After receiving the presidential sash from the then president of Congress, Jesús Murrillo Karam, Peña Nieto shook hands with Calderón, the members of the board of directors and received handshakes under the tribune. Selfies were not common practice, at least not among the political class.
After the session, Peña Nieto went to the National Palace, where he issued his first message to the nation as president, in the presence of a thousand national and foreign guests.
The special guests
The three, Peña, López Obrador and Sheinbaum, have gathered around them a wide range of members of the international community for the session of the General Congress in which they have protested as constitutional presidents.
In 2012, upon the arrival of Enrique Peña Nieto to the presidency, the most prominent delegation was that of the United States, although in reality 13 heads of State and Government attended.
Among the 350 national and foreign guests were Joe Biden, then vice president of the United States, at the head of a delegation formed by the United States ambassador to Mexico, Anthony Wayne; the then Secretary of Labor of that country, Hilda L. Solís; John O. Brennan, assistant to then-President Barack Obama for Homeland Security and Counterterrorism, and Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs, Roberta S. Jacobson.
Other guests were Laura Chinchilla, president of the Republic of Costa Rica, and among the national guests, in addition to the ministers of the Supreme Court of Justice of the Nation (SCJN) in full, was the president of the defunct Federal Electoral Institute (IFE), Leonardo Valdes.
On the other hand, in the ceremonies in which Andrés Manuel López Obrador protested on December 1, 2018 and Claudia Sheinbaum on October 1, 2024, guests from left-wing countries dominated.
Former President López Obrador did invite King Felipe VI of Spain, the President of Venezuela, Nicolás Maduro; to Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Canel; that of Bolivia, Evo Morales; that of Ecuador, Lenín Moreno, and that of Peru, Martín Vizcarra.
The vice president of the People’s Assembly of the People’s Republic of China, Shen Yueyue, attended; the Secretary of Foreign Affairs of the Federal Republic of Germany, Niels Annen; among others, but the United States delegation was extensive: Michael Pence, US vice president; Rick Perry, Secretary of the Department of Energy; Kirstjen M. Nielsen, Secretary of the Department of Homeland Security; Ivanka Trump, daughter of then-President Donald Trump, presidential assistant and advisor, among others.
Even the United Nations High Commissioner for Human Rights, Michelle Bachelet, attended.
Sheinbaum, unlike López Obrador, did not invite anyone from the Spanish monarchy, but instead extended an invitation to 16 heads of state, including Bolivia’s Luis Alberto Arce Catacora; that of Brazil, Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva; that of Chile, Gabriel Boric Font; that of Colombia, Gustavo Petro; that of Cuba, Miguel Díaz-Cane, and that of Honduras, Xiomara Castro.
10 heads of international organizations also attended, as well as resident and concurrent ambassadors.
President Joe Biden’s wife, Jill Biden, attended as a personal representative of the United States government.
