Tony Castro: Maria Echaveste and the Ethnic Lion's Den Debacle of Mexico Tony Castro - VOXXI
go to original February 5, 2015

Maria Echaveste's withdrawal from the U.S. ambassador to Mexico nomination points to a deeply rooted problem of President Obama with Latin America. (Berkeley Law)

Maria Echaveste, the illustrious Texas-born daughter of Mexican immigrants, might have been the best ambassador to Mexico that President Barack Obama could have appointed, if only he had done it six years ago.

On Monday Echaveste withdrew her nomination that the president made last September which wound up disappointingly mired in a GOP-controlled Senate where she became a doomed symbol of the Obama administration’s failure on Latin American foreign policy.

Echaveste, 60, cited a prolonged confirmation process as well as her family’s best interests.

That, of course, is academic-speak from a Stanford University and Berkeley Law School graduate to rhetorically ask what could she possibly accomplish in the year or so, should she eventually be confirmed, in a lame duck administration of a politically weakened president who has turned Mexican policy into a political issue?

The tragedy is not that her appointment was effectively derailed by politics but that Echaveste, considered one of the most brilliant minds among first generation Americans of Mexican descent, was little more than a throwaway nominee.

Why wasn’t she appointed when Obama took office in 2009 amid a honeymoon political climate and a likelihood of serving a full term?

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