Venezuela has ordered its embassy in Ecuador closed in the wake of a raid on the Mexican Embassy in Quito.
“I ordered to close our Embassy in Ecuador, as well as the Consulates in Quito and Guayaquil and for diplomatic personnel to return to Venezuela immediately,” Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro said Tuesday in a post on the social platform X, which was translated from Spanish with Google translation tools. “All this until International Law is expressly restored in Ecuador.”
Earlier this month, Ecuadorian police raided the Mexican Embassy in Quito and arrested a former Ecuadorian vice president, Jorge Glas. Glas, who had sought asylum at the embassy, had been sheltering there since December.
Glas had a warrant for his arrest and had been sentenced to prison for alleged corruption, per Ecuador’s presidential office.
“The absolute and total solidarity from Venezuela with the people of Mexico,” Maduro said in a separate post on X. “You are not alone, you have the voice of our America, accompanying you in this circumstance that you did not seek, but rather it is an act of barbarism committed against your embassy in Ecuador, which no one in the world defends.”
According to The Associated Press, the Venezuelan Embassy in Quito seemed to be closed Tuesday. Those who were attempting to get through paperwork stayed outside, alongside reporters, not getting answers from embassy staff.
Tensions between Mexico and Ecuador have strained for months. Ecuador’s government said that the Mexican ambassador wasn’t wanted earlier this month after Mexican President Andrés Manuel López Obrador made comments about last year’s Ecuadorian election.