Michelle Obama makes first solo international trip to Mexico

WASHINGTON — Almost 50 years ago, a first lady seized Mexico City’s heart: the beautiful, chic, multilingual Jackie Kennedy, to whom Michelle Obama draws comparisons.

Reporters judged her 1962 trip with President John F. Kennedy “a triumph.”

It saw an estimated 1 million people line the route of their motorcade.

It saw people leap to their feet — applauding — after the first lady delivered, without notes, a short speech in Spanish.

It saw thousands bid the couple farewell, shouting “adios,” “Jackie, si,” and “come back soon.”

That’s just the kind of excitement Mexico’s ambassador to the United States, Arturo Sarukhan, expects Obama’s visit to generate.

She departs Tuesday for a three-day trip to the
Mexican capital, her first official solo trip abroad. She will meet
children, tour an anthropology museum and dine at Los Pinos, the president’s residence.

“I think she will ‘wow’ Mexico
and Mexicans,” Sarukhan, who entered the diplomatic corps in 1993, said
in an interview. “I think people will be bowled over. …

“She is a very powerful example of the empowerment
of African-Americans in this country, and a very powerful symbol to
Latinos in this country and Mexicans in Mexico
of what you can achieve in a country that is built on immigrants and is
built on diversity and is built on the ability to advance because of
hard work and merit.”

Sarukhan will accompany Obama as she travels with Mexican first lady Margarita Zavala. He is a former foreign policy adviser to Mexican President Felipe Calderon.

Obama is 46 — so is Sarukhan — so neither was born
when the Kennedys made their celebrated trip in 1962. Yet he said it
lives on in the minds of Mexicans and is one reason that cities and
towns across his country carry Kennedy’s name.

Kennedy’s chief of staff, Letitia Baldrige,
remembers details down to the pink sleeveless dress and big matching
hat worn by the first lady at the luncheon. “That’s what everybody
oohed and aahed about — how she looked,” said Baldrige.

She said visits by first ladies are highly
choreographed diplomatic dances, with careful plans governing arrival
and departure ceremonies, gift exchanges, meals, the issues they’ll
highlight and their sightseeing excursions.

The aim for the hosts? “A lyrical, beautiful description of how they entertained the foreign guest,” Baldrige said.

Obama will likely be “briefed, rebriefed and rebriefed a million times until she gets there,” she said.

“This is not going to be a joy ride. It’s a rigorous
trip, a grueling trip, often. In spite of all that, all of the first
ladies I’ve known felt privileged to represent their country and see
things they’ve never seen with everybody opening their hearts and their
homes to them.”

Baldrige has met first ladies dating to Lou Henry Hoover, wife of Herbert Hoover, who served from 1929 to 1933.

Last year Obama visited nine foreign countries with the president: the United Kingdom, France, Russia, Ghana, Denmark, Norway, the Czech Republic, Italy and Germany. That’s roughly on par with Laura Bush, who as first lady visited 76 countries and Hillary Rodham Clinton, who hit more than 80.

Senior White House officials said Obama’s Mexico City
trip will kick off with an international agenda of engaging with young
people, with more solo trips in store. That she’s going it alone,
Baldrige said, “shows the president and the government has great faith
in her.”

“That’s what’s great about a real capable first
lady: She can represent the president in another part of the world and
do a tremendous job for him and for our country,” Baldrige added.

Will Obama attempt some Spanish?

Baldrige thinks it’s a sure bet. But a White House official sidestepped the question, saying “it will be about her (Obama’s) own personal comfort level.”

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