Eastern Washington’s Mexican Connection

One of Mexico’s oldest and longest serving diplomats keeps his office in the basement of a building near Pines and Sprague.

Carlos H. Landa, 84 and an honorary Mexican consul for more than 40 years, still spends a few hours a week acting as a liaison between Eastern Washington and Mexico.

It’s a job, the 53-year Valley resident admits, few people know about or understand.

“Most people don’t know what the hell an honorary consul is,” he says.

According to Webster’s, a consul is “a person appointed by his government to live in a certain foreign city and serve his country’s citizens and business interests there.”

The honorary part means Landa doesn’t get paid.

“You definitely have to have another form of cash flow to do this,” says the retired Landa, who made his living in real estate and banking.

Landa became consul in 1951, when there were roughly 10,000 people in the Valley and only a year after the Washington Legislature passed a law allowing foreign nationals to buy their own homes.

Landa, who married Valley native Jean Smith in 1943, had become a naturalized American citizen in 1950.

His wife died nearly 15 years ago.

He came to the United States in 1942 as part of a program aimed at teaching Latin Americans to fly airplanes as part of the war effort and never left.

Landa’s father was a Mexican ambassador to several countries, so his appointment to consul carried on a family tradition of international diplomacy, he said.

In his heyday, Landa was quite the international mover and shaker.

In 1956, he negotiated the sale of 10,000 seedling apple trees from Wenatchee orchardists to farmers in Mexico.

Landa once arranged for the grandson of a former Mexican president to have $135,000 in modifications made to his personal airplane at a company in Spokane.

In the height of his service, he issued more than 1,000 tourist permits annually to Eastern Washington residents planning to visit Mexico.

Landa admits he has slowed down quite a bit these days.

He now spends only a few hours a week issuing tourist permits and prescribing treatment for an ailment he refers to as “Montezuma’s revenge” - a gastrointestinal upset brought on by the water in Mexico.

“You can’t do much to keep from getting it, but once you do, this stuff helps keep it under control,” says a laughing Landa, brandishing a box of Immodium A-D. “I enjoy what I’m doing, though, because I don’t have to punch a clock anymore.”

The senior member of Mexico’s 127-person worldwide consular corps brags that he gets a free parking spot at the Spokane International Airport and is immune from parking tickets.

Those are amenities granted official representatives from other countries.

“Being the dean of the Mexican consular corps, I’m a privileged individual,” he says with a grin.

, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Photo

MEMO: Saturday’s People is a regular Valley Voice feature profiling remarkable individuals in the Valley. If you know someone who would be a good profile subject, please call editor Mike Schmeltzer at 927-2170.