First lady Jill Biden will head up the U.S. delegation to Mexican President-elect Claudia Sheinbaum’s inauguration amid debate in Mexico over the official guest list, which also includes Russian President Vladimir Putin.
The White House announced Biden’s participation Wednesday, but did not say which other officials would accompany her.
Sheinbaum will be the first woman to become a head of state in North America, a precedent Democrats want to see emulated by Vice President Harris in January.
Mexico’s inaugurations have a history of featuring foreign dignitaries who prove uncomfortable for one political faction or another.
In 2018, for now-outgoing President Andrés Manuel López Obrador’s inauguration, Mexico’s conservatives were in an uproar over an invitation for Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro.
Members of the center-right National Action Party put up a banner inside the lower chamber of Congress, where inaugurations are held, that read, “Maduro you are not welcome.”
In the end, Maduro did not attend; then-incoming Mexican Foreign Minister Marcelo Ebrard said the plane from Venezuela had been delayed.
It’s unlikely that Putin will attend, given that Mexico is a member of the International Criminal Court (ICC), which has outstanding arrest warrants against him over alleged forced deportations and child abductions as part of Russia’s ongoing war against Ukraine.
Putin visited ICC member state Mongolia in September without being detained according to the court’s rules.
Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelensky was also invited: The Ukrainian Embassy in Mexico thanked Sheinbaum and declined the invitation, also calling on Mexico to detain Putin if he shows up, according to local daily El Universal.
Sheinbaum has said the invitations to different world leaders are a simple matter of diplomatic protocol, and extended to all nations with which Mexico sustains diplomatic relations.
