The United States government “dedicated” its new US $1.2 billion embassy in Mexico City on Tuesday ahead of its expected opening in 2025.
Located near the Soumaya art museum in an area of the capital known as Nuevo Polanco, the 49,000-square-meter, seven-story embassy is the largest United States embassy in the world, according to U.S. Ambassador Ken Salazar.
It was designed by the New York-based firms Tod Williams Billie Tsien Architects and Davis Brody Bond.
Salazar, who will conclude his ambassadorship in Mexico on Jan. 7 ahead of the Jan. 20 inauguration of Donald Trump as the 47th president of the United States, “dedicated” the embassy during a ceremony at the building on Tuesday.
In a statement, he said that the embassy is a “symbol” of the “lasting ties” and “shared future” of the United States and Mexico.
“Here, in the capital of Mexico, the investment of more than US $1 billion that we’ve made in this embassy — the most important and largest in the world — emphasizes the unique relation between our nations and countries, not just as [each other’s] main trade partners, but also as family,” Salazar said.
The embassy’s construction began in early 2018. It was initially scheduled to open in 2022. It is located on a former industrial site in the Irrigación neighborhood (part of Nuevo Polanco), which is part of Mexico City’s Miguel Hidalgo borough. The site required extensive cleanup to rid it of dangerous toxins.
The Associated Press reported that the opening of the embassy to the public “likely won’t come before late next year as work continues.”
Some 1,400 embassy employees will work in the new environmentally-friendly building, which includes two underground levels and an art gallery. Those employees will relocate to the new embassy from the current U.S. Embassy on the Paseo de la Reforma boulevard as well as from various other U.S. government offices in Mexico City.
The first U.S. ambassador to work from the new embassy will be Ronald D. Johnson, who Trump announced as his pick for ambassador to Mexico last week.
At the dedication ceremony on Tuesday, William Moser, senior advisor to the director of the U.S. Department of State Bureau of Overseas Buildings Operations (OBO) and a former director of the OBO, said that the “wonderful new facility” will be the United States’ diplomatic “home” in Mexico “for the next 75 years.”
According to Davis Brody Bond, the new embassy “is sunken several stories into the ground, and designed around a large covered open air courtyard, responding to the scale of the neighborhood and climate of the region.”
“… The new facility incorporates rigorous sustainability and energy-saving goals, aiming to reduce environmental impact, optimize building performance, and enhance the self-sufficiency of the campus,” the firm said.
“The campus will use reclaimed water from the city for cooling and sewage conveyance to reduce the impact on the local water infrastructure.”
‘The vision of dividing’ and ‘building walls’ is ‘not our vision,’ says SalazarÂ
While a plaque unveiled at Tuesday’s ceremony features the names of U.S. President Joe Biden, Secretary of State Antony Blinken and Salazar, the embassy will officially open during Trump’s second term as president.
The commencement of that term could signal the start of a more tumultuous relationship between the United States and Mexico, given that Trump has threatened to impose tariffs on Mexican exports, deport large numbers of immigrants from the U.S. and perhaps even use U.S. military force to combat Mexican cartels.
Without specifically mentioning the former and future president, Salazar on Tuesday spoke about what he called “another vision” of U.S.-Mexico relations.
“You know it very well,” he told attendees at the dedication ceremony, among whom were Mexican officials and business leaders.
“It’s the vision of dividing, of building walls, of seeing one people as inferior to another people. That is not our vision,” Salazar said.
In his statement, the ambassador highlighted that the embassy was built by “Mexican and United States hands with effort, commitment and dedication.”
“In the same way, together we will build our shared future so that it is more prosperous, safer and brighter for our nations,” Salazar said.
“In addition to being a functional, modern and environmentally responsible building, our new embassy is also a tribute to the greatness of Mexico and its people. It will serve as a meeting point to work together to deepen and broaden our relationship. Beyond diplomacy, it will be a place for our nations to get to know each other better, understand each other more and build a shared future,” he said.
“… Our bet is on North America,” he said in his speech at the new embassy.
Investment of over US $2 billion in new US embassy and consulates in Mexico Â
Salazar highlighted that the United States opened new consulates in Hermosillo, Guadalajara, Mérida and Nogales “in the past year.”
The total investment in the new embassy and the consulates was over US $2 billion, he said.
Salazar, a former U.S. senator and secretary of the interior during Barrack Obama’s first term as president, established a good rapport with former president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, but their relationship soured after the ambassador voiced concerns about the Mexican government’s judicial reform earlier this year.
Last month, Salazar was critical of AMLO’s so-called “hugs, not bullets” security strategy, declaring that it had failed.
In October, President Claudia Sheinbaum announced that her government’s relationship with the ambassador and the U.S. Embassy would be managed by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE).
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 [directly] calling one minister, another minister, another minister,” Sheinbaum said.
With reports from El PaÃs, El Universal, El Financiero and AP
