Latin American countries condemn Ecuador raid on Mexico embassy | News

Governments across Latin America have rallied around Mexico after security forces in Ecuador stormed the Mexican embassy in Quito to arrest a controversial politician who had been granted political asylum there.

Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Colombia, Cuba, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela sharply rebuked Ecuador on Saturday, hours after the seizure of Ecuador’s former Vice President Jorge Glas, with Nicaragua joining Mexico in severing diplomatic ties with Quito.

During the incident, which took place late on Friday night, special forces equipped with a battering ram surrounded the Mexican embassy in Quito’s financial district, and at least one agent scaled the walls to extract Glas.

The 54-year-old politician is wanted on corruption charges and has been holed up inside the Mexican embassy since seeking political asylum in December.

Mexican authorities granted that request on Friday.

Following his arrest, Glas could be seen on video circulating on social media being taken by a police convoy to the airport in Quito, flanked by heavily armed soldiers. He then boarded a plane en route to a jail in Guayaquil, the Andean nation’s largest city.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador blasted the unusual diplomatic incursion and arrest as an “authoritarian” act as well as a breach of international law and Mexico’s sovereignty, while the government of Ecuador’s President Daniel Noboa argued asylum protections were illegal because of the corruption charges Glas is facing.

Still, under international law, embassies are considered the sovereign territory of the country they represent, and the Vienna Convention, which governs international relations, states that a country cannot intrude upon an embassy on its territory.

Brazil’s government condemned Ecuador’s move as a “clear violation” of international norms and said the action “must be subject to strong repudiation, whatever the justification for its implementation”.

Colombian President Gustavo Petro argued in a post on X that Latin America “must keep alive the precepts of international law in the midst of the barbarism that is advancing in the world”, while his government said in a separate statement that it will seek human rights legal protections for the now-detained Glas.

The United States also said it condemns any violation of the convention protecting diplomatic missions and encouraged “the two countries to resolve their differences in accord with international norms”.

United Nations Secretary-General Antonio Guterres, meanwhile, said he was “alarmed” by the raid, and urged both sides to show moderation in resolving the dispute, according to a spokesman.

The Washington-based Organization of American States also issued a call for dialogue to resolve the escalating dispute, adding in a statement that a session of the body’s permanent council will be convened to discuss the need for “strict compliance with international treaties, including those that guarantee the right to asylum”.

On Saturday, the Mexican embassy remained surrounded by police and the Mexican flag had been taken down.

Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said late in the day that diplomatic personnel and their families would leave Ecuador on a commercial flight on Sunday, adding that personnel from “friendly and allied countries” would accompany them to the airport.

In Mexico City, about 50 demonstrators rallied outside Ecuador’s embassy, accusing Quito of being “fascist”.

In an interview with national broadcaster Milenio, Mexico’s top diplomat Alicia Barcena expressed shock at Ecuador’s incursion into the country’s embassy, adding that some embassy personnel were injured in the raid.

She added that Glas was granted asylum after an exhaustive analysis of the circumstances surrounding the accusations he faces.

Glas was vice president under former leftist president, Rafael Correa, between 2013 and 2017.

He was released from prison in November after serving time for receiving millions of dollars in kickbacks in a vast scandal involving Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht. He faces another arrest warrant for allegedly diverting funds that were intended for reconstruction efforts after a devastating earthquake in 2016.

Glas has claimed he is the victim of political persecution, a charge Ecuador’s government has denied.

Former President Correa, who has been exiled in Belgium since 2017 and was sentenced in absentia to eight years in prison for corruption, wrote on X that “not even in the worst dictatorships has a country’s embassy been violated”.

He said Glas “was struggling to walk because he was beaten”.

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Mexico suspends ties with Ecuador after police raid embassy | Politics News

Mexico has suspended diplomatic relations with Ecuador after police forcibly broke into its embassy in Quito and arrested former Ecuadorian vice president Jorge Glas who had sought political asylum there.

Glas, who had been convicted twice of corruption, has been staying in the Mexican embassy since December, claiming he was being persecuted by Ecuadorian officials.

Mexico’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement on Friday that it had offered political asylum to Glas, calling on Ecuador to grant him “safe passage” out of the country.

