Diplomatic Community

Stepping out onto the wide green lawn behind the Getty House, Los Angeles Mayor James Hahn looked shellshocked. He had just spent several grueling hours in what would soon be proved a vain attempt to keep the secession of the San Fernando Valley off November’s ballot. Then he got stuck in traffic, so he was a half hour late to his own party.

But in a way, this particular party was the perfect ending to an imperfect day. Because the guests helping themselves to turkey burgers and Chinese chicken salad in the mayoral backyard were the city’s foreign diplomats and it would be difficult to find a bigger group of L.A. boosters not wearing Laker colors.

“This is where it all happens--industry, style, film, high tech--it all begins in California,” said Colin Robertson, consul general of Canada. “This is one of the most important cities in the world.”

“This is the most international city in the world,” said Luis Kreckler, the consul general of Argentina who was recently named dean of the corps. “There is no other place like this anywhere.”

Certainly such words were balm for the mayor’s soul, but beyond the enthusiasm that might be expected from a diplomat for his host city, these sentiments and the assembly in which they are spoken, symbolize how the world has come to think of L.A. The city’s consular corps has changed, just as the city has changed.

Just 10 years ago, Los Angeles was considered by many members of the international diplomatic corps as a “retirement post,” a place to enjoy the sunshine, improve one’s tennis game and perhaps coax celebrities into appearing at celebrations. Here, career diplomats could rest up, get a nice tan before being pensioned out.

One look at the group gathered at the Getty--men and women in the prime of their careers--makes it clear that this has changed. Those posted to L.A. these days are senior enough to handle what is an assignment on par with heading an embassy--many are, in fact, ambassadors--but young enough still to be hungry for action, for currying trade and tourism, for alerting the home office about trends in everything from footwear to tax assessment. Young enough to want to redefine diplomacy and to do it in the city they realize is on the vanguard of just about everything.

Ten years ago, Los Angeles had fewer consulates than San Francisco and Chicago. Now, with 86 career and honorary consul generals, L.A. trails only Washington, D.C., and New York. But while in the latter two cities a large diplomatic community is virtually a requirement--what with Embassy Row in Washington and the United Nations in New York--the community in L.A. has grown because a variety of foreign governments sees the West Coast as the center of the new economy and L.A. as the center of the West Coast.

Industry, Technology

“We are indeed a gateway city,” Hahn told the diplomats as evening fell. “To the Pacific Rim, to Asia, to Mexico and Central and South America. But now in the age of the Internet, we are also a gateway, through industry and technology, to Europe, to the world.”

“It is now one of the Top 10 postings in the world,” said Elga Sharpe, director of protocol for Hahn. “The economy is booming; it’s a diverse community and that makes it interesting. The diplomats here are very senior, many are ambassadors. They come here to see how we do business.”

And to see what the world of the 21st century might look like. According to census data, almost 40% of people living in Los Angeles are foreign born. As the leader of the corps, Kreckler wants to raise awareness and understanding of his job and that of his colleagues, and in doing so make even native Angelenos more appreciative of the role this city will play--is playing--in the new economy.

“People think we are all about protocol, about parties and dinners and issuing visas,” Kreckler said. “But we are doing business; diplomacy now is business and that is especially true in Los Angeles.”

Robertson describes what he does as a new diplomacy for a new economy--the job is less about image and more about real connection. “We are really post-political diplomats,” he said. “Politics doesn’t matter as much as regulation, who’s in office doesn’t matter as much as who’s running the companies.”

The recent growth of the corps in Los Angeles is especially striking since it occurred during a decade of budgetary streamlining and new standards of bottom-line justification in the diplomatic corps worldwide. Gone are any echoes of the Graham Greene consulate, open three days a week from 1 to 4, when diplomats conducted their business on the tennis court or over a gin and tonic, and reserved their charm for visiting dignitaries.

Now, members of the foreign service say almost to a person that their governments want to know exactly what they’re up to--how many citizens are being served, how many foreign trade groups have been hosted, how many deals have materialized and what it means in dollars, or yen, or dinars.

In this era of bottom-line diplomacy, the placement of consulates has become more strategic, and when forced to choose between a mission in Chicago, San Francisco or Los Angeles, most countries are now choosing L.A.

In the 1970s, Pakistan had one in San Francisco; it closed because of budgetary reasons and reopened in 1992 in Los Angeles. Partly, said Consul General Raana Mumtaz Rahim, because the Pakistani population of L.A. had grown so much, but also because this city is now seen as a cultural and economic center--there are more Pakistani citizens in Houston but there was no talk of opening a consulate there.

A Sociopolitical Model

The sheer size of California, the breadth of its industry and the ethnic diversity of Los Angeles make it a perfect sociopolitical model for just about every nation, for just about every issue. Ward Beysen, a Belgian member of the European parliament and its energy committee, for example, was recently in town to learn as much as he could about the state’s energy infrastructure. As the European Union looks toward deregulation, California is the only place complex enough to be helpful at all. “Of course, we hope to avoid the, er, difficulties you faced last year,” Beysen said. “This is what we are learning from, your successes and your mistakes.”

