A new rule from the Mexican government will guide, and possibly limit, U.S. Ambassador to Mexico Ken Salazar’s contact with senior officials, even as the foreign dignitary emphasized the warm relationship between the U.S. and Mexico.
Former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador said in late August that he had placed the Mexican government’s relationship with the United States Embassy in Mexico “on pause” due to Salazar’s critical remarks about his judicial reform proposal and what he characterized as the U.S. government’s lack of openness about the arrest of Sinaloa Cartel leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada.
But Salazar said Thursday that “in reality there never has been a pause,” and declared that the relationship between Mexico and the United States is “very good.”
“I always look at the relationship with optimism,” he told a press conference at the U.S. Embassy in Mexico City.
“The relationship between the United States and Mexico is going very well. … It’s never going to pause, it continues, there’s no pause now and in reality there never has been a pause,” Salazar said.
“The exchange we have is a strong, deep, authentic exchange — very good dialogue,” he said.
Salazar also said that U.S. President Joe Biden is “very happy” with the work the U.S. Embassy has done in Mexico.
“On behalf of President Biden and Secretary [of State Antony] Blinken, and on my part, I want to thank the government of Mexico because they’ve opened the doors to us as partners,” he said.
Speaking a day after Mexico’s former security minister Genaro García Luna was sentenced to 38 years in U.S. prison for colluding with the Sinaloa Cartel on drug trafficking operations, the ambassador said that the Biden administration and the Mexican government led by President Claudia Sheinbaum are “aligned” on their actions to “ensure that officials are not corrupt.”
“It’s a part of the [bilateral] agenda,” he said.
Salazar highlighted the security cooperation between the United States and Mexico, noting that the case in the U.S. against imprisoned Los Zetas/Northeast Cartel leaders Miguel Treviño Morales and Omar Treviño Morales is the result of “shared work and cooperation” with Mexico.
He also said that progress has been made on the broader fight against organized crime, including the trafficking of weapons and fentanyl, which drug cartels manufacture in Mexico and ship to the United States, where the powerful synthetic opioid is the main cause of the overdose crisis.
In addition, Salazar said that United States and Mexico have made progress in addressing irregular migration to the U.S.
The number of migrants attempting to cross into the United States from Mexico has fallen sharply since the Biden administration implemented a new border policy in early June.
“The decline in encounters has come amid policy changes on both sides of the border,” the Pew Research Center said earlier this month.
“Authorities in Mexico have stepped up enforcement to prevent migrants from reaching the U.S. border. And U.S. President Joe Biden issued an executive order in June that makes it much more difficult for migrants who enter the U.S. without legal permission to seek asylum and remain in the country.”
Salazar stressed that close cooperation between the United States and Mexico on security, migration and economic issues has continued since Sheinbaum was sworn in as president on Oct. 1. He highlighted that officials from both countries have met on several occasions in the past two weeks.
“In the meetings we’ve had with her cabinet, we’ve worked to advance security, … we’re working on energy, climate change, on the integration of our economies,” Salazar said.
“We’re creating the strongest power in the world in North America,” he added.
Salazar attended the United States-Mexico CEO Dialogue meeting on Tuesday at which Sheinbaum spoke, and returned to the National Palace for a meeting with high-ranking officials on Wednesday. The ambassador, and U.S. First Lady Jill Biden, also met with Sheinbaum the day before she was sworn in as president.
Sheinbaum sets new rules for the ambassador
Sheinbaum said last Friday that the Foreign Affairs Ministry (SRE) will manage her government’s relationship with Salazar and the U.S. Embassy.
If the ambassador wants to speak about the USMCA with Mexico’s labor minister, for example, he will have to make the arrangement with the SRE, she said.
“A series of general guidelines were established because sometimes the ambassador got used to calling one minister, another minister, another minister,” Sheinbaum said.
“Now we told him: ‘If you want to touch on an issue with the energy minister because there are United States businesspeople interested in investing [in Mexico] … it’s through the Foreign Affairs Ministry,'” she said.
Foreign Affairs Minister Juan Ramón de la Fuente said that the new rules won’t limit interactions between U.S. and Mexican officials, but do create “a much more orderly and clear scheme in the complex [bilateral] agenda we have on multiple issues.”
“… Clear rules, long friendships. Fundamentally, I believe that has been the message,” he said.
“… I’m sure that the relationship will continue being cordial, productive and very diverse,” de la Fuente said.
During the previous six-year period of government, Salazar met with López Obrador at the National Palace on numerous occasions.
Despite the ambassador’s declaration that the relationship between the United States and Mexico is “very good,” it doesn’t appear likely that he will be sitting down to one-on-one meetings with Sheinbaum on a regular basis.
Salazar, United States secretary of the interior during Barrack Obama’s first term as U.S. president, succeeded Christopher Landau as U.S. ambassador to Mexico in 2021.
The Mexico-US relationship at a glance
- Mexico and the United States share a 3,145-kilometer-long border that separates six Mexican states from four U.S. states.
- Mexico and the United States are each other’s largest trading partners. Mexico became the top exporter to the U.S. in 2023, surpassing China, and has maintained that position this year.
- Trade between Mexico, the United States and Canada was governed by NAFTA between 1994 and 2020, when that free trade pact was superseded by the USMCA. A review of the USMCA is scheduled to take place in 2026.
- In late 2021, the two countries established “The Mexico-U.S. Bicentennial Framework for Security, Public Health, and Safe Communities.”
- Around 11 million Mexicans live in the United States, while an estimated 1.6 million U.S. citizens live in Mexico, according to the U.S. Department of State.
With reports from La Jornada, El Economista, El Financiero, Animal Político, Expansión and El País
