By José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero on April 8, 2024
the arrest of former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas, photo: AFP
On the night of Friday, April 5, the Ecuadorian police forcibly broke into the Mexican embassy in Quito. Special detachments with heavy weapons and armored vehicles participated in the operation, where former Vice President Jorge Glas was arrested, Mexican diplomatic personnel were mistreated and international legality, particularly the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, was completely violated.
In spite of the courage with which the ambassador in charge of Mexico tried to defend the national sovereignty of his country, he could not prevent the facts from being consummated. Jorge Glas returned to prison, Mexico and Ecuador broke diplomatic relations, Nicaragua and Ecuador broke diplomatic relations, even the USA questioned the actions of its Ecuadorian ally and the president of CELAC, the Honduran Xiomara Castro, called for a series of emergency meetings on Monday and Tuesday.
The Ecuadorian Foreign Minister, on her part, ignoring the wave of international indignation that the decision taken by her country has generated, declared this Saturday that Ecuador was only defending its national sovereignty, as a response to an asylum considered illegitimate by her government.
Undoubtedly, something in Ecuador is overflowing. It seems logical to assume that it has to do with the subject that motivated the brutal action: Jorge Glas. Who is this dangerous criminal who is worth more to Ecuador than international legality and the possible isolation of the country?
Glas, an engineer by training, has a relatively long political career. Linked to the Citizen Revolution movement, he was vice president of Rafael Correa between 2013 and 2017 and then of Lenín Moreno between 2017-2018. Lenín prosecuted him for his alleged links to corruption cases, was found guilty and sentenced to eight years in prison. While on provisional release, the former vice president made the decision in December 2023 to seek asylum in the Mexican Embassy, citing fears for his safety. Mexico’s recent sovereign decision to grant him political asylum was the trigger for the brutal violation mentioned above.
Glas has two years left to serve. He is not currently a political figure of weight in the country, but rather, from the images that have been leaked, he looks like a man who is suffering from the difficult conditions of his incarceration. He is not a threat to the powers that rule the country today, and even less so at a time when Ecuador seems to be going through a deep structural crisis.
In January of this year we watched with alarm as the leaders of the country’s main criminal gangs escaped virtually in unison from maximum security prisons. At the same time, gang violence was rampant in Guayaquil and other major cities of the country, bringing to everyone’s attention a reality that had been hitting the daily lives of Ecuadorians for some time: the rise of organized crime, drugs, violence, corruption and the intertwining of these phenomena with high-ranking officials of the national state. A presidential candidate was even assassinated just for promising a firm program to fight organized crime.
What is overflowing in Ecuador today is the result, in my opinion, of two fundamental issues. On the one hand, the fierce persecution of “Correism” and of everything that has a link with Rafael Correa. This persecution of “correísmo” implies the total denial of that country project that, between 2007 and 2017, with virtues and defects, managed to guarantee high rates of national development with important social justice programs. The line followed by Moreno, Lasso and now Noboa, which is in tune with the national and international elites, seeks above all to destroy any space of possible political rearticulation of a leftist project in the country. For that it is necessary to fiercely persecute any leadership. This is how the numerous cases and attempts of lawfare against “Correism” are understood, from Correa himself to Jorge Glas. The visceral hatred to “Correism” is perhaps what best explains the events of this Friday.
To dismantle the political fabric of a society it is essential to dismantle its social fabric. That is why the second fundamental element has been the progressive construction of narco-state structures that envelop the citizenry and subjugate them through fear or direct physical violence. A shock strategy that allows justifying hard-line policies that are always expressed in an authoritarian reinforcement of governmental powers and a reduction of citizens’ rights and guarantees.
In this scenario, the media are fundamental allies. They contribute with enthusiasm to the climate of fear and anxiety, filling the television grid with news that constantly shows the growing violence in society.
What happened Friday, then, is the expression of an agonizing political body, illegal and amoral, that imprisoned in the nets of its own internal “vendetta”, does not hesitate to generate a complex regional crisis. Ecuador is overflowing and only its people, who already knew how to channel it in the past, will be able to put the country back on the best path.
José Ernesto Nováez Guerrero is a researcher, author and journalist. Coordinator of the Cuban chapter of the Network of Intellectuals and Artists in Defense of Humanity and frequent contributor to Cuba en Resumen.
Source: Cuba en Resumen