Mariana Llamas-Cendon
By Mariana Llamas-Cendon / Amigos805
Thinking about going to Mexico for the Holidays? If you are a Mexican citizen, whether by naturalization or birth, I recommend you first check to see when your Mexican passport expires.
Otherwise, based on my experience, it won’t be as pleasant and hassle free to renew it at the Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores or SRE (Ministry of Exterior) offices south of the U.S. border as it normally is at Mexican consulates of Oxnard and Los Angeles.
On a recent trip to Mexico, specifically to the city of Cuernavaca in the state of Morelos, I didn’t realize my passport was about to expire. Since I was in Mexican territory I thought about renewing the document there so I checked online at www.sre.gob.mx for the documents required to do so. I also made an appointment since that is apparently the new requirement.
My soon-to-be-expired document was issued by the General Consulate of Mexico in Los Angeles in 2005 and valid for five years so my logic told me that I needed a renew it.
I arrived at the SRE offices in Cuernavaca, on Calle Estrada Cajigal at 409 Colonia Tezontepec, and waited until my turn was called. At the counter, I presented my still valid passport and a photo ID. I was instructed to return the following day and present a certificate of studies or birth and an older and no longer valid passport issued in Mexico because, as the female officer explained to me: “the passport issued at the consulate isn’t valid for SRE”.
I was shocked! How can my passport not be valid if it was issued by an official and legal representative of the Mexican government abroad?
No one could explain why and I am still wondering, so much so that on Nov. 16, I called, left a message and then sent an e-mail to Consul Olga Garcia, general director of the department Direccion General de Servicios Consulares (General Consular Services Management), with copy to Laura Guadalupe Parada, head of department Documentacion a Mexicanos (Mexican citizens Documentation Department) of Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores. I’m still waiting for a response.
On that same day, I sent an e-mail to Claudia Luna at the General Consulate of Mexico in Oxnard, who called me the following day offering me an interview with Consul Martha Teissier regarding this issue. After some repeated calls, and more than a couple messages left on the Consul’s voicemail, I never received a response.
A second explanation I received at the Cuernavaca office was that “the passports issued abroad at a consulate are considered ‘emergency’ documents.” So I thought, there are “emergency” passports issued for a length of five years — which includes a cost? To me, an “emergency passport” should be issued for six months or less. When is there a five-year emergency?
To make a long and painful story short, I was asked for a number of documents that could prove my nationality — information that is irrelevant from my perspective — but that I always carry around whenever I travel.
Once I submitted photocopies of the required paperwork I was again instructed by the female officer to submit the originals. When I ask for those to be returned to me, she said that those may not be given back and she offered no further explanation. I found that odd and unusual and it made me feel uneasy because never in my life, and I wasn’t born yesterday, have I ever been denied the opportunity of getting my original documents back. Usually, at least in Mexico, the U.S. originals are rarely asked for and never ever kept away with no guarantee of return.
U.S. passports, by comparison, are painless and hassle free to obtain if you have your documentation complete and in order.
Finally, perhaps the officers at SRE felt pity for me and I was granted a new passport after spending more than five hours at the office.
So, unless you want to practically go through hell in order to renew your passport in Mexico, I will tell you to think again, check when it expires and instead go to your closest Mexican consulate in the U.S. to avoid the hassle.
Still, I hope someone will explain to me why a passport issued at any of the Mexican Consulates in the U.S. isn’t valid for Secretaria de Relaciones Exteriores…
I’m still waiting for their call.
— Mariana Llamas-Cendon has previously worked with such publications as the Ventura County Star’s Mi Estrella weekly newspaper, La Opinion and Hoy. The views expressed by Mariana Llamas-Cendon do not necessarily represent the views of Amigos805.com