Billionaire Beer Brewer, U.S. Ambassador to Wed in Mexico

The wedding date and the location are still a mystery, as is the guest list. But it’s not hard to imagine what brand of cervezas will be served when Tony Garza, the U.S. ambassador to Mexico, ties the knot with Maria Asuncion Aramburuzabala, the glamorous vice chairwoman of Grupo Modelo and reportedly this country’s wealthiest woman.

Aramburuzabala, 41, helps run the company that makes Corona and Negra Modelo beers, and Forbes magazine has estimated her fortune at $1.5 billion. Garza, 45, the grandchild of Mexican immigrants, is a longtime Texas associate of President Bush.

News of the engagement broke over the weekend in a Mexico City newspaper. By Monday, the nation’s media were buzzing over the pending nuptials and their possible ramifications on such matters as beer exports and U.S.-Mexico relations, which lately have been decidedly strained.

Garza himself has been at or near the center of the tension. Last week, he was savaged by Mexican commentators and politicians, including President Vicente Fox, for allegedly meddling in the country’s internal affairs by releasing a letter to Mexican officials expressing concern over the country’s “inability to come to grips” with escalating drug warfare and street violence.

Garza’s letter coincided with a State Department warning to American travelers to beware of “a deteriorating security situation” in northern Mexico, where more than two dozen U.S. citizens have been abducted in the last six months.

Details of the wedding remain sketchy. Maria Francisca Tamez, a spokeswoman for the bride-to-be, said the event would be a private family affair, and that it was unlikely many details would be made public in advance. Tamez said the couple had met “a little while ago” through various government and social functions. They first appeared together in public in November.

The U.S. Embassy confirmed the engagement, but Garza was not available for comment.

In some ways, Aramburuzabala and Garza make an unusual power couple. Theirs is a kind of gender-reversed, cross-border Cinderella story.

Garza is the gregarious son of a Brownsville gas station owner, who grew up along the Texas border, played high school football, rose to be then-Gov. Bush’s secretary of State, then served on the Texas Railroad Commission.

He is widely regarded in Lone Star State political circles as a possible candidate for governor or the U.S. Senate. He is a connoisseur of modern art, and has been known to break out a bottle of high-grade tequila while chatting with reporters over policy issues.

Before last week’s heated exchange over border security, Garza had enjoyed a generally favorable image in the Mexican media. But Humberto Garza, a professor at the College of Mexico who is no relation to the ambassador, said the American envoy shouldn’t be blamed for the diplomatic dust-up.

“Ambassador Garza has been impeccable and discreet,” the professor said. Referring to last week’s events, he said the ambassador was “only following orders” from U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.

If Garza personifies a relatively new type of upwardly mobile, Republican, second-generation Mexican American, his future spouse represents a fresh spin on the well-connected, old-money Mexican business elite that has held sway over the country for decades.

Aramburuzabala is the granddaughter of a Spanish Basque immigrant who arrived in Mexico as it was still convulsing from the Revolution of 1910-1920. He went on to co-found Grupo Modelo, whose Corona is the world’s fifth-most popular beer.

Aramburuzabala earned an accounting degree at the Autonomous Technological Institute of Mexico and had two children with her first husband, a business executive, before divorcing.

But it wasn’t until her father died several years ago, and she began shaping the future of the family enterprise, that Aramburuzabala became as well known for her business acumen as for her blow-out shopping trips. She assumed her current post with Grupo Modelo in 1996, and also holds a top position with Televisa, the powerful Mexican media company.

Guadalupe Loaeza, a Mexico City columnist, described Aramburuzabala as a “very open woman, very educated, very congenial, very cosmopolitan.” Her success in the traditionally male-only enclave of Mexican business sets her apart from the society’s upper-class ladies who lunch, Loaeza said.

“She’s another style of woman in Mexico.”

Loaeza said that Mexicans “are going to have a great interest” in the wedding, which she thinks could help strengthen U.S.-Mexican relations.

And given Mexicans’ strong belief in the institution of marriage, Loaeza said, the wedding also could raise the bachelor ambassador’s standing in Mexican eyes.

“It’s going to improve his public image,” Loaeza said. “He’s going back to his roots.”

Narayani Lasala of The Times’ Mexico City Bureau contributed to this report.