| | |  News Around the Republic of Mexico | March 2009 
US Embassy Spills Over Onto Mexico City Street
 Mark Stevenson - Associated Press
go to original
| | A man walks past a blocked side street next to the US embassy, behind, in Mexico City, Monday, March 23, 2009. Metal barricades and a sheet-metal canopy were erected years ago on the street to provide order and shade for an estimated 2,000 Mexicans who come for U.S. visa applications daily, but with political campaigns heating up for midterm elections in July, the issue has become politicized as some candidate have said that the embassy has illegally blocked and taken over this side street. (AP/Eduardo Verdugo) | |
Mexico City — The drug war. Immigration reform. Escalating violence along the border. As if Hillary Clinton didn't have enough to worry about on her first visit to Mexico as secretary of state, now some leading leftists are accusing the United States of stealing a city street in the nation's capital.
The U.S. Embassy has illegally occupied the side street, they say, with metal barricades and a sheet-metal canopy erected years ago to provide order and shade for an estimated 2,000 Mexicans applying each day for U.S. visas.
While the dispute emerged just before Clinton's visit to Mexico City, it doesn't seem to forebode any ill-will toward her.
"Hillary Clinton (is) a woman who is respected and admired, not just by me, but by many Mexicans," said Mexico's Foreign Relations Secretary, Patricia Espinoza.
But it will be difficult for Clinton not to notice the metal anti-riot fences that are normally kept on a median strip in front of the embassy to ward off demonstrators, or the closed-off street beside the diplomatic mission.
And as Mexico prepares for midterm elections in July, the issue has become, well, political.
"It seems to me to be a lack of respect, and it is also a violation of national sovereignty," said city legislator Tomas Pliego of the leftist Democratic Revolution Party, who pledged to force the Embassy obey a law against occupying public streets, parks and sidewalks.
Mayor Marcelo Ebrard, of the same party, also has taken up the cause of reopening Rio Danubio, a narrow one-way street off Paseo de la Reforma, the capital's main promenade modeled after the Champs-Elysees in Paris.
"The Embassy has not had, nor does it have, authorization to occupy public spaces," Ebrard told reporters. "They shouldn't be the ones who occupy the city with the aim of providing security."
No one has proposed sending in city police to recover Rio Danubio, where the embassy says the canopy and other structures have made the visa wait shorter and more comfortable in response to criticism in the 1990s that it was exposing hundreds of Mexicans each day to the sun and rain.
"The embassy is in active conversations with the city and the Foreign Relations Department on these matters," said spokeswoman Janice Weiner.
Meanwhile, it is hard to find any city residents who care about the leftists' cause.
After all, street vendors, restaurants and other businesses routinely take over streets and sidewalks all over the capital, often leaving just a few inches for pedestrians to squeeze past griddles of frying meat or pirated DVDs.
"The embassy has become very Mexicanized in that respect," Art gallery operator Antonio Mendez said. "They wouldn't try this in Washington or New York." |
|
| |
Vallarta Weddings
Tell a Friend
Site Map
Print this Page
Email Us