MEXICO- “I am in the worst prison in Ecuador and on a hunger strike. Help me. Here there is a brutal persecution against all progressives,” lamented former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge David Glas Espinel after The government of his country took him out of the Mexican embassy in Ecuador at machine gunpoint.
A week passed since that statement and in the last hours The Mexican government asked Switzerland and the Vatican for help to intervene in Ecuador in the midst of one of the most acute diplomatic crises in 200 years with a Latin American country and a political, economic and social storm fueled by organized crime of Mexican origin. But not to refine rough edges, but to demand… that the former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge David Glas Espinel be returned to them!
Considered politically persecuted by the administration of Andrés Manuel López Obrador and a criminal by the justice system of his own country, Glas Espinel is currently in the maximum security prison of La Roca, where he has exerted all kinds of pressure to demand his release. including a hunger strike that landed him in the hospital.
“One of the great examples of an inflexible alliance between political groups in Latin America is that of the one that has governed Mexico since 2018, and the one that lost power in Ecuador in 2021 with Rafael Correa at the head. Only the concordat between Castroism and Chavismo surpasses it,” compared political analyst Rubén Cortés.
“Given the fall from grace of its ideological allies, after the triumph of the liberal Guillermo Lasso over the populist Andrés Arauz, in 2021, the Mexican administration gave asylum to a dozen troubled Ecuadorian politicians.”
Glas was the last of those protected. Emanated from the Correista Citizen Revolution party, he appeared at the Mexican embassy asking for diplomatic protection since, he claimed, he feared for his life on December 17, 2023.
The Ecuadorian justice system found him guilty of authorizing the construction of projects that were not priority and that they also did not benefit those affected by an earthquake when he was in charge of the Committee for Reconstruction and Productive Reactivation of Employment, created precisely to face the emergency.
Previously, Jorge Glas was arrested in 2017 for corruption in the Odebrecht case in Ecuador and was sentenced to six years in prison. He was released on parole in 2022.
Glas remained in the embassy until April 5, when the Ecuadorian Armed Forces removed him from there with the argument that he could not give asylum to a convicted person. Mexico broke diplomatic relations, removed its representatives from the country and sued the South American State before the International Court of Justice.
Authorities from Venezuela, Honduras, Cuba, Colombia, Uruguay, Nicaragua and Chile also supported Mexico in the face of the Ecuadorian police raid on the embassy in Quito. Nicargaua went to the extreme and also broke relations with the South American country.
“The assault on the Mexican embassy, added to other recent signs in Latin America and the Caribbean, inserts us a little more into the trajectory of this catastrophic scenario for the region,” highlighted the internationalist from the Ibero-American University Fausto Carvajal.
“Hence, this event is not only a bad precedent that weakens International Law, but also undermines the stability of the inter-American system. Hence, Mexico, and the other Latin American countries, have to be forceful so that these types of events are not repeated.”
THE NARCO
Regardless of what the international justice system resolves, another factor of tension between Ecuador and Mexico looms like a shadow.
In recent days, Ecuadorian President Daniel Novoa suggested that Mexico helps organized crime. “You can see that there are even governments that cooperate with these transnational structures, but we are not going to allow them to interfere with the country,” said Noboa, distancing himself from the leftist governments in the region.
The government of Ecuador included in its list of “military targets” the boss of the Mexican Sinaloa cartel Ismael Mario Zambada García, alias El Mayo, as a measure against the violence imposed by numerous drug trafficking gangs linked to international cartels, at odds with each other, but united in their war against the State.
“No one has had the courage to say their names or their location, but they have focused on minor bosses and put the blame on minor bosses, but the structures are very large, they are very strong and they are transnational,” declared the president, in power since November.
Last Sunday, Ecuadorian voters approved nine questions from a popular consultation that authorize the participation of the Armed Forces in the fight against organized crime with 72%.
The high participation in favor of toughening the criminal fight was interpreted as a sign that the assault on the Mexican embassy did not affect Noboa in the eyes of its citizens.
Regarding a possible solution to this diplomatic conflict, Ambassador Eduardo Ibarrola announced that, for the moment, it is impossible to know what resolution the International Court will give.since “the litigation could take an interesting dynamic and move exclusively from the issue of the break-in to the embassy to the question of asylum, which would be extremely interesting from the point of view of international law.”
He acknowledged that despite the fact that the Ecuadorian authorities violently entered the embassy, he believed that it would be best for both countries to reach a peaceful agreement before a resolution by the International Court.
“Every resolution of the International Court of Justice is a true Treaty of International Law, so we will have to look at the responsibility of the State, as well as a series of considerations that the International Court of Justice will make to determine who violated international norms.”
Keep reading:
–Daniel Noboa, president of Ecuador, “does not regret” having ordered the assault on the Mexican embassy
–AMLO asks Celac member countries to join in their complaint against Ecuador for the assault on the embassy
–AMLO promises to provide help to the former vice president of Ecuador, Jorge Glas, through other countries