Ecuador’s foreign ministry released a statement Thursday calling Mexico’s ambassador Raquel Serur Smeke a “persona non grata” following Andrés Manuel López Obrador, the president of Mexico’s, comments about the 2023 Ecuador elections and the assassination of former presidential candidate Fernando Villavicencio.

The foreign ministry noted that Ecuador was still in mourning following the assassination and that it had no desire to interfere with the internal matters of other countries. 

In his statements made on Wednesday, President López Obrador commented on the 2023 Ecuador elections and suggested that a female candidate, Luisa Gonzalez, who was the front-runner for a time, was unfairly blamed by the media for the assassination of Villavicencio and ultimately lost the election to Ecuador’s current president. President López Obrador further alleged that the media needed to take responsibility for creating a “charged atmosphere” throughout the elections and that Mexico also shared similar struggles with corruption in media. López Obrador has previously been criticized for leaking a journalist’s phone number in an interview with the New York Times, after which the numbers of him and his family were leaked in the media, leading to death threats and harassment. 

Ecuador is currently facing numerous struggles with gang violence, with current President Daniel Noboa claiming the country was in “a state of war” following mass prison breakouts of gang leaders amidst other assassinations and acts of violence.