Throughout the afternoon of Tuesday, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs (SRE), as well as various diplomatic circles, were dominated by all sorts of speculation about the future of the Secretariat at a time of tension with the United States and as the renegotiation of the T-MEC approaches. The absence of Foreign Minister Juan Ramón De la Fuente, for supposed personal reasons, was covered at Tuesday's press conference by the Undersecretary for North America, Roberto Velasco, even though the norm indicates that in the absence of the foreign minister, their replacement is the Undersecretary of Foreign Relations, in this case, Teresa Mercado. The general comment within the SRE is that Velasco has possibilities of becoming foreign minister because, in addition to his relations in Washington, he has managed to win over the entire ruling party: he is a trusted official for Claudia Sheinbaum as well as for Andrés Manuel López Obrador, which is reflected in his good relationship with Jesús Ramírez. By the way: the coordinator of advisors has promoted in certain circles that the foreign minister never stood out for being particularly hardworking or operational. In addition to the political front, Velasco has gained ground within the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, appointing consuls, creating new consulates, and arranging embassies with the tensions that this entails. A concrete example: in the face of criticism over the appointment of Genaro Lozano as ambassador to Rome, the undersecretary operated and placed Lozano's predecessor, career diplomat Carlos García de Alba, as ambassador to Brazil, leaving aside a friend of Beatriz Gutiérrez Müller, something that was well viewed by career officials. The rise of the undersecretary raises the inescapable question of whether his growing influence will be enough for him to become foreign minister. For now, it was enough for him to replace Mercado, who, by the way, is upset because she considers that, although she is a career diplomat, she has made several gestures of affinity towards the 4T to be relegated. Inside the cabinet, all sorts of speculations also cross paths, especially in the cases of Marcelo Ebrard, Luz Elena González, or Alicia Bárcena, three officials who would like to replace De la Fuente: the Secretary of Economy to have full political control over the negotiation with the US, the Secretary of Energy to escape the disaster of Pemex, and the Secretary of the Environment as a sort of safe pass against the already quite cold possibility of running for the UN.
