Ambassador Rodrigo Riofrio admitted that the fight happened while he was waiting in line at a supermarket in the Peruvian capital of Lima on April 21st, but says that the two women who cut in front of him started it.
Christina Castro, one of the women who cut in front of Mr Riofrio and his wife, said that she and her daughter backed off after the ambassador had made it clear that he had been there first.
However, Mrs Castro said in an interview with Peruvian television station DiaD that having admitted she was in the wrong, Mr Riofrio kept at it, angrily saying that all Peruvians were ignorant “Indians” and that the country was “doomed”.
It was then, according to Castro that her young daughter intervened and the situation escalated into a physical confrontation.
Castro alleges that Mr Riofrio broke her glasses and also struck her daughter with a rolled up magazine in the ensuing melee before kicking both women when his wife entered the fray.
Mr Riofrio was quick to apolgise for the unseemly incident, but has continued to insist that it wasn’t him or his wife who started it.
Ecuador’s foreign minister Rafael Roncagliolo has confirmed that the Peruvian government has requested that Mr Riofrio be removed as the ambassador to their country.
It seems that not even foreign ambassadors are able to control their tempers when faced with pushy people in queues.