But Ecuadorian special forces, wearing tactical gear including bulletproof vests and helmets, forcefully entered the embassy on Friday night and arrested Glas.

“Ecuador is a sovereign nation and we are not going to allow any criminal to stay free,” Ecuador’s presidency wrote in a statement shortly before the raid.

Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador wrote in a post on X that the storming of the embassy and arrest of Glas constitute an “authoritarian act” and “a flagrant violation of international law and sovereignty of Mexico”.

Mexico to take case to ICJ

For many Ecuadorians it seemed like a “mockery of justice” that the convicted former vice president was being granted political asylum by Mexico, especially considering that he is an ally of the Mexican president, said lawyer and political commentator Adrian Perez Salazar.

“But the fact that there was this grievance does not – at least under international law – justify the forceful breach of an embassy,” Salazar told Al Jazeera from Guayaquil, Ecuador.

Alicia Barcena, Mexico’s foreign minister, said on X that a number of diplomats suffered injuries during the incident – which she called a violation of the Vienna Convention on diplomatic relations.

Mexican diplomatic personnel will “immediately” leave Ecuador, Barcena said, adding that Mexico will appeal to the International Court of Justice (ICJ) to hold Ecuador accountable for violations of international law.

“International law is very clear that embassies are not to be touched, and regardless of whatever justifications the Ecuadorian government might have, it is a case where the end does not justify the means,” Salazar told Al Jazeera.

The situation had escalated a day earlier after the Mexican president made remarks about Ecuador’s elections which the South American country said it considered “very unfortunate”.

Lopez Obrador had commented on the assassination last year of Ecuadorian presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio, comparing it with recent violence in the run-up to the current election cycle in Mexico, which had seen several local candidates shot.

He implied that frontrunner Luisa Gonzalez ultimately lost the election because of Villavicencio’s murder and the media speculation it produced.

Obrador also took aim at “owners of media outlets” and those that he deemed were responsible for an “atmosphere of violence” throughout election campaigns.

Ecuador’s government subsequently declared Mexican ambassador Raquel Serur Smeke as persona non grata and directed her to leave the country “soon”.

Condemnation

Ecuador has been dealing with a new wave of violence since earlier this year, when riots erupted in prisons across the country, criminal leaders escaped custody and masked gunmen stormed a live television broadcast and took hostages.

On Saturday, regional countries reacted to the arrest.

Nicaragua said it was severing diplomatic ties with Ecuador. The government of President Daniel Ortega declared in a statement its “sovereign decision to break all diplomatic relations with the Ecuadoran government” following the “unusual and reprehensible action”.

Meanwhile, four leftist governments in Latin America – Brazil, Colombia, Venezuela and Cuba – criticised the arrest of Glas, who had sought refuge in the embassy since December.

The Organization of American States in a statement reminded its members, which include Ecuador and Mexico, of their “obligation” to not “invoke norms of domestic law to justify non-compliance with their international obligations.”

“In this context, it [the OAS] expresses solidarity with those who were victims of the inappropriate actions that affected the Mexican Embassy in Ecuador,” according to the statement released on Saturday.

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Amid diplomatic spat, Mexico grants former Ecuadorian vice president asylum | News

Amid a developing diplomatic spat, Mexico has granted asylum to a former Ecuadorian vice president accused of bribery while in office.

In a statement on Friday, Mexico’s foreign ministry said it had offered political asylum to Jorge Glas, who has been staying in Mexico’s embassy in Quito since late last year.

The statement called on Quito to grant “safe passage” to Glas, who had twice been convicted of corruption, to leave the country.

“Once asylum is granted, the asylum state can request the departure of the asylum seeker to a foreign territory, and the territorial state [Ecuador] is obliged to immediately grant the corresponding person safe passage,” Mexico’s foreign ministry wrote.

The ministry also condemned what it described as an “increase in the presence of Ecuadorian police forces” outside of its embassy in Quito. Ecuadorean authorities have continually sought permission to enter the embassy and arrest Glas, who was sentenced to six years in prison in 2017.

