President Claudia Sheinbaum on Wednesday said Mexico has no plans to restore diplomatic relations with Ecuador after President Daniel Noboa won re-election over the weekend.
During her Wednesday morning press conference, Sheinbaum cast doubt on Noboa’s election victory, calling it “highly irregular,” while rejecting the Ecuadorian president’s expressed desire to renew relations with Mexico.
“We do not currently have relations with Ecuador and we will not restore relations as long as Noboa is in power,” Sheinbaum said.
Noboa of the center-right National Democratic Action Party defeated left-wing challenger Luisa González in a run-off on Sunday. Sheinbaum had voiced support for González who refused to accept the outcome of the election, claiming fraud though providing no evidence.
Sheinbaum’s predecessor, Andrés Manuel López Obrador, broke off relations with the South American nation after Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito on April 5, 2024. Noboa ordered the highly controversial raid to detain a former vice president of the South American nation who was seeking asylum in Mexico.
Then-Foreign Minister Alicia Bárcena announced the cancellation of diplomatic relations the following day.
“In consultation with [President López Obrador], and in view of the flagrant and serious violation of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, [especially] the principle of inviolability of Mexico’s diplomatic premises and personnel, and the basic rules of international coexistence, Mexico announces that it is immediately breaking diplomatic relations with Ecuador,” she said.
Mexico’s relations with Ecuador were already tenuous. The day before the raid, Ecuador had declared Mexico’s ambassador persona non grata for perceived insults leveled by López Obrador. Three months earlier, however, Mexico had formally condemned acts of violence in Ecuador while declaring solidarity with the Ecuadorian government and people.
Surveillance footage of the embassy raid showed Ecuadorian police grappling with Roberto Canseco, Mexico’s deputy chief of mission, as they arrested Jorge Glas, Ecuador’s former vice president.
Glas, twice convicted for corruption, had sought protection from embezzlement charges by requesting asylum in Mexico. In December 2023 — a little over a month after Noboa first assumed power — López Obrador granted Glas permission to live at Mexico’s embassy.
On April 11, 2024, Mexico filed a lawsuit in the International Court of Justice (ICJ) for “the flagrant violations committed by the Republic of Ecuador against the Mexican Embassy and its diplomatic personnel.” A month later, the ICJ ruled against Mexico’s request for compensation, saying Ecuador had adequately addressed Mexico’s concerns by pledging to protect and respect the embassy in Quito.
Noboa, who will serve a four-year term, has been in office since November 2023 after winning a snap election following the resignation of President Guillermo Lasso six months earlier.
He has defined his presidency through a tough military crackdown on violent criminal gangs while keeping Ecuador in a permanent state of emergency.
Noboa defended his decision to raid Mexico’s embassy by saying the security crisis in Ecuador called for “exceptional decisions,” and that he could not allow a convicted criminal to escape justice.
With reports from El Economista, El Páis México and CNN en Español
