transnational crime – requires regional cooperation.

In Ecuador the police say so the most powerful cartels in Mexico, Sinaloa and Jalisco Nueva Generaciónthey are funding a growing drug trafficking industry that has fueled violence and death.

If the Noboa government “really wanted to tackle organized crime,” said Agustín Burbano de Lara, an Ecuadorian political analyst, “what we should have is a closer collaboration with Mexiconot this diplomatic impasse with Mexico.”

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