The announcement has come at a moment of heightened tension for the two countries. On Thursday, Ecuador declared Mexico’s ambassador a “persona non grata”, in response to comments made by Mexican President Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador.

What did Lopez Obrador say?

The remarks that set off the diplomatic incident were aired on Wednesday, during Lopez Obrador’s daily news briefing.

Speaking to reporters, the left-leaning Mexican president implied that violence had affected the outcome of Ecuador’s recent presidential elections.

“In a very strange way, there were elections in Ecuador,” Lopez Obrador explained. He then proceeded to address the assassination of Ecuadorean presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio in August 2023, weeks before the first round of voting.

Lopez Obrador implied that frontrunner Luisa Gonzalez ultimately lost Ecuador’s election because of Villavicencio’s murder and the media speculation it produced.

Villavicencio had been a longtime anticorruption campaigner and was a vocal critic of Gonzalez’s left-wing party, the Citizen Revolution Movement.

“A male candidate who speaks ill of the female candidate who was on top is suddenly murdered,” Lopez Obrador said, without naming either Villavicencio or Gonzalez. “And the female candidate who was at the top falls.”

In the run-off vote in October, Gonzalez narrowly lost the Ecuadorian presidency to centre-right businessman Daniel Noboa, a relative newcomer to national politics and the heir to a banana industry fortune.

What was the reaction?

The Ecuadorian foreign ministry followed Lopez Obrador’s statements on Thursday by declaring Mexico’s ambassador to Ecuador, Raquel Serur Smeke, persona non grata and telling her to leave the country “soon”.

It also acknowledged Villavicencio’s assassination, which took place outside of a political rally in Quito on August 9.

“Ecuador is still mourning this unfortunate event that caused shock in Ecuadorian society and threatens democracy, peace and security,” the ministry wrote. It also called Lopez Obrador’s statements on the matter “unfortunate”.

Supporters of the Mexican president, however, defended his remarks, saying that he was attempting to compare the situation in Ecuador to the recent violence Mexico has faced in the run-up to its June 2 elections.

Several local candidates in Mexico have already been killed, including Bertha Gisela Gaytan, a candidate representing Lopez Obrador’s Morena party in the race to be mayor of Celaya.

Critics have also pointed out that Lopez Obrador’s statements appeared to be largely critical of the media. In his Wednesday remarks, Lopez Obrador accused media companies of whipping up a “heated atmosphere” in Ecuador before the vote.

On Friday, Lopez Obrador said Mexico would not expel Ecuador’s ambassador in retaliation.

Speaking shortly before his foreign ministry made the announcement on Glas, he shrugged off the suggestion that there was any dispute between the two countries.

“For there to be a fight, there need to be two parties involved,” he said. He also called Mexico’s ambassador to Ecuador, Serur Smeke, an “exceptional person”.

Known for his outspokenness, Lopez Obrador has spurred tensions in recent years with his comments about regional politics. Last year, for instance, he provoked ire in Peru after offering asylum to impeached former President Pedro Castillo, who is currently in jail.

He also questioned the legitimacy of Castillo’s successor, current President Dina Boluarte. “So long as there isn’t democratic normalcy in Peru, we don’t want economic or trade relations with them,” he said.

Peru’s Congress responded by declaring Lopez Obrador a “persona non grata”.



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Argentina arrests, deports family of Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive | Drugs News

Drug boss Jose Adolfo Macias is at large after escaping from an Ecuadorean prison, triggering wave of gang violence.

The wife and children of Ecuador’s most-wanted fugitive, drug kingpin Jose Adolfo Macias, were arrested in Argentina and have been deported to Ecuador.

The Los Choneros gang leader, known as “Fito”, escaped from a prison in the port city of Guayaquil this month, leading to a surge in gang violence across Ecuador that prompted President Daniel Noboa to declare a 60-day state of emergency in the country, which is home to 17.8 million people.

Argentina’s security minister Patricia Bullrich said: “We are proud that Argentina was a hostile territory for a group of drug dealers who could’ve come to settle here. Mr Fito had a sentence of 38 years and he escaped, leaving a trail of blood and death in Ecuador.”

