Mexico's new top diplomat is also its youngest

The 38-year-old has a deep understanding of the U.S., a crucial skill in the age of Trump.

- BY PATRICK J. MCDONNELL AND CECILIA SÁNCHEZ VIDAL

Roberto Velasco Alvarez has a master's degree from the University of Chicago.

(Luis Barron Associated Press)

The junior Mexican diplomat, part of an official delegation to Washington, was caught in an undiplomatic moment: munching on peanuts piled on a napkin as he sat with political heavyweights including Mexican Cabinet secretaries and then-House Speaker Nancy Pelosi.

The 2019 image of the peanut-chomping envoy quickly went viral, begetting a biting social-media hashtag: #LordCacahuates (Lord Peanuts).

It was the kind of protocol-busting moment that could derail a career. One wag wrote on X that the young diplomat had “behaved like a drunk in a dive bar under the stunned gaze of Nancy Pelosi.”

But Roberto Velasco Álvarez survived Peanutgate — with a flourish.

This month, the Mexican Senate confirmed President Claudia Sheinbaum’s nomination of Velasco as the new secretary of foreign relations, Mexico's equivalent of secretary of State.

Velasco, who is 38 but looks even younger, replaced Juan Ramón de la Fuente, 74, a veteran diplomat and academic who stepped down, he said, for health reasons.

This was a cultural, as well as generational, changing of the guard. Velasco, a millennial who came of age in the digital era, is among the youngest officials to head the secretariat. He is also the country’s first openly gay top diplomat.

Velasco is a bespectacled policy wonk known for discipline, discretion and a pragmatic bent, along with an unquestioned fealty to the ruling leftist Morena political bloc, according to reports in Mexico.

Those traits, along with his standing as a protege of Marcelo Ebrard — Mexico's secretary of the economy, who previously served as foreign secretary — helped power Velasco’s meteoric career rise.