Ecuador was once famous for harboring a man: For seven years it allowed WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange to hole up in its embassy in London, invoking an international treaty that makes diplomatic facilities safe.
Then last week, the South American nation appeared to break that treaty by sending police to the Mexican embassy in Quito — over Mexico’s protests — where they arrested a former vice president accused of corruption.
President Daniel Noboa of Ecuador defended the decision to arrest the former vice president, Jorge Glass, calling him a criminal and citing the growing security crisis in the country to justify the move.
But his critics said it was one of the most flagrant violations of the treaty since its creation in 1961. They saw a more personal motive: Mr. Noboa’s political agenda.
Ecuador has been mired in record levels of violence and Mr Noboa, a young centre-right leader, is keen to appear tough on crime. He is just days away from a national referendum that, if passed, would give him sweeping new powers to tackle insecurity – and potentially help him win re-election next year.
Mr. Noboa is characterized the embassy raid and arrest of Mr. Glass as a way to show Ecuador that it is working hard to hunt down accused criminals.
But, several analysts say, his administration’s decision to forcefully enter the embassy is one of the most egregious examples of a dynamic that has become all too familiar around the world, with Latin America no exception: foreign policy is driven less by high principles or national interest, and more than the personal goals of leaders who hope to preserve their own political future.
“Foreign policy has never been clean, it’s often driven by internal or individual political interests,” said Dan Restrepo, who served as President Barack Obama’s top adviser on Latin America. “But in America there has definitely been an intensification of staff in recent years.”
Across the region, diplomatic rhetoric has worsened, with presidents lashing out at each other with a barrage of insults that may seem trivial on the world stage but have the potential to play well domestically, particularly with their ideological bases.
President Gustavo Petro, Colombia’s left-wing leader, has been at odds since last year with El Salvador’s right-wing president, Najib Bukele. Mr. Petros accused Mr. Bukele of running the prisons as “concentration camps” and Mr. Bukele highlighted corruption charges against Mr. Petros’ son.
“Everything okay at home?” Mr. Buchelle He wrote mockingly on the X platform.
Argentina’s right-wing president, Javier Millay, has fallen out with Mr. Petros, whom he recently called a “murderous terrorist,” leading Mr. Petros to expel Argentine diplomats. (He later reinstated them.)
Mr Milei has also fallen out with President Andrés Manuel López Obrador of Mexico, calling him “ignorant” and once referring to his supporters as members of the “small penis club”. Mr López Obrador in turn has labeled Mr Milei an “ultra-conservative fascist”.
The dispute between Mexico and Ecuador first arose in December when the Mexican embassy in Ecuador allowed Mr. Glass to stay there after being welcomed “as a guest,” Mexico’s foreign ministry said.
Mr López Obrador then angered Ecuador when he publicly questioned the legitimacy of his presidential election, leading Mr Noboa’s government to expel the Mexican ambassador. It was the third time a Latin American country has expelled a Mexican ambassador since Mr López Obrador took office in 2018.
The row continued to escalate, until police finally stormed the embassy and arrested Mr Glass last week.
At his daily press conference on Tuesday, Mr López Obrador called the seizure of the embassy in Ecuador “a violation not only of our country’s sovereignty, but of international law”. (Ecuador’s action has been widely condemned, including by the United States, the Organization of American States, and countries throughout Latin America.)
Mexico has a long history of harboring dissidents. But the government has not provided much clarity on why it ultimately granted asylum to Mr. Glass, prompting critics to question whether Mexico’s president, long a standard-bearer of the country’s left, was simply trying to protect an ideological ally. Mr. Glass served in a leftist administration.
“What is the national interest served here in terms of Ecuador’s or Mexico’s place in the world? This is a question that no one has an answer to, because there is none,” 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 Mr Glass seemed a complete departure from its own willingness to host Mr Assange in its London embassy for so long.
Mr Assange is accused of breaching the US Espionage Act by publishing secret military and diplomatic documents from WikiLeaks.
He was allowed into the Ecuadorian Embassy by its then president, Rafael Correa, a leftist with a rival relationship with the United States.
But then President Lenin Moreno took office in Ecuador and sought to distance himself from Mr. Correa and build warmer relations with the United States. It was Mr. Moreno’s government that allowed Mr. Assange’s eventual arrest.
The WikiLeaks founder remains in custody in Britain and is fighting extradition to the United States.
Mr. Glass served as vice president under Mr. Correa, who in 2020 was convicted on corruption charges and has escaped prison by living abroad. Mr López Obrador recently praised Mr Correa for his “very good government”.
(After Mr. Glas was transferred to a detention center, authorities in Ecuador said Monday they found him in a coma. On Tuesday, the prison authority said his condition had improved and he was back in prison.)
Mr. López Obrador has generally prioritized domestic politics, traveling abroad rarely and focusing instead on major infrastructure projects and social programs at home.
Much of Mr. López Obrador’s foreign attention has been consumed by his relationship with the United States, in which he has gained significant leverage because of his role in managing the migrant crisis.
However, Mr López Obrador has also been a staunch defender of left-aligned governments across the region. In 2022, he snubbed the Biden administration by refusing to participate in a summit organized by the United States because it excluded Cuba, Nicaragua and Venezuela.
In a dramatic episode, Mr López Obrador’s government sent a military plane to bring former Bolivian President Evo Morales to Mexico City in 2019.
Mexico also sheltered allies of Mr. Morales in its diplomatic compound in the Bolivian capital — prompting the country to expel Mexico’s ambassador.
Then, in late 2022, Mexico granted asylum to the family of Peru’s ousted leftist president Pedro Castillo, who was in prison after an attempt to dissolve Congress. Peru responded by expelling the Mexican ambassador.
Mr. López Obrador later insisted that Mr. Castillo was the “legitimate and legitimate president” of Peru and accused the country’s government of “racism” for imprisoning Mr. Castillo.
The provocative comments, experts said, were part of a pattern. While Mr López Obrador has said a pillar of his foreign policy is not meddling in another country’s internal affairs – and he expects others to do the same in Mexico – he is not afraid to express his own views on the domestic politics of some neighbors of.
“It is surprising that a president who says the principle of non-intervention guides Mexico’s foreign policy is giving an opinion on the internal political affairs of these two countries without justification,” said Natalia Saltalamacchia, head of international studies at the Technological Autonomous Institute of of Mexico, referring to Peru. and Ecuador.
Diplomatic disputes have the potential to have real-world implications at a time when tackling some of the region’s biggest issues — migration, climate change and transnational crime — requires regional cooperation.
In Ecuador, police say Mexico’s most powerful cartels, the Sinaloa and Jalisco New Generation, finance a drug-trafficking industry that fuels violence and death.
If Mr. Noboa’s government “really wanted to tackle organized crime,” said Agustín Burbano de Lara, an Ecuadorian political analyst, “what we should have is closer cooperation with Mexico, not this diplomatic impasse with Mexico”.