Fito’s wife Mariela Macias, her three children, a nephew, a family friend and a nanny were deported, Bullrich told a news conference on Friday.

Mariela arrived in Argentina two weeks ago just before her husband escaped. In December, they bought a house in an exclusive neighbourhood of Cordoba, in central Argentina, in cash.

The authorities were still investigating whether Fito only sent his family to Argentina or if he was or is in the country, Al Jazeera’s Latin America editor Lucia Newman reported from Buenos Aires.

Soldiers stand guard outside Simon Bolivar airbase in Guayaquil after the wife and children of fugitive drug trafficker Jose Adolfo Macias were deported to Ecuador from Argentina [Vicente Gaibor del Pino/Reuters]

Cordoba official Juan Pablo Quinteros said the family’s temporary residence permit had been cancelled, allowing the authorities “to detain them and expel them from the country”.

Interior minister Guillermo Francos said: “Argentina will not be a den for criminals.”

Fito escaped on January 7 from a prison in Guayaquil where he was serving time for various crimes, including drug trafficking and murder.

Authorities have tied Los Choneros to extortion, murder and drug trafficking and accuse the group of controlling Ecuador’s crime-plagued and overcrowded prisons.

Under the state of emergency declared after Fito disappeared, the military was deployed onto the streets and a nationwide nightly curfew was mandated.

Incidents in January alone have included an on-air attack by armed men on a TV station, the taking of more than 200 prison officials hostage and the kidnapping of police officers, as well as the murder of a prosecutor pursuing organised crime.

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Ecuador ‘in state of war’ against drug cartels’ terror campaign | Drugs News

With city streets largely deserted apart from a massive military deployment, Ecuador found itself in a “state of war” as drug cartels waged a brutal campaign of kidnappings and attacks in response to a government crackdown.

Hundreds of soldiers patrolled the capital, Quito, where residents were gripped by fear over a surge in violence that has also prompted alarm abroad.

The small South American country has been plunged into crisis after years of increasing control by transnational cartels that use its ports to ship cocaine to the United States and Europe.

The latest outburst of violence was sparked by the discovery on Sunday of the prison escape of one of the country’s most powerful narco bosses, Jose Adolfo Macias, known by the alias “Fito”.

On Monday, President Daniel Noboa imposed a state of emergency and nighttime curfew, but the gangs hit back with a declaration of “war” – threatening to execute civilians and security forces.

They also instigated numerous prison riots, set off explosions in public places and waged attacks in which at least 14 people have been killed.

More than 100 prison guards and administrative staff have been taken hostage, the prisons authority said.

In the port city of Guayaquil, attackers wearing balaclavas stormed a state-owned TV station on Tuesday, briefly taking several journalists and staff members hostage and firing shots in dramatic scenes broadcast live before police arrived.

Local media reported some of the attackers were as young as 16.

This attack, in particular, spread panic among the general population, many of whom left work and closed shops to return to the safety of their homes.

“Today we are not safe, anything can happen,” said Luis Chiligano, a 53-year-old security guard in Quito who explained he was opting to hide rather than confront “the criminals, who are better armed”.

Noboa said on Wednesday that the country was now in a “state of war,” as he promised not to yield to the gangs.

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Ecuador president declares ‘war’ with criminal gangs amid soaring violence | Crime News

City streets deserted after gangs take prison staff hostage, set off explosions and briefly seize a TV station live on air.

Ecuadorian President Daniel Noboa says his country is “at war” after drug gangs took more than 130 prison guards and other staff hostage and briefly captured a TV station during a live broadcast.

“We are at war, and we cannot cede in the face of these terrorist groups,” Noboa told radio station Canela Radio on Wednesday.

The increase in violence began after Noboa announced a state of emergency following the prison escape of Ecuador’s most powerful narco boss, the Los Choneros gang leader Adolfo Macias, over the weekend.

On Tuesday, Noboa gave orders to “neutralise” criminal gangs after gunmen stormed and opened fire on a TV studio and threatened executions of civilians and security forces.

Noboa on Tuesday named 22 gangs as “terrorist” organisations, making them official military targets.