That same week, a parliamentarian from Siberia grilled L.A. County officials about how the budget worked. Since the breakup of the Soviet Union, the county has had representatives from many of the emerging nations combing through real estate assessment formulas, watching tax collection at work, photocopying voter registration forms.

As with Los Angeles, it is difficult to describe the nature of the city’s consular corps; the word “diverse” doesn’t begin to cover it. The majority in the corps are career diplomats, with offices (an inordinate number of which are on Wilshire Boulevard) and residences (many of which are clustered in Hancock Park, Westwood and Brentwood), and they usually stay at a post no longer than four years.

But 33 serve as honorary diplomats, U.S. citizens who have been appointed by a foreign government. For these, the position is unpaid and the duties are often curtailed versions of an accredited diplomat, but the appointment is for life and includes invitations to more cocktail parties and luncheons than the average American will ever see.

Links to Industry

Often, they are nationals of the country they represent, but sometimes they are links to the specific industries the appointing country wishes to cultivate. In 1999 Monaco appointed Dick Wolf, a well-known television producer, as its honorary consul general.

“Monaco had really cut back on its presence abroad,” said Ginger Barnard, deputy director of protocol for the county. “Their appointments became very strategic--they wanted a direct link to the industry.”

Many of a consulate’s duties remain traditional. As described by the 1963 Geneva Convention on consular duties, the top priority of all foreign missions is to care for its citizens, those Jamaicans or Austrians who are living in Los Angeles. Consulates provide visas, passports and other international ID, and oversee the recording of births, deaths, marriages and divorces of nationals living in L.A. Some consul generals perform marriages for their citizens. Likewise, when a foreign citizen finds himself or herself detained by the police, often the first phone call is to the consulate.

Much of how consul generals spend their time, therefore, depends on the nature and number of the community they serve. For Mexico, Los Angeles has never been anything like a retirement post. Martha Lara, the current consul general, has essentially the job of a governor. The Mexican consulate in Los Angeles is the largest foreign mission in the world. Overseeing the lives of more than 3 million Mexicans living in California, Lara has a larger constituency than the mayor of L.A., and her duties are more diverse.

Fifteen hundred of those whom she calls “my people” come through the consulate doors every day in search of temporary identification cards and visas. Lara receives three or four Mexican dignitaries every month, opens businesses, crowns community queens, attempts to thwart scams targeting immigrants, aids the imprisoned, the evicted, the unemployed, the dying.

“Me, I do not have time to go to parties,” she said. “We behave more like an embassy because we have important political activity that many other consulates do not have. Our relationship with Los Angeles sets us completely apart.” Other Latin American consul generals similarly find much of their time and resources going to immigration issues and the immediate needs of their people and less to courting production companies to shoot in their capitals.

But for Austrian Consul General Peter Launsky-Tieffenthal and many of his European counterparts whose constituencies are relatively settled, cultural exchange, business opportunities and world technology are the centerpieces of a posting in L.A. “The minister of home affairs and finance have been here recently; we have steady flow of decision makers here and in Sacramento,” Launsky-Tieffenthal said. “We are trying to identify issues [the two cities] can work together on--urban transportation, environmental concerns, inner-city revitalization, these are all things we are dealing with in Vienna as well.”

Tinseltown Ties

Hollywood remains a big draw for many countries--Canada’s Robertson and his staff unapologetically court production companies. “I do not see it as trying to take business away from the U.S.,” he said with a shrug. “I am trying to bring business to Canada.”

He also spends a good deal of time trying to bring people to Canada. In L.A. and especially the Silicon Valley, the consulate often sponsors immigration fairs, offering Canadian citizenship to those in the U.S. on student or work visas. “This way they can still be in the North American space,” Robertson said. Even beyond the disparate nature of their mandates, the term “diplomatic community” is a bit misleading in L.A. Although some diplomats spend more time socializing with their colleagues than others--one could fill a calendar with consulate events, and some folks do--most agree that the L.A. community is far less insular than in other places, including New York.

A lot of that is due to the nature of the city--a friendly government and accessible business representatives are not the norm in some smaller or less-developed countries. But the nature of the work here also affects the diplomatic social calendar. Where once there were large parties, there are now selective dinners and luncheons; where once the standard guest list was largely foreign, now it is largely native.

“Compared with other countries, I spend very little time with other consuls,” Launsky-Tieffenthal said. “I spend most of my time with Americans. Which is what I am here to do after all.”

Still, the corps remains a society with an air of romance, of intrigue. Turkey’s Aykut Berk tells of having Fidel Castro over to dinner during his posting in Cuba. George Chilingar, honorary consul of Honduras, speaks of his days in Iran during the last days of the Shah. Spain’s consul general, Jose Luis Ballester, explains that he joined the foreign service mainly because he loved Spain but could not live under Franco.

But so many people living in Los Angeles have come from far away, have seen international turmoil and war, that diplomats don’t stick out as much as they might in other places. And this, more than the movie stars, though perhaps not as much as the weather, is one of the most appreciated facets of a posting to this city.

“Everyone has so many of their people here,” Ballester said. “You get to experience America, but America with your country too.”