This foreign agency in the Central Valley serves 1.5 million residents. See who heads it
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The Consulate of México in Fresno – the foreign gubernatorial entity that serves 1.5 million Mexican nationals residing in the Central Valley with services such documentation, protection and legal affairs – has a new leader.
Minister Nuria P. Zuñiga Alaniz, who served as deputy consul for the last three years in Fresno, assumed functions as head consul on April 2.
The consulate, which has been in the valley for more than 90 years, provides different services to Mexican nationals.
The consulate is best known for the documentation service which has the most demand – passports, matrícula consular (consular registration), credencial de elector (voter identification), birth certificates, registro civil (civil registry), dual nationality, power of attorneys, among other documentations.
“Which are services that people require more every day,” she said.
As part of the services provided, parents can request dual citizenship for children born in the United States or adults can request dual nationality if their parents were born in México.
Zuñiga Alaniz said while there are more than 40 services the consulate offers in Fresno under one roof; in México those services are carried out in 25 different government agencies.
“The attention we provide to our community has increased as time has progressed,” she said.
A familiar face
Having served the consulate’s community in the Valley the past few years has allowed Zuñiga Alaniz to know firsthand the stories of many of Mexican nationals as well as the challenges they face and their needs.
“The advantage of having been deputy consul is that it already gives me a much more complete and much more documented panorama of the needs and challenges that our community faces, particularly here,” said Zuñiga Alaniz, a career diplomat who has been a member of the Mexican Foreign Service since 2010.
“And that allows me to do a much more complete analysis than other consuls have not had because maybe arriving at a new place is starting from the beginning.”
Zuñiga Alaniz replaces former head consul Adriana González Carrillo, who returned to México after four years in Fresno. González Carrillo’s last day was Feb. 29.
With the advantage of already knowing the community, Zuñiga Alaniz said now she “can get to a point where we can take more actions and focus.”
With more than 60% of the population in the area being of Mexican origin or born in México, Zuñiga Alaniz said the presence of the consulate in the Valley is extremely important.
The consulate covers eight counties in the area including Mariposa, Merced, Madera, Inyo, Fresno, Tulare, Kings and Kern.
Other services and initiatives
The consulate offers other services such as service window for indigenous peoples and there are plans to open a service or civic education window to promote not only a stronger civic education in the community but the importance of voting.
“Why is it important that we participate in the elections in Mexico now that we can,” Zuñiga Alaniz said. “So those are some of the projects that have been opened in recent years.”
The consulate has partnered with the organization Binational of Central California for a mental health program.
“All these new programs serve very specific needs that we have detected in the community,” Zuñiga Alaniz said. “Obviously the issue of mental health, we all know that COVID left many consequences or revealed many problems that we had.”
Zuñiga Alaniz said the topic of mental health is something that remains a bit taboo in the community, that is why it was extremely important for the consulate to offer those services and create awareness and break that taboo.
Another service is protection and legal affairs area. There is also community affairs, which seeks links with the entire diaspora and does so through three programs: education, financial education and health.
“All this is focused on empowering our community, so that they can open doors, have greater opportunities, better life opportunities, but also in some way that they adapt to the norms and ways of life established in this case the Central Valley,” Zuñiga Alaniz said.
“This is one of the consulate’s objectives to provide this care, to support our community to grow and make a more integrated and stronger community,” she said.
Zuñiga Alaniz said it is a “very big challenge” to provide service to more than 1.5 million people in a very rural environment where access to information or services is sometimes difficult.
“Obviously, part of what I want to do or part of the issues we want to improve as a consulate is, well, attention to service, quality of service, but also being able to build and continue weaving this great network of allies that already we have but increase it for the benefit of the community,” she said.
The consulate recently expanded business hours from 7 a.m. to 1 p.m.
Before Fresno, Zuñiga Alaniz was at the Consulate General of México in Houston, at the Embassy of México in Bolivia, and Sub-Saharan Africa at the Secretary of Foreign Affairs.
Zuñiga Alaniz has a bachelor’s degree in political science and administration from Universidad Complutense de Madrid (Spain); an MBA in Political Science from El Colegio de México (México); holds postgraduate diplomas on Mexican Culture, IMR, and on U.S. Political Institutions and Bilateral Relations México-U.S., Center for U.S.-Mexican Studies, University of California San Diego.