Soldiers patrol the perimeter of Inca Prison in Quito, Ecuador, during a state of emergency [Dolores Ochoa/AP Photo]

The government said the violence is a reaction to Noboa’s plan to build new high-security prisons for gang leaders. Noboa said the design for two new facilities would be made public on Thursday.

“We are making every effort to recover all the hostages,” Noboa said, adding that the armed forces have taken over the rescue efforts.

“We are doing everything possible and the impossible to get them back safe and sound.”

Riots have erupted in several prisons where 125 guards and 14 administrative staff have been taken hostage, the SNAI prisons agency said.

Eleven people were released on Tuesday, it said.

TV station takeover

In the port city of Guayaquil, attackers wearing balaclavas stormed a state-owned TV station on Tuesday, briefly taking several journalists and staff members hostage on live TV.

The attackers also kidnapped several police officers, one of whom was forced to read a statement to Noboa at gunpoint.

“You declared a state of emergency. We declare police, civilians and soldiers to be the spoils of war,” a terrified officer read.

The statement added that anyone found on the streets after 11pm would be “executed”.

Ecuadorian police said on Wednesday that there have been 70 arrests made since Monday in response to the violence, including the TV station takeover.

World leaders and international bodies have condemned the unrest in the South American country.

European Union foreign policy chief Josep Borrell described the increase of gang activity as a “direct attack on democracy and the rule of law”.

Brian Nichols, the top United States diplomat for Latin America, said Washington was “extremely concerned” by the events and was in “close contact” with Noboa.

France and Russia advised their citizens against travel to Ecuador.

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Ecuador declares state of emergency, curfew after druglord escapes prison | Politics News

Ecuador has declared a state of emergency after an “extremely dangerous” druglord escaped from maximum-security detention and unrest broke out at several prisons in the violence-plagued country.

President Daniel Noboa, in office since November, announced a 60-day mobilisation of soldiers in Ecuador’s streets and prisons as authorities searched for Jose Adolfo Macias, alias Fito.

There would also be a curfew from 11pm (04:00 GMT) to 5am (10:00 GMT) daily, the president said.

The state of emergency, Noboa said in a video on Instagram, would give members of the armed forces “all the political and legal support” they need to carry out their duties in a battle against what he described as “narcoterrorists”.

“We will not negotiate with terrorists nor rest until we return peace to all Ecuadorans,” Noboa said.

On Sunday, Fito, the leader of the powerful Los Choneros gang, was found missing by police conducting an inspection of a prison in the port city of Guayaquil.

The 44-year-old, who is said to have instilled terror in his fellow inmates, is believed to have escaped just hours before police arrived, according to presidency spokesperson Roberto Izurieta. He was apparently tipped off.

“The full force of the state is being deployed to find this extremely dangerous individual,” Izurieta told domestic television on Monday.

He said the prison system had failed and bemoaned “the level of infiltration” by criminal groups.

The prosecutor’s office, meanwhile, said it had opened an investigation and filed charges against two prison officials “allegedly involved in the escape” of Fito.

‘He must be found’

Fito had been serving a 34-year sentence for organised crime, drug trafficking and murder since 2011.

This is his second prison escape – the last was in 2013 when he was recaptured after three months.

In an operation involving thousands of security forces, Fito was transferred to a maximum-security prison last August following the assassination of presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

A week before his death, anti-cartel candidate Villavicencio said he had received threats from Fito.

Long a peaceful haven between top cocaine exporters Colombia and Peru, Ecuador has seen violence explode in recent years as rival gangs with links to Mexican and Colombian cartels vie for control.

Gang wars largely play out in the country’s prisons, where criminal leaders such as Fito wield immense control.

Some 460 inmates have been killed in these battles since 2021, and their bodies are often found dismembered, decapitated or incinerated.

Izurieta said Fito, who studied law in prison, was a “criminal with extremely dangerous characteristics, whose activities have characteristics of terrorism”.

“The search continues … He will be found, he must be found,” said the spokesperson.

After Fito’s escape, unrest broke out at penitentiaries in six of Ecuador’s 24 provinces on Monday, according to the SNAI prison authority, with guards taken hostage at some of the facilities.

