But is he really a Mexican?

Juan Camilo Mouriño was named Mexico's interior secretary this week, a position that is the second-most powerful in the country. In his first press conference Wednesday afternoon, he was forced to address the most uncomfortably personal question now facing Mexico's political class: Is Mouriño really Mexican?

The constitution requires that all Cabinet officers and all legislators be Mexicans by birth. Both Mouriño's parents were born in Spain, as was he. But Mouriño says his mother is a Mexican citizen, and he was thus a Mexican citizen at birth.

On Wednesday he released two documents that back up his claim: a citizenship certificate issued by Mexico's Foreign Ministry and a birth certificate issued by Mexican consular officials in 1979 (eight years after Mouriño was born in Madrid).

The issue remains unsettled and is likely to resurface if, as many observers here suspect, President Felipe Calderon is grooming Mouriño as a possible successor. Reforma columnist Miguel Angel Granados Chapa in a column today (subscription required) called Mouriño an "illegal secretary" and says it's possible that his mother wasn't a Mexican citizen when her son was born.

-- Hector Tobar in Mexico City

Comments

[Sancho Panza]

This is just typical of Mexican politics and its culture. A susceptability to honor what is of Spanish descent and denegration of what is Indian/brown. When will us Mexicans ever learn!? Please, please, please stop using that idiotic term of "España, la madre patria." (Spain, our motherland)

As a Mexican I resent this obsession towards anything Spanish (from Spain) and certainly their influence in my country's politics. Get rid of the imposter. Spanish singer Camilo Sesto was more Mexican than this Juan Camilo Mouriño character.

[Richard Vasquez]

Aren't there any mexican Mexicans who want the job? It seems to me that the last thing Calderon needs is another distraction...

[Derek]

Most Mexican elite are of spanish (spain) orgin, the darker indian types are considered to lesser class