SPECIAL FEATURE
immigrants, badgers his administration to construct hundreds of miles of border wall before 2020, undermines bi-lateral trade with tariffs and denigrates Mexican immigrants as criminals and rapists. Barcena, who is both a career diplomat and an academic, is a good pick for the post, having until recently headed the border cooperation section in the Mexican foreign ministry. Her previous posts included ambassadorships to Denmark, Turkey and the international organizations in Rome (for example, the Food and Agricultural Organization). She recently told the Detroit Free Press that the U.S. is mistaken in blaming Mexico for a humanitarian crisis in Central America. “It’s a huge misunderstanding,” she said. “The challenge is both for Mexico and the U.S. because the situation in Central America is dire, with no opportunities, problems of insecurity, drought.” The reality was that undocumented travel
among Mexicans has plummeted and more Mexicans are returning home than ever before. Still, there are still 11.3 million Mexican immigrants in the United States, the largest group in the country. “Some rhetoric in certain sectors is causing a lot of anxiety in our [U.S.] communities,” Barcena continued. “Children are not attending schools. Children are feeling ashamed and they ask psychologists if their parents are rapists and murderers or if their parents are going to jail. I think that’s unacceptable.” People in Mexico, she said, “understand the importance of the U.S. for us and that our future is tied to the U.S. in all senses— economic, social, cultural. In the U.S. they don’t understand this. They think Mexico is not important. It’s taken for granted.” A former professional ballet dancer, Barcena graduated from the diplomatic school in Spain, has a degree in philosophy from the Jesuit-run Pontifical Gregorian University
in Rome, and seems to be fluent in every language imaginable, including Mandarin. This is her first U.S. assignment but she does have an earlier American connection: her great aunt was a nun in Grand Rapids, Mich.
NETHERLANDS ANDRE HASPELS
presented his credentials in the Fall of 2019 to begin his first ever Washington posting. He was most recently political director at the ministry of foreign affairs in the Hague, a key policy position. A long-time career diplomat, he has served as Netherlands ambassador to Vietnam and South Africa.
ETON SCHOOL FOR BRITISH PRIME MINISTERS THE CLASS-CONSCIOUS BRIT
B
ritish media were quick to note that Boris Johnson was the 20th prime minister who had been at Eton College, the elite all-male secondary school on the banks of the River Thames, near Windsor. At $51,000 annually, Eton’s tuition fees are on a par with other “public schools”—as the English, somewhat perversely, label their private schools—but it has long been the chosen school of the British establishment. Founded in 1440, Eton has over the span of centuries provided education for countless members of the royal family, the latest being Prince William and Prince Harry. The trail of prime ministers didn’t begin until the 18th century—with Sir Robert Walpole, who was there from 1690-1696. Then came William Pitt, Earl of Chatham, also known in history as William Pitt the Elder.
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Others followed, including Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, the hero of the battle of Waterloo and later prime minister. William Lamb, Lord Melbourne— the young Queen Victoria’s “Lord M”— entered Eton in 1792. Oxford and Cambridge universities
are major incubators for U. K. politicians of all party persuasions, but Eton’s ties with Conservative politics in the modern era is a separate phenomenon. The school pushes its swallowtail-coated and tophatted students towards public service, and by now politics is a school tradition. In the 1950s and 1960s, three Old Etonians, as the school’s alumni are styled, actually followed each other as the Conservative Party’s occupant of 10 Downing Street: Anthony Eden, Harold Macmillan and Alec Douglas Home. Among the political protagonists of the Brexit crisis David Cameron, Boris Johnson and his brother Joe also studied at Eton. Old Etonians also tend to pick fellow schoolmates as cabinet members. David Cameron holds the record—13 in a cabinet of 27. Nor is that a novelty for Tory prime ministers. Macmillan had nine.
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