Heavily armed police and soldiers entered the prisons of El Oro, Loja, Chimborazo, Cotopaxi, Azuay and Pichincha, after which the military distributed images of half-naked inmates rounded up in courtyards.

The SNAI said there had been no injuries due to the “incidents”.

Other videos on social media, not verified by the authorities, purported to show hooded inmates threatening officials with knives as they pleaded for their lives.

Noboa came to power with promises to clamp down on gangs and insecurity.

On the campaign trail, he proposed creating a separate judicial system for the most serious crimes, militarising the borders with Colombia and Peru, and jailing the most violent offenders on barges offshore.

Last week, he announced the construction of two new maximum-security prisons similar to those built by El Salvador’s President Nayib Bukele, who has led a controversial crackdown on gangs credited with drastically reducing his country’s murder rate.

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Year of the underdog: How ‘outsiders’ upended Latin America’s elections | Elections News

Buenos Aires, Argentina – Poverty through the roof. Out-of-control inflation. Overwhelming debt. Javier Milei painted the grimmest of pictures when he delivered his inaugural address as president of Argentina earlier this month.

“There is no money,” he said in a grave voice. “There is no alternative to tightening our belt. There is no alternative to a shock.”

It was not the sort of message you would expect to elicit cheers from a society battered by economic recession. But the roar from the crowd demonstrated the extent to which Milei – a relative newcomer to the world of politics – had succeeded in tapping into voters’ discontent with the status quo.

Milei, a 53-year-old libertarian economist known for his shaggy hair and cloned dogs, was part of a wave of political outsiders who surged into leadership positions in Latin America this year.

Countries across the region saw dark-horse candidates sweep into the presidency in 2023, delivering a rebuke to the political establishment.

In Ecuador, for instance, Daniel Noboa stunned the nation by defeating political veteran Luisa González in an October run-off vote. Like Milei, Noboa, the heir to a banana industry fortune, had only served a single term in public office before his ascent to the presidency.

Guatemala, meanwhile, saw progressive congressman Bernardo Arevalo come from behind to win a landslide in his country’s presidential elections, defeating former First Lady Sandra Torres.

Arevalo had been seen as a long-shot candidate, polling with less than 3 percent support in the lead-up to the first vote. But he sailed to victory on a wave of popular frustration he characterised as a “democratic spring”.

President Daniel Noboa became Ecuador’s youngest-ever elected president when he was sworn in on November 23 [Carlos Noriega/AP]

Even in Paraguay, another long-shot, Paraguayo Cubas, made a surprisingly strong showing in the country’s presidential race. Describing himself as an “anti-system” candidate, the far-right leader landed in third place in the final vote.

But Pablo Touzon, an Argentinian political scientist, said “anti-system” might not be the right term for this trend of political outsiders.

“It’s not that they are anti-system. They are the new system,” he said of the slate of new leaders, who span the political spectrum, from left to right.

Touzon traces this crop of political outsiders to a global shift that has been brewing for more than a decade.

He explained that the global economic crash of 2008 and the rise of social media empowered new voices to rail against the status quo, rocking political establishments from Europe to North America to the Middle East.

This period of upheaval in the early 2000s coincided with a commodities boom in Latin America: The price of raw materials and other exports rose, fuelled by demand from countries like China.

That lowered regional inequality slightly, but Touzon warned that Latin America has “yet to find its economic model” – one that will ensure the region’s stability. Instead, economic uncertainty has created the conditions for the current “political rupture”.

“The new system might be more unstable, more variable, with a power that is easier to obtain and easier to lose,” Touzon said.

President-elect Bernardo Arévalo has faced legal challenges since winning Guatemala’s presidential election with a dark-horse campaign [Moises Castillo/AP]

The economy was a leading issue in several of the countries that saw upstart candidates take power.

Argentina’s dismal economic outlook dominated its election cycle, with inflation soaring past 160 percent and its currency tanking. More than 40 percent of the population sits below the poverty line.

Likewise, Ecuador’s economy has struggled to rebound after the COVID-19 pandemic. Experts have warned that high youth unemployment could provide “easy recruits” for criminal gangs, another top concern in this year’s election.

