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Last updateSat, 01 Nov 2014 12pm

Expat Living

‘Soft landings’ for new faces at US Consulate

Two new section heads who arrived at the U.S. Consulate in Guadalajara in the past month are acclimatizing to life in Mexico’s second largest city but both admit the process is hardly taxing.

“Guadalajara was at the top of my list of places to come,” says Kathy Guerra, the Consulate’s new Public Affairs Officer. “This is a soft landing compared to other foreign service assignments. The people are friendly, the food is good, the weather is great. There’s traffic but it’s not unmanageable. It’s just a very pleasant city.”

As for Pete Marigliano, the new chief of the American Citizen Services section, Guadalajara is almost like a second home.  Two of his four daughters were born here during his first foreign Service posting in 2001. “I’m so excited to be back,” the Long Island native says.

Marigliano arrived in Guadalajara to work on the “visa line” on September 10, 2001, the day before the United States found itself under attack from terrorists. Despite the inauspicious beginnings, his career has since blossomed, taking him on foreign tours to Managua, Nicaragua and Belgrade, Serbia, where he served as consular section chief.

In between these tours, Marigliano spent a year in Iraq,  working as a provincial action officer in Tikrit, Salah and Din Province, a job he says involved “helping the Iraqis get their basic services and communities up and running.”

Thirteen years on from that fateful day in 2001, many changes have taken place in the way consular work is done, Marigliano acknowledges.   

Security, nonetheless, remains the priority. “The most important job of the State Department is to protect Americans and American interests overseas,” he stresses in textbook style.

Disseminating information about risks to Americans traveling or living in Mexico – travel advisories are published every six months or so – is now an important part of this responsibility.

Says Marigliano: “We try to make it as clear as possible where the potential problems are and the places foreign service officials are allowed to go.  

“By law if we have information about security threats we have to provide it to American citizens at the same time as we provide it to our own consulate employees.

“Of course, we can’t stop Americans from doing what they want but we do want them to be aware of the potential dangers.”

Marigliano says his section is keen to hear reports of crimes committed against U.S. citizens. Although the Consulate cannot interfere with the legal process, he says they can “help Americans navigate the Mexican system” by providing certain resources and making “follow up inquiries” with local authorities in certain cases.

A native of Seattle, Washington, Guerra left her job as a high school history teacher to join the foreign service. Her first posting was to Singapore, and she has since served in Bogota, Colombia and Guatemala City.

Married to a Bolivian national and with a young son, it’s no surprise that she was keen to continue her career in Latin America, whose language and culture she is very comfortable with.

In addition to dealing with the media, her role at the Consulate also embraces cultural and educational responsibilities, including coordinating some of the State Department’s outreach programs.

In Guatemala, Guerra became involved in the English Access Microscholarship Program that provides a foundation of English language skills to 13-20 year-olds from economically disadvantaged sectors through after-school classes and intensive sessions.

Guerra says she is delighted this State Department program is also active in Guadalajara, catering to around 40 students at the Instituto Cultural Mexicano Norteamericano.   “I’m pretty passionate about this program.  I think it really makes a difference.”

Guerra is also looking forward to working on specific Consulate-sponsored programs, including follow up from May’s Green Race at the American School, an annual “hackathon” and a new program in which computer programmers and software developers design apps that can help journalists with their work.

A former soccer goalkeeper, and with a soccer-mad husband, Guerra has already taken in a Chivas game at the Omnilife Stadium and says she is looking forward to exploring the region further.