Ecuador Declares Persona Non Grata to the Ambassador of Mexico

April 4, 2024 Hour: 9:22 pm

The Government of Ecuador decided on Thursday to declare the Ambassador of Mexico, Raquel Serur Smeke, persona non grata in that nation.

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According to a statement from the Foreign Ministry, the measure was taken in correspondence with “article 9 of the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations,” following statements by Mexican President Andrés López Obrador on the 2023 elections in the Andean country, and the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

In this sense, the statement of the portfolio described the declarations of the Mexican president as “very unfortunate”.

“Ecuador is still in mourning for that unfortunate event, which caused shock in Ecuadorian society and undermined democracy, peace and security. The country continues to face transnational organized crime, which threatens the State, its democratic institutions and its population,” the document said.

La Cancillería del Ecuador informa: pic.twitter.com/68L06w8tiF

— Cancillería del Ecuador �� (@CancilleriaEc)
April 4, 2024

Official statement of the Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry

The Government of Ecuador also reiterated its “commitment to respect for the dignity and sovereignty of its State and to the fundamental principle of non-intervention in the internal affairs of other States”.

The Mexican president, in his usual space La Mañanera, described as strange the conditions in which the elections took place in Ecuador.

“It was the candidate of the progressive force (Luisa González) as ten points above. Then a candidate who speaks ill of the candidate going up is suddenly killed, and the candidate going up falls. And the candidate who was in second (Daniel Noboa), goes up,” the president recalled.

#Ecuador| La Cancillería ecuatoriana declaró persona non grata a la embajadora de México. Estas son las declaraciones que provocaron esa decisión ⤵️@teleSURtv pic.twitter.com/zvZReI7sP4

— Elena Rodríguez Yánez (@ElenaDeQuito)
April 4, 2024

The text reads, The Ecuadorian Foreign Ministry declared the Mexican ambassador persona non grata. These are the statements that caused that decision

López Obrador also said that González, after the murder of Villavicencio, continued to campaign under very difficult circumstances, because she was considered suspicious.

In this sense, the head of State stressed that after that, it was necessary to “create a rarefied atmosphere of violence”, and this was evident in the attendance of candidates to the presidential debates wearing bulletproof vests.

Raquel Serur Smeke is an outstanding intellectual who was appointed ambassador of Mexico to Ecuador in 2019.