La Raza Activist Named U.S. Ambassador

A leftist La Raza activist previously forced out of a U.S. ambassadorship for her close ties to a terrorist-sponsoring foreign government has been nominated by President Obama to a key administration post.

Mari Del Carmen Aponte, a former director at the extremist Mexican group National Council of La Raza (see the press release applauding her nomination) and the Puerto Rican Legal Defense and Education Fund, has been handpicked by Obama to be the U.S. Ambassador to El Salvador. That means Aponte, an attorney and independent consultant, will represent the State Department in the civil war-ravaged Central American country. 

In 1998 Bill Clinton nominated Aponte, who was a member of his transition team, to be U.S. Ambassador to the Dominican Republic but she was forced to withdraw after news broke about her tight relationship with an agent of Communist Cuba’s spy agency. The island nation has appeared on the State Department’s terrorism list since the early 1980s for supporting designated Foreign Terrorist Organizations—from South America and Europe—and for harboring fugitives from U.S. justice, including domestic terrorists. Cuba’s government also maintains close relationships with other state sponsors of terrorism such as Iran and Syria.

On the heels of Aponte’s latest nomination, a popular news syndicate is rehashing the long forgotten story of her ignominious past. According to an intelligence memo obtained by the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Aponte cohabitated with an agent of the Cuban intelligence service, known as DGI. The crucial intelligence memo questioned the lack of a thorough security check into Aponte’s background and alleged that Aponte was recruited as a spy for Cuban Dictator Fidel Castro. 

In Washington deep pockets and powerful friends often make these sorts of damaging scandals go away, however. Aponte is a longtime close pal of Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and she’s donated generously to Democrats over the years. That’s why soon she will get that cherished diplomatic post that has eluded her for a decade.