Is it too much to ask that the U.S. Ambassador be… uh… diplomatic?

After two tries, given their enthusiasm for that US supported bloodbath known as the “War on Drugs” and foisting war-zone State Department hacks on Mexico, the Obama administration, in its closing days, finally sent an Ambassador to Mexico who ,… miracle of miracles… actually knew something about Mexico and Latin America, and — more to the point — was diplomatic in her relations with both the elites and the ordinary people.  But, being a professional, with the lunatics at the State Department under the Trump Administration, there was no way Roberta Jacobson would have stayed on.  So… while Trump was busy finding new and exciting ways to annoy Mexico, his administration sorta, kinda overlooked a Mexico, at a time when the country’s political and economic leadership is changing, and drawing away from asking, when the United States says “jump”, how high?

Christopher Landau’s “qualifications” for being Ambassador to Mexico seems to rest mostly on having written an undergraduate thesis on US-Venezuelan relations in the 1940s.  Oh, and being a Republican Party partisan, speaking Spanish (his father was a US Ambassador to Paraguay) and being a corporate shark who practiced before the Supreme Court arguing against worker rights, etc.

In other words, a corporate tool.  And… it appears… kinda thin skinned and clueless.  I don’t know what’s more appalling in his latest public foray… his complete misunderstanding of Frida Kahlo (hardly the”iconic” figure for all Mexicans… sure, she’s well know and the tourists and expats love her work, though by no means the only Mexican artist, nor the favorite of most Mexican art connoisseurs… and, for that matter, a rather minor figure in Mexican feminist history).  And, I suppose it’s to be expected that the United States Ambassador to a country in which tourism is one of the major industries, would say nice things about a tourist site.  Like, wondering why she was a Commie?

And then he whines that he’s not taken as seriously as he’d like?  What a tool!

My translation from Reporte Indigo (Embajador de EU en México cuestiona el “comunismo” de Frida Kahlo).

Through his Twitter account, Landau said he admired the free and bohemian spirit of the painter.

However, he added he could not understand Frida Kahlo’s  passion for Marxism / Leninism / Stalinism, even wondering whether she had known the horrors of those ideologies.  His tweet read:

In Frida Kahlo’s house. I admire his free and bohemian spirit, and he has rightly become the icon of Mexico in the whole world. What I do not understand is her obvious passion for Marxism / Leninism / Stalinism. Don’t  you know about the horrors committed in the name of that ideology?

Additionally, Christopher Landau asked the Mexican tweeters for to help him because he had so few followers, nothing the US Ambassador to Greece has many more, although Greece has a smaller population than Mexico.

“Dear Mexican tweeting friends: this is a hit! Greece has a population of 10 mm, while Mexico of 130 mm. But the US ambassador to Greece, @USAmbPyatt, has almost 150 thousand followers, and I barely 40 thousand. How are we going to change it? Mexico has to be # 1! #reto, ”he added.

I hope he feels better, the number of those who follow Landau’s tweets (twits?) he now has more than 70 thousand followers.