Mexican ambassador says ‘it’s business as usual’ after the midterms and Miller’s promotion
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Roberto Lazzeri Montaño has a Sisyphean task ahead of him as Mexico’s new ambassador to the United States.
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Montaño → say → States
The relationship between the two countries — forever adversarial yet eternally co-dependent — has become even more fraught under President Trump, who infamously declared, “When Mexico sends its people, they’re not sending their best” during the 2015 speech that launched his first campaign.
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that → become → campaign
This week, Trump threatened to double tariffs on Mexico, our biggest trading partner, if it doesn’t stop a caravan of migrants from reaching the border, which is already effectively shut down thanks to his multibillion-dollar enforcement regime and the masked federal agents terrorizing Latinos nationwide.
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which → threaten → Latinos
He has also repeatedly suggested sending U.S. troops south of the border to pursue drug traffickers, an offer that Mexican President Claudia Sheinbaum has criticized as a threat to her nation’s sovereignty.
“So we have a sad history about intervention that, of course, no one wants to replicate,” Lazzeri said during a one-hour conversation with Times journalists at the newspaper’s El Segundo office last week.
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Lazzeri → suggest → office
“So we arrive to every negotiating table, to every conversation, knowing what’s possible and knowing what’s not possible.”
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what → arrive → conversation
L.A. writer and filmmaker Francisco Aviles Pino reflects on Mexican sports culture and the limits of nationalism to establish community as an immigrant in the United States.
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Pino → reflect → States
The Mexico City native exuded diplomatic tact and no arrogance.
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native → exude → tact
He sported a tightly cropped beard and wore a simple gray suit, a skinny black tie held in place by a clip.
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He → sport → clip
A pin of the Mexican and U.S. flags adorned his lapel.
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pin → adorn → lapel
The 42-year-old spoke in flawless but studied English and brought no assistant with him, occasionally jotting down thoughts in a moleskin notebook.
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old → speak → notebook
Mostly, he listened and responded to our questions.
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he → listen → questions
He was in Los Angeles — where he lived for a few years in the 2010s while studying music management at UCLA Extension — for a few days before returning to Washington to introduce himself to the new Democratic-majority Congress.
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he → live → Congress
When Lazzeri first arrived in the nation’s capital in August, lawmakers were busy getting ready to campaign for the midterms.
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lawmakers → arrive → midterms
Now, he said, “we’ll actively try to engage again.”
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we → say → ?
The conversation started with Steve Padilla, who edits The Times’ Mexico correspondents, asking how relations with the U.S. might change after the midterms and Trump’s promotion of Stephen Miller, who has railed against Mexican culture since his high school years in Santa Monica, to chief of staff.
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who → start → staff
“It’s business as usual,” Lazzeri responded.
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Lazzeri → ’ → ?
“We have no reason to meddle into internal U.S. politics. ...
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We → have → politics
But when [it] affects the lives of our people here in the country, or their health, or their well-being, and if it starts to cross into a human rights violation, we’ll raise our voice and we’ll try to work with the administration to find that these things don’t happen again.”
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things → affect → administration
That was the Lazzeri that emerged as we chatted: confident but clear-eyed, knowing he needs to keep el Norte happy — but not at the expense of his patria.
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he → emerge → patria
He hailed the 2020 U.S.-Mexico-Canada trilateral trade agreement as beneficial to everyone but especially Americans, who save $900 a year in groceries, he said, “because they have access to produce from Mexico.
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they → hail → Mexico
And they have access all year long.”
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they → have → access
Lazzeri called U.S. airstrikes that killed Mexican citizens on fishing boats in international waters west of the Mexican coast “extrajudiciary executions.”
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that → call → coast
The deaths of two CIA officers during a covert mission alongside local authorities in Chihuahua was a “violation” of Mexican national security laws that ban foreign agents from working inside the country without the knowledge of the federal government, he said.
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he → ban → government
The ambassador thinks yearly visas or “something similar” to the 1950s-era bracero program are a “reasonable solution” for the American demand for cheap labor and the willingness of Mexicans to fill those positions.
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visas → think → positions
And he said the strategy of previous Mexican presidential administrations to target cartel leaders while failing to go after their financial assets and leaving civilians to suffer the subsequent turf wars was “horrible” and a “lesson learned.”
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strategy → say → wars
The Sheinbaum administration is trying not to replicate those campaigns, Lazzeri asserted, but nor is it necessary to join U.S.-led hemispheric coalitions like Shield of the Americas.
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it → try → Americas
“What we have heard from the U.S. authorities,” he said, “is that they respect our model, and we’re showing the best results in the region.”
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we → hear → region
Lazzeri went on to describe overall relations between Mexico and the U.S. as “the highest of collaborations that I have seen,” hailing the state of the border.
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I → go → border
“You see — very smartly — [Mexican] security forces talking with Border Patrol to say people are crossing around here — ‘If we do X, Y, Z, this will deter them,’” he said.
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he → see → them
“So, it feels lot less politicized.
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it → feel → ?
It feels like an ongoing, daily basis work of people that know what they’re doing, that know the terrain.”
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that → feel → terrain
I commented that his rosy description made it sound as if the Mexican government was capitulating to Trump’s demand of zero migration.
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government → comment → migration
“I mean, illegally, if [migrants] are doing it through polleros [human smugglers], of course we want to deter that,” Lazzeri responded.
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Lazzeri → mean → that
Some political analysts say Sheinbaum, despite her talk of defending Mexico’s sovereignty, has actually acquiesced to Trump many times, particularly on security.
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Sheinbaum → say → security
His calm, pragmatic responses reminded me of Sheinbaum, whom Lazzeri repeatedly referred to as “my president.”
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Lazzeri → remind → president
Times Executive Editor Terry Tang brought up the more confrontational approach of Canadian Prime Minister Mark Carney and asked if the low-key way that Sheinbaum deals with Trump’s bluster is intentional.
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Sheinbaum → bring → bluster
“My president, she’s very thoughtful,” Lazzeri said.
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Lazzeri → ’ → ?
“We try to focus on not getting tangled into the political narrative that sometimes doesn’t come from the [Trump] administration.
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that → try → administration
It comes from many other sources, and it will be a mistake to just engage with that when it’s not actually what we’re discussing.
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we → come → what
We focused mostly on the issues Americans typically associate with Mexico: immigration, drug and trade wars.
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Americans → focus → Mexico
…and 34 more, not listed.
The Aporia
