US, Mexico have mutual ambassadors for first time in over a year

The Mexican ambassador was fully accredited in a White House ceremony Monday, the final step in fully staffing the teams in charge of U.S.-Mexico relations for the first time since March 2015.

Ambassador Carlos Manuel Sada Solana was nominated in April by President Enrique Peña Nieto and quickly approved by the Mexican Senate, replacing Miguel Basáñez Ebergenyi, who held the post for about eight months.

Sada presented President Obama with his letters of credence Monday, a formality that allows diplomats to fully assume their responsibilities in representing their home countries.

Sada ran the office in charge of congressional affairs in Mexico’s Embassy from 2007 to 2011. He also headed the Mexican consulates in Toronto, San Antonio, Chicago, New York and Los Angeles, and was mayor of his hometown of Oaxaca from 1993 to 1995.

The United States also has a newly minted ambassador in Mexico City, Roberta Jacobson, who presented her own letters to Peña on June 20. Jacobson was nominated in June 2015 but was forced to wait out a Senate hold placed on her appointment by Sen. Marco Rubio (R-Fla.)

A long period of vacancies in the North American partners’ respective embassies began in March of last year, when then-Ambassador Eduardo Medina-Mora left to become a member of the country’s Supreme Court. 

Medina-Mora’s replacement, Basáñez, was a political newcomer who was blindsided by Donald Trump’s Republican primary campaign and the billionaire’s focus on Mexican immigrants and trade.

In July of last year, Ambassador Earl Anthony “Tony” Wayne resigned from his post, prior to his September retirement from the State Department, and left the embassy in charge of a caretaker ambassador until Jacobson arrived in Mexico City in May.