For Mexican ambassador who survived Trump, Washington was last stop Nick Miroff, The Washington Post Feb. 20, 2021 FacebookTwitterEmail The first woman to serve as Mexico's ambassador to the United States, Martha Bárcena, arrived in Washington in December 2018 at a fraught moment in the two nations' shared history. Newly elected Mexican president Andrés Manuel López Obrador, a man with leftist roots, had sent Bárcena to be his envoy to President Donald Trump, who was building a border wall and threatening to torpedo the Mexican economy because he was enraged at a Central American migration surge. Bárcena spent the next two years in the eye of the Trump storm, helping navigate the finalization of the U.S.-Mexico-Canada Agreement, and the implementation of controversial border and migration agreements such as the "Remain in Mexico" policy, which was crafted to placate Trump and deter migrants seeking asylum in the United States.