CALDERON SCHEDULED TO VISIT SONOMA WINERY
Mexican President Felipe Calderón is scheduled to visit a Sonoma winery Wednesday as part of his first official visit to California. Calderón plans to visit the Robledo Family Winery following a luncheon with Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger and before flying on to Los Angeles.Reynaldo Robledo, the patriarch of the winery family, is an immigrant from Calderón's home state, Michoacan.One of Calderón's goals on his U.S. tour, which began Sunday, is to reach out to the 12 million Mexican immigrants in the United States.Notimex, the Mexican news agency, said Calderón will meet with the Robledos and other immigrants who have opened their own businesses after working in the vineyards of California.After coming to the United States about four decades ago, Robledo worked his way from field worker to vineyard manager, then to vineyard owner and finally vintner.Neither Robledo nor his daughter, Vanessa, the winery president, could be reached for comment Monday, but they have talked in the past about their immigrant roots."Now that we've grown up, we all appreciate that my father was correct in being strict with us when we were kids and we now see that he was right when he told us that the business would keep the family together," Vanessa Robledo told Notimex in an article published MondayCalderón's visit hasn't been widely publicized.Sonoma County Supervisor Valerie Brown, who represents the Sonoma Valley, said she wasn't aware of it. Sheriff Bill Cogbill said he couldn't comment on any possible visit or any role his department would have in providing security for a visiting chief of state.A spokeswoman for Gov. Arnold Schwarzenegger, who will meet with Calderón today and Wednesday, said she wasn't aware of the Mexican president's schedule after he leaves Sacramento.Efforts to contact Mexican consular officials in San Francisco on Monday were unsuccessful.While he's in California, Calderón will address the state Legislature and attend a private lunch meeting with Schwarzenegger, Assembly Speaker Fabian Núñez and other officials.He is scheduled to meet with migrant workers in Los Angeles after leaving Sonoma. His appearance in California culminates a tour that includes stops in Boston, New York and Chicago.Some say his first official visit to California is overdue."There has been a lot of criticism from Mexican leaders in the U.S., that he hasn't traveled to this country, he hasn't visited with them," said Andrew Selee, director of the Mexico Institute at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars. "And unlike (former President) Vicente Fox, he hasn't paid the kind of consistent attention to Mexican communities in the United States, and he's trying to address that."Fox made a similar trip to California in 2006.The acting Mexican Consul in San Jose, Jose Loreto, said Calderón, who took office in late 2006, after a close election against a liberal candidate, has been too busy dealing with internal matters to schedule a trip north."His main objective is to get close to community groups," Loreto acknowledged.Although he won't be meeting with President Bush, or going to Washington, D.C., Calderón is expected to speak consistently about the plight of Mexican immigrants. Calderón has publicly stated his concern for the "growing harassment" and "frank persecution" of Mexicans in the United States.His comments, made to the Mexican government's migrant assistance agency in November, were in apparent reference to U.S. presidential candidates who voiced their desire to curb illegal immigration; he's also expressed disappointment at Congress' inability to agree on an overhaul of immigration laws.Calderón, who holds a master's in public administration from the John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University, told an audience of students and faculty there Monday: "It's important to change the perception that Mexicans are the enemy."Calderón is expected to share his sentiment about immigration when he addresses a joint session of the California Legislature.Fox used the same platform to push for an overhaul of immigration laws in a speech to the state Legislature in May 2006, a day when several Republicans in attendance silently protested Mexico's economic and education policies, which they said lead to illegal immigration, by wearing yellow buttons with the phrase "No mas," or, no more.On Wednesday morning, Calderón, 45, will meet privately with the Latino Legislative Caucus as well as Senate and Assembly leaders from both parties before addressing both houses.
