Botanist, actor — A look back at U.S. diplomats in Mexico
It is safe to say that most people in 2018 would acknowledge that relations between the United States and Mexico have been better. However, many Americans may not realize that the top diplomat to Mexico, the ambassador, sometimes has been either colorful or of interesting historical importance in some way.
The first U.S. ambassador to Mexico, the title of which at the time was “minister,” was Charleston, S.C., native Joel Poinsett, a physician who would distinguish himself as a diplomat, a congressman, and a secretary of war. He served in Mexico from 1825-1829. However, his true passion was botany, and he became fond of a popular Christmas plant found south of Mexico City in Taxco de Alarcon. He sent many of the plants to his elaborate hothouses on his South Carolina plantation so they could be grown and distributed to his friends. As a result, these Mexican plants lost their Spanish-language name in the U.S. and became known as “poinsettias” after Poinsett. One prominent ambassador to Mexico was Dwight Morrow, who served in the position from October 1927 to September 1930 under both Presidents Calvin Coolidge and Herbert Hoover. While Morrow went down in history for a most skilled and effective handling of a major political crisis within Mexico, his tenure as ambassador has an interesting footnote.
While working at J.P. Morgan, Morrow was Charles Lindbergh’s financial adviser. After the aviator’s famous flight across the Atlantic, Morrow was the ambassador and invited him to Mexico. Lindbergh met Morrow’s daughter Anne, then a college student, at the ambassador’s residence on Dec. 21, 1927; the two married on May 27, 1929.
Sadly, the couple’s first-born son, infant Charles Jr., was kidnapped and murdered in 1932, and the case ranks as the most famous kidnapping in U.S. history.
Patrick Lucey, a two-term governor of Wisconsin, was named ambassador to Mexico in 1977 by President Jimmy Carter. Lucey had the precarious task of handling damage control after Carter’s visit to Mexico City in 1978, when at a state dinner the president spoke of a past visit to Mexico and experiencing “Montezuma’s revenge.” Carter then poked fun at Montezuma, the second-to-last ruler of the Aztecs, who is highly revered in Mexican culture and history.
Lucey left his post as ambassador and surprisingly proceeded to work against Carter. Lucey publicly said that Carter “has refused to take responsibility for the state of the nation, preferring instead to numb the nation with the false and dangerous message that no president can really make any difference.” Lucey served as the deputy campaign manager for Sen. Edward Kennedy’s presidential bid to wrest the Democratic nomination away from Carter in 1980.
When Kennedy’s bid was unsuccessful, Lucey accepted the invitation of Republican congressman John Anderson to be his running mate in Anderson’s independent bid for president. The Anderson/ Lucey ticket garnered 6.6 percent of the popular vote in the 1980 election, in which Ronald Reagan soundly defeated Carter.
To say that Reagan appointed a colorful ambassador to Mexico is an understatement. Actor John Gavin, who died on Feb. 9, was best known for his role as Janet Leigh’s boyfriend in Alfred Hitchcock’s 1960 classic “Psycho,” in addition to prominent roles in “Imitation of Life” and “Spartacus.” Gavin was also slated to play James Bond in the movies “Diamonds Are Forever” and “Live and Let Die,” but the roles went to Sean Connery and Roger Moore, respectively.
Like his friend Ronald Reagan, Gavin became the president of the Screen Actors Guild. Gavin, whose mother was from a wealthy and influential family in Mexico, was a longtime Reagan insider who served from January 1981 to May 1986.
In a famous instance, one noted politician was nominated to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico but did not win Senate confirmation, primarily because there was never a vote as he never was given a hearing.
When Massachusetts Gov. William Weld, a Republican, ran against incumbent John Kerry for U.S. Senate in 1996, in an attempt to gain liberal votes, he made the pledge that if elected he would not vote to retain Republican Sen. Jesse Helms as chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. In 1997, President Clinton nominated the Republican Weld to be U.S. ambassador to Mexico, and Weld resigned as governor in anticipation of his new position.
Helms, still the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, declined to schedule a hearing for Weld. Six weeks after being nominated, Weld withdrew his nomination. The Spanish word for payback is
While today there are noticeable tensions in the relationship between the U.S. and Mexico, the stories of these U.S. ambassadors to Mexico reflect an ironic and interesting part of history that is independent of their tenures as ambassadors.
Media reports will no doubt abound about the diplomatic relations between these two neighbors, but none will inform the American public about the colorful and historically significant aspects of U.S.Mexico diplomacy.