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U.S. presidential visits to Mexico have been done by every president since World War II. President Taft also walked across the border in 1909, which was the first visit for any U.S. president; President Obama's first visit was the 30th for any U.S. president. The country was most visited by presidents George W. Bush and Ronald Reagan. Both George W. Bush and Reagan visited Mexico more often than Canada, and both presidents had previously been governors of states with large Mexican-American populations. However, only Presidents Carter and Taft were able to speak in Spanish when talking to the Mexican head of state. Canadians consider it respectful of the old alliance for the President to make Canada the destination of their first international trip. However, President Bush pointedly made his first international visit to President Fox's ranch, in the so-called (cowboy summit ). A total of 10 trips have been to the border cities of Tijuana, Mexicali, Ciudad Juárez, Nogales and nearby Magdalena de Kino, Ciudad Acuña, and Nuevo Guerrero (Falcon Dam State Park). The last visit to a border city was in 1986. Only 6 trips have been to the Federal District (Mexico City). ==The Taft-Diaz summit== In 1909, William Howard Taft and Porfirio Díaz planned a summit in El Paso, Texas, and Ciudad Juárez, Mexico, an historic first meeting between a U.S. and a Mexican president, the first time an American president would cross the border into Mexico, and only the second international trip by a sitting president (Theodore Roosevelt had traveled to Panama while president).〔Harris 2009, p. 1.〕 Diaz requested the meeting to show U.S. support for his planned eighth run as president, and Taft agreed to support Diaz in order to protect the several billion dollars of American capital then invested in Mexico.〔Harris 2009, p. 2.〕 An El Paso historian has added that it was a "veritable pageant of military splendor, social brilliance, courtly formality, official protocol, and patriotic fervor." President Taft arrived in El Paso on the morning of October 16 and, after attending a presidential breakfast at the St. Regis Hotel, was driven to the Chamber of Commerce Building. ''President Díaz arrived at 11:00 A.M., and after formal introductions, spent about twenty minutes alone with the American president. Because both presidents were bilingual there was no need for interpreters. No one else attended the meeting. Whether the Chamizal dispute was discussed is not known. Although official reports of the meeting stated that nothing of political or diplomatic significance was discussed, some have suggested that the basis was laid there for the treaty of arbitration that the two nations signed a year later. Díaz then returned to Ciudad Juárez, followed by Taft an hour later, and all preparations were then completed for the meeting of the two presidents at the Mexican customhouse. There, after a brief interview, they stepped outside to the front of the building under a scarlet canopy and posed for a cameraman. The resulting photograph effectively dramatized the contrast between Taft's plain appearance and Díaz's military bearing and chest full of medals. The banquet at the Ciudad Juárez customhouse dwarfed all other events of that historic occasion. The entire building had been transformed into a reproduction of one of the famous salons of Versailles. There were rich red draperies, paintings of George Washington and Miguel Hidalgo y Costilla, three traincarloads of flowers brought from Guadalajara, a gold and silver service that had belonged to the Emperor Maximilian and was valued at a million dollars, cut glass from Chapultepec Castle valued at $200,000, and fine linens from the presidential palace. There was soft music, conversation in two languages, and mutual toasts by the two presidents. With the presentation of gold goblets to the presidents as gifts from the city of El Paso, the evening came to an end. Taft returned to El Paso to board a train for San Antonio. At length he let El Pasoans know that construction of the Elephant Butte Dam project would begin in 1910. Nineteen months later Porfirio Díaz was overthrown with the capture of Ciudad Juárez by revolutionary forces.''〔(【引用サイトリンク】title=Handbook of Texas Online, s.v. )〕 抄文引用元・出典: フリー百科事典『 ウィキペディア(Wikipedia)』 ■ウィキペディアで「United States presidential visits to Mexico」の詳細全文を読む スポンサード リンク
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