📊 Mexico-Ecuador Relations
With tensions rising we explore: How much do the countries share?
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🤝 Relations
We live in strange times for Latin American regional politics.
Brazil is run by the same man who led the country 20 years ago. Colombia has its first-ever leftist president, while famously left-wing Argentina has swung to the libertarian right. Both Peru’s presidency and legislature have rarely ever been so despised.
Oh, and Mexico has brought a court case against Ecuador at the International Court of Justice in The Hague, Netherlands.
Yes, currently there is a diplomatic crisis that you’ve likely have heard of. Ecuador raided the Mexican embassy in Quito a few weeks ago in order to arrest former vice president Jorge Glas, who had been living in the embassy since December.
The move, which in theory goes against the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations, sparked outrage from across the political spectrum around Latin America and the world. Mexico even severed diplomatic relations with Ecuador, a move promptly followed by Nicaragua.
Seeing our region’s divisive regional politics thrust into the global limelight got us thinking about the relationship these two countries share. What is the relationship between Ecuador and Mexico?
The answer is: fairly minimal.
It’s a long-held tenet of liberal theories that countries with greater economic relations and interdependence are less likely to have conflicts among them. To be sure, there are limits to this: no amount of economic exchange will fully erase the issues in ties between the US and China, or the European Union and Russia.
But if trade can stand in as a sign of two countries’ relationship strength, then Ecuador and Mexico are far from intimate partners. Less than a percent of all Mexican exports go to Ecuador—the same is true in the inverse. Ecuador might well hope to change that with its ambition to join the four-country Pacific Alliance…but that dream is likely to remain unrealized as long as there’s bad blood with Mexico City.
But trade and economics only tell one half of the story. After all, US-Mexico ties aren’t just economic; there’s the thousands upon thousands of people living in both countries with ties to the other.
We thus decided to look at the people-to-people social relationship, which is also quite minimal.
In both directions, there’s little to see, though as always with numbers of immigrants it’s tough to be comprehensive. Even with record numbers of Ecuadorians leaving their country due to crime, only a few live today in Mexico.
The reverse also holds true: by the most recent numbers available, you could fit every Mexican living in Ecuador into a large public high school.
None of this is to say that with heavy trade ties or significant expat populations the recent conflict would be any different. The case around Jorge Glas and his arrest is full of nuance and controversy, and the presidents of both countries likely believe they’re in the right.
Still, it’s worth noting what sort of relationship – or lack thereof – is today so full of contention.
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Comment of the Week 🗣️
Guadalupe observes the fact that many of Latin America’s top universities are religious. That’s certainly unlike the rest of the world.
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