Foreign agents-in novels and movies-bring to mind swirling fogs, meetings under bridges, urgent cablegrams from Control, and sudden violence. It’s not like that for foreign consuls in Chicago, not most of the time, as the Danish consul general was saying the other day in a meeting high in the John Hancock Center.
“Many people have only a sketchy idea of what a consul does,” said Niels Lassen, sitting by a window at the consulate with a 30-mile view. “They often refer to us as counsels (COWN-suls), as if we gave advice. It’s consul (CON-sul), as in Roman consul.”
Diplomacy used to be a capital matter. That was where diplomats lived-in capitals. These days, so many countries have consulates in Chicago-there are 56, from Argentina to Ukraine-that the world, in a sense, has come to Chicago. Yet few people know what these local diplomats do.
Like piloting an airplane, which has been described as hours of routine punctuated by moments of terror, consular life has drama.
In 1978, the West German consulate, at 104 S. Michigan Ave., was occupied for 10 hours by two Croatian extremists who seized six hostages and threatened to throw them out a 10th-floor window. Before the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe, Poland’s consulate, at 1540 N. Lake Shore Drive, was regularly picketed by placard-waving crowds. More than once, bombs were planted at the now-closed Yugoslav consulate, at 307 N. Michigan Ave.
But mostly, the work has to do with more peaceable pursuits: trade, culture, tourism. Most consuls are full-time diplomats who consider Chicago an important posting on the road to a major ambassadorship. They issue passports. They promote business. They offer a home away from home to their nationals. Perhaps most important, they burnish their country’s image, an art that depends on hundreds of contacts a year, ranging from small talk at social functions to setting up cultural events and making speeches.
The whale’s blowout
“We’re in the `representing’ business,” the wife of a Chicago-based consul once said. What that means, as writer Francis Hackett observed, is that “in the whale of a diplomat, you’ll find the whole equipment-the blubber of charity, the whalebone of flexibility, the oil of commodity. A great diplomat is a regular Moby Dick.” As a group, they also know how to party.
For years, one of Chicago’s major blowouts has been the annual Consular Ball, a spectacular display of bonhomie and medals (though it was slightly marred in 1979 when an honorary consul threw a punch and decked a photographer who refused to take his picture). This year’s event, with 800 guests expected, will take place Saturday at the Chicago Hilton & Towers.
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They will nibble on Scottish salmon, moo shