Mexico replaces top US diplomats in response to 'a more hostile climate'

Thomson Reuters

Mexico's government on Tuesday unexpectedly changed two of its top officials responsible for US relations, citing concerns about an increasingly anti-Mexican climate across the border.

Carlos Sada, previously the consul in Los Angeles, was named ambassador to the US, while Paulo Carreno, one of President Enrique Pena Nieto's communications chiefs, was appointed the deputy foreign minister for North America.

Sada, who has held diplomatic posts in New York, Chicago, San Antonio, and Toronto, has "broad experience in consular work and in the protection of the rights of Mexicans in North America," the Mexican Foreign Ministry said in a statement.

The new ambassador must still be approved by the Mexican Senate.

"We have been warning that our citizens have begun to feel a more hostile climate," Foreign Minister Claudia Ruiz Massieu told local radio after the announcement.

"This (anti-Mexican) rhetoric has made it clear that we have to act in a different way so that this tendency being generated doesn't damage the bilateral relationship," she added.

Mexican government officials have expressed concern about the rise of Republican presidential frontrunner Donald Trump due to his repeated verbal attacks on Mexico, and his insistence that Mexico should be made to pay for a border wall.

In late February, Ruiz, Mexico's top diplomat, issued a stern rebuke of Trump's ongoing criticism of Mexico. "It sounds ignorant and racist, because it is," Ruiz said. "We are pretty sure that's not the way most Americans feel." She also called Trump's wall plan "not an intelligent thing to do."

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Trump on Tuesday threatened to block remittances from undocumented Mexican migrants if elected president unless the country pays billions for his planned wall. Trump also called Ford's announcement that it would build more cars in Mexico "an absolute disgrace."

Sada replaces Miguel Basañez Ebergeny, who has only held the ambassador post for seven months. Basañez emphasized US-Mexico diplomatic and trade ties, working to lessen the effect of Trump's rhetoric. Basañez said in August that Trump knew his comments about Mexicans were "false," and that the real-estate mogul would have to "apologize" for his statements. 

(Reporting by Anahi Rama and Adriana Barrera; Editing by Sandra Maler)