Following a police action on Friday night, the president of Mexico, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, announced the severing of diplomatic relations with Ecuador. The Ecuadorian police had invaded the Mexican embassy in Quito and arrested former vice president Jorge Glas, who had been sheltering in the diplomatic representation since December and had just received political asylum.
The head of the Chancellery and Political Affairs of the Mexican embassy, Roberto Canseco, denounced the invasion and attack on the guards at the diplomatic headquarters. He called it unacceptable and barbaric. Glas was detained in the diplomatic unit and transferred to a Public Prosecutor’s Office unit in Quito. He was then taken to the La Roca maximum security prison in Guayaquil.
Glas served as vice-president in the administration of Rafael Correa and Lenin Moreno and was accused of embezzling public resources. He already had two judicial convictions and had been free due to a habeas corpus since the end of 2022. However, he sought refuge at the Mexican embassy in Quito and never left. In January, an Ecuadorian court ordered his preventive detention, but at that point, he was already sheltered in the embassy.
The granting of asylum led to a deterioration of diplomatic tensions between Ecuador and Mexico. Days before the incident, López Obrador had made intemperate statements about non-leftist politicians in Ecuador. In response, the Ecuadorian government declared
