Sounds to me like on the one hand you have ATC acting conservatively when faced with a communication problem on the subject of how little fuel remained in the aircraft. With Avianca in mind, they opted to route the aircraft directly in. Everyone's happy, except...
...On the other hand you have some "hometown" crew who's noses are bent out of shape because they automatically think he was trying to get clever and queue-jump, ignoring the fact that enroute diversions or unplanned FL assignments could have affected his burn so as to arrive in the fuel state he did i.e. unable to hold until EAT 45 minutes later.
So the controller's choice is to "stop fiddling around with the language barrier and work him in so as not to risk an Avianca accident" vs. "risk being bad-mouthed in a few cockpits containing Figjams who go through life thinking everyone else is doing it wrong or suspiciously, and will even later try and tell me how to do my job".
I'm no controller, but I sure know which choice I would make every single time and still sleep at night like a baby.