New US Ambassador from Mexico Plucked from Inner Circle and Raising Eyebrows Nina Lakhani - The Guardian
go to original August 15, 2015

Miguel Basañez is a trusted ally to President Enrique Pena Nieto, but many on both sides of border question choice of academic with no diplomatic experience. (Especial)

Mexico’s relationship with the United States has always been mutually significant: the two countries share a land border of nearly 2,000 miles, and bilateral issues such as the “war on drugs”, migration, border security and trade will undoubtedly play a key role in the upcoming US presidential elections.

But until this week, Mexico had been without an ambassador to Washington – its most important diplomatic posting – for an unprecedented six months, ever since the former envoy was named as a supreme court justice.

President Enrique Peña Nieto’s decision to appoint a trusted ally with no diplomatic experience to the top US post has raised eyebrows on both sides of the border, and prompted rumours of strained relations between the two countries.

The surprise appointment of Miguel Basañez, a former government pollster, came in stark contrast to Barack Obama’s decision to assign Roberta Jacobson, a Mexico expert and political heavyweight, to serve as his envoy in Mexico.

Basañez, 65, is barely known within Mexico, but is an internationally respected academic, pollster and businessman with a political past rooted in the state of Mexico where Peña Nieto was born and cut his political teeth.

Read the rest at The Guardian

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