An ambassador at last

Maria del Carmen Aponte is a bilingual attorney and financial consultant, former executive director of the Puerto Rico Federal Affairs Administration, onetime board member of the National Council of La Raza and ex-president of the Hispanic National Bar Assn. To that impressive list of credentials she will now add U.S. ambassador to El Salvador. President Obama last week used a congressional recess appointment to bypass the Senate confirmation process after Republicans blocked her nomination to the post for the better part of a year.

Sens. Jim DeMint (R-S.C.) and Jim Risch (R-Idaho) ostensibly were holding up Aponte’s confirmation because of a relationship she had many years ago with a Cuban-born boyfriend who had contact with the Cuban interests section in Washington. As they well knew, however, Aponte had been cleared by the FBI, and her appointment was approved by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee last spring. In reality, their objections were about election-year politics and the Republican strategy of obstructionism, not American protection from Cuban espionage. Indeed, Aponte’s confirmation was championed by Sen. Robert Menendez (D-N.J.), a Cuban American and noted skeptic on warming ties with a Cuba led by the Castro brothers. “If anyone in this chamber would have concerns about a nominee’s ties to and views on Cuba, it would be me,” Menendez said. “I wholeheartedly endorsed her nomination.”

Of course, Menendez too has his eye on the election calendar; he has little incentive to antagonize Democratic supporters by standing in the way of a Latina nominee. Domestic politics aside, the relevant points in Aponte’s nomination are that El Salvador is a U.S. ally and the United States has a strong interest in the country’s developing democracy. Nevertheless, the U.S. government has failed to send an envoy to work with President Mauricio Funes, who was elected last year on the ticket of a former guerrilla movement that had put down its guns and converted into a political party. The failure to appoint an ambassador sent exactly the wrong message, particularly when U.S. policy is aimed at trying to keep countries like El Salvador out of the radical camp of Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez. The U.S. and El Salvador are training the region’s police forces, and they face common challenges such as drug trafficking, gang crime, immigration and trade. In light of this, a professional, progressive and bilingual Latina such as Aponte is a welcome and overdue appointment.