Corruption was also a mobilising issue. In Ecuador, outgoing President Guillermo Lasso faced impeachment hearings until he dissolved the legislature and called for new elections.

In Argentina, meanwhile, the previous administration hit a speed bump when a federal court found then-Vice President Cristina Fernández de Kirchner guilty of corruption last December.

And in Guatemala, a litany of government scandals drove voters to back the Movimiento Semilla or Seed Movement, an anticorruption party led by Arevalo.

“My candidacy and our party channelled the frustration with an intolerable situation of corruption,” Arevalo said in an interview with the BBC in November.

Even so, government prosecutors and rival politicians have mounted repeated efforts to question the legitimacy of Arevalo’s victory, spurring international observers to warn of election interference.

Supporters reach out towards Argentina’s newly inaugurated President Javier Milei, bottom right, on December 10 [Natacha Pisarenko/AP]

Distrust in government institutions has been a uniting theme throughout the 2023 elections, according to commentators like Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist Andrés Oppenheimer.

In an appearance on Mexico’s Imagen Radio, Oppenheimer credited the clamour for change to longstanding frustrations.

“The wave of outsider presidents that they are electing in Latin America – from Chile, Peru, Colombia, Argentina, all the anti-systemic leaders are appearing ahead in the polls – all of that is part of the same thing,” Oppenheimer said. “There’s a wave of unhappiness in the world.”

In some cases, when faced with major obstacles like economic turmoil or corruption, voters turn to politicians they come to view as “messiahs”, said Romina Del Pla, a left-leaning member of Argentina’s Chamber of Deputies.

“It’s the expression of the magnitude of the crisis that we have been living through in Argentina for many years,” Del Pla said of her country’s recent election.

She added that the thirst for “messiah” figures extends beyond Argentina, pointing to the success of populists like Donald Trump in the United States or Jair Bolsonaro in Brazil.

“We’ve seen that this phenomenon is international in nature, with Trump, with Bolsonaro, with others, that are the people who have managed to channel that huge frustration,” she said.

Protesters demonstrate against President Javier Milei’s slate of reforms outside the National Congress in Buenos Aires, Argentina, on December 21 [Rodrigo Abd/AP]

Del Pla observed that, during this year’s presidential race, there was a “rupture” among working-class voters who had traditionally supported large political parties. Many were instead drawn to Milei, who denounced the political establishment as corrupt.

On the campaign trail, he often referred to the governing parties as a “political caste”, implying a fixed power structure meant to keep outsiders like him at bay.

But for all his working-class appeal, Del Pla warned that Milei’s economic measures were sure to hit the middle class and poor the hardest.

Upon taking office, Milei devalued Argentina’s currency by more than 50 percent, a move poised to send inflation even higher and weaken consumer spending power. He also unveiled a legislative package that sought to overhaul some 300 laws by decree, with language that would curtail the right to strike and set the stage for the privatisation of state assets.

His government also pledged to crack down on protests, releasing guidelines that indicate a zero-tolerance approach to demonstrations that cut off traffic.

Critics like Del Pla see the guidelines as a move to suppress dissent. After all, the early days of Milei’s administration have seen clashes with police as protesters rallied against his reforms.

“Now, we see that all of the caste that they were supposedly going to fight against is actually in the government,” said Del Pla. “In the end, Milei is not that much of an outsider.”

Supporters of Javier Milei gather outside the National Congress on December 10 to hear his speech after he was sworn in [Martin Cossarini/Reuters]

But outside the National Congress building on Milei’s inauguration day, his supporters celebrated a leader they saw as upending the political establishment.

“I was tired of governments who used poor people to get to power,” said Norma Fernandez, 57, an elder-care worker who joined the crowd to watch Milei speak. “I think Javier Milei is something different.”

Another supporter, 36-year-old secretary Sol Calvo, expressed her excitement about the new president through tears of joy.

“I’m happy that people have finally changed their minds,” she said of the new political outlook under Milei.

Both women acknowledged that challenges lay ahead under Milei, a relatively untested political leader with radical plans to reshape the government. But Fernandez said she believes that most people who voted for Milei understood what was in store.

“Milei is going to get us out of this,” she said. “But it’s going to be hard.”

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