The international community has loudly condemned Ecuador’s government, following a police raid on the Mexican embassy in Quito to forcibly remove former vice president Jorge Glas. Mexico broke diplomatic relations with Ecuador in response.
Glas had taken refuge in the embassy in December. He was formally granted asylum earlier Friday and Mexico had requested safe-conduct for Glas to board a plane to Mexico City. Ecuador’s government said it was unlawful to grant asylum to a person twice convicted on corruption charges. Glas, who had served five years in prison already before being released on parole, Glas faces a new trial for embezzlement in which the judge requested preventive detention. He said he is the victim of political persectuion. (Associated Press, Reuters, El País, Guardian)
International leaders, including Latin American governments from across the ideological spectrum and the U.N. Secretary General, have voiced concern over the nearly unprecedented violation of the Vienna Convention on Consular Relations. While violations are rare globally, it has particularly rankled in Latin America, where embassies served as a critical safe space for victims of political persecution and dictatorship.
Mexican Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena made reference to this history yesterday, receiving evacuated embassy personnel, noting even General Augusto Pinochet’s dictatorship respected the Mexican embassy’s inviolability. Bárcena said Mexico plans to challenge the raid today at the World Court in The Hague. She added that 18 countries in Latin America, 20 in Europe and the Organization of American States have backed Mexico. (Associated Press)
Critics have said the raid on Mexico’s embassy was particularly violent: special forces equipped with a battering ram surrounded the Mexican embassy in Quito’s financial district, and at least one agent scaled the walls to extract Glas on Friday night. (Al Jazeera)
Glas’ attorney told The Associated Press that officers broke into his room in the Mexican embassy and he resisted when they attempted to put his hands behind his back. She said the officers then “knocked him to the floor, kicked him in the head, in the spine, in the legs, the hands,” and when he “couldn’t walk, they dragged him out.”
El País reports that “agents shook off Roberto Canseco, the head of the Mexican consular section, who tried to restrain them on his own. The diplomat ended up on the ground, desperate and helpless, and watched as a convoy of vehicles with tinted windows escorted Glas away.” Videos show Canseco shouting: “No, no, this is a violation, this is not possible!” before he was wrestled to the ground by police. (Financial Times)
Diplomatic tensions between Ecuador and Mexico were already running high last week, when Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador said media manipulation contributed to Ecuadorean President Daniel Noboa’s electoral victory last year. Ecuador responded by declaring Mexico’s ambassador persona non grata. (Reuters)
Ecuador is betting that actual retaliation is unlikely, particularly from the U.S. which is supporting Noboa’s crackdown on organized crime, but the raid could eventually have legal repercussions with monetary implications, according to experts. (Associated Press)
Political calculus
Despite the global outcry, Noboa’s move was well received at home, reports Bloomberg. Experts say “political aspirations appear to explain the arrest at the embassy, which signaled that the president is tough on impunity,” reports the New York Times.
The standoff could help the president ahead of a referendum later this month asking voters to back anti-crime measures and economic reforms, say pollsters. The referendum will likely impact Noboa’s chances at reelection next year (he has a short presidency having assumed last year after snap elections). “Noboa has been faced with flagging approval ratings amid rising violence,” reports the New York Times.
But the move seems to have dynamited a governability pact that permitted Noboa to usher through several thorny projects in his first months in office, reports El País. Opposition parties allied with former President Rafael Correa (under whom Glas was vice president) might now campaign against the referendum. “Even if Noboa wins the consultation and referendum he will be obliged to pass the reforms to the Assembly, where he will encounter a blockade,” reports El País.
More Ecuador
NYT explainer on Glas and El País profile on the former VP: “Glas has garnered a reputation among his supporters as a loyal man who sticks to his guns.”
Ecuador's armed forces will continue carrying out joint anti-crime operations with the police under a presidential decree announced at midnight, reports Reuters.
Moraes v Musk
Brazil’s Supreme Court and Elon Musk are in a standoff over accounts on the social media platform X that Judge Alexandre de Moraes ordered blocked. He is investigating "digital militias" that have been accused of spreading fake news and hate messages during the government of former far-right President Jair Bolsonaro and is also leading an investigation into an alleged coup attempt by Bolsonaro, reports Reuters.
Moraes’ order also barred the social network from publishing details of which accounts were blocked, and came with fines of about £16,000 a day for failure to comply, reports the Guardian.
Yesterday Moraes opened an inquiry into what he called Musk’s obstruction of justice, after Musk said he would lift all the restrictions because they were unconstitutional. (Reuters)
In social media posts, Musk encouraged users in Brazil to use a virtual private network (VPN) app for continued access to the social media platform and called the court’s demands the “most draconian” of any country, reports the Washington Post.
The current Lula administration criticized Musk and called for regulation of social media. “We cannot live in a society in which billionaires domiciled abroad have control of social networks and put themselves in a position to violate the rule of law, failing to comply with court orders and threatening our authorities,” said the federal solicitor general, Jorge Messias. “Social peace is non-negotiable.” (Guardian)
If X decides to disobey the order, the platform could be blocked temporarily, Bruna Santos, global campaigns manager at non profit organization Digital Action, told the BBC. "Musk acted to provoke the Brazilian judiciary," she said. "I think there is a real chance that X might get blocked."
More Brazil
Today Brazil’s Supreme Court unanimously voted “that the armed forces have no constitutional power to intervene in disputes between government branches, a largely symbolic decision aimed at bolstering democracy after years of increasing threat of military intervention,” reports the Associated Press.
Venezuela
Venezuela’s July presidential elections will be neither free nor fair, but massive citizen participation could contribute to negotiations for a democratic transition, Tamara Taraciuk Broner, Director of the Interamerican Dialogue’s Peter D. Bell Rule of Law Program told me for this piece in Cenital.
Haiti
Members of Haiti’s incipient transitional presidential council said, late Friday, that they had finalized a political agreement among their seven voting members and two observers. The document, once signed, is expected to be sent to the Caribbean Community, which will then transmit it to outgoing Prime Minister Ariel Henry so that his council of ministers can sign and the council can be formed, reports the Miami Herald.
The plan is for a 22-month transition, with a new elected president to take office on February 7, 2026 reports AlterPresse.
“Many observers of Haiti’s social disorder today maintain that the island country has always been dysfunctional. But the poverty and chaos in Haiti is of recent vintage, the product of disastrous decisions by political elites and heavy-handed US interference,” argue Jeffrey Sommers and Patrick Bellegarde-Smith in Jacobin.
Guatemala
Guatemalan President Bernardo Arévalo dismissed his minister of environment and natural resources yesterday, fewer than 100 days into his term, to "avoid any doubt" over the integrity of his government. “The dismissal was the first of his term and came after Maria Jose Iturbide acknowledged that her 28-year-old daughter had not followed protocols in the use of vehicles and security meant for the ministry,” reports Reuters.
Mexico
“In Mexico’s first presidential debate on Sunday ahead of June 2 elections, former Mexico City Mayor and frontrunner Claudia Sheinbaum appeared comfortable with her polling lead, remaining calm amid ex-Senator Xóchitl Gálvez’s personal attacks,” reports the Associated Press.
Panama
On the issue of asylum in embassies, former Panamanian president Ricardo Martinelli, who sought asylum in Panama City’s Nicaragua embassy after local courts ratified his 10-year prison sentence for money laundering and declared his bid for president illegal, is campaigning heavily ahead of Panama’s upcoming May presidential election. His candidate, José Raúl Mulino, is leading in the polls, reports Americas Quarterly.
Regional Relations
Nicaragua asked the International Court of Justice to order Germany to halt military arms exports to Israel and to resume its funding of U.N. Palestinian refugee agency UNRWA, saying there is a serious risk of genocide in Gaza — Reuters.
Peru
Peruvian President Dina Boluarte “dismissed an investigation into her use of luxury watches as a “smoke-screen”, denying wrongdoing and saying that the items had been loaned to her, though she admitted to journalists that it was a “mistake” to have accepted them,” reports the Guardian.
Argentina
Since taking office four months ago, Argentine President Javier Milei “has grown into the Presidency. He likes to call his position “just another job” and he seems to have given this job two main descriptions: one, to recreate the Argentina that existed at the turn of the 20th Century; and two, to install himself as one of the leaders of the global alt-right,” writes Marcelo J. García in the Buenos Aires Times.
Libertarian Antonella Marty questions Milei’s libertarian credentials, calling him a “self-obsessed populist with a savior complex who gratifies libertarians by echoing their ideas. Yet his actions contradict his words: He raises taxes, escalates the drug war, restricts social freedoms, threatens his political opponents, and appoints political hacks from previous corrupt administrations to positions of power.” (Reason)
Paraguay
Martín Almada, a human rights activist whose archival work opened the way for a widespread legal reckoning against Paraguay’s Stroessner regime and the regional atrocities of Operación Condor, died at age 87 — Washington Post
Feministas
Mexico City’s feminist markets, run by activists, embody an alternative economy in a country beset by gender violence. Its about reclaiming public spaces, and also the “barter of products, knowledge and services tailored to individual needs, from menstrual healthcare to psychological assistance or legal services,” Mar Cruz, a human rights advocate in Mexico, told the Guardian.