Home / International

Arturo Sarukhán Casamitjana

Published: Tuesday October 28, 2008

Ambassador Arturo Sarukhán Casamitjana, the ambassador of Mexico in Washington.

The ambassador of Mexico to the United States since January 2007, Mr. Sarukhán was foreign policy coordinator for presidential candidate Felipe Calderón (who was elected president of Mexico in 2006).

Since 1994, Mr. Sarukhán's diplomatic career has included postings as Mexico's consul general in New York, with Mexico's Secretariat of Foreign Affairs, and as Mexico's representative at the Agency for the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons in Latin America and the Caribbean (OPANAL).

He is also a professor at the Instituto Tecnológico Autónomo de México (ITAM) and has taught at the Mexican National Defense College, the Inter-American Defense College, and at the U.S. National Defense University.

Mr. Sarukhán has a bachelor's degree from El Colegio de México (1988) and, as Fulbright Scholar and Ford Foundation Fellow, he earned his master's degree in U.S. foreign policy from Washington's Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies (1991).

The Kingdoms of Spain and Sweden conferred on him the Order of Civil Merit of Isabel la Católica, Officers Degree, and the Order of the Polar Star, Commanders Degree, respectively.

Mr. Sarukhán is married to Verónica Valencia and they have two young daughters, Laia and Ani.

The ambassador's father

The ambassador's father, José Aristeo Sarukhán Kermez, was born in Mexico in 1940. An award-winning biologist he was president of Mexico's National University from 1989 to 1997, and continues to do research on ecology there. In November 2007, writing in the leading Mexican daily El Universal, Dr. Sarukhán Kermez discussed the Armenian community's efforts to win Armenian Genocide affirmation in the U.S. Congress and his own family experience. See his commentary in Spanish at http://www.el-universal.com.mx/editoriales/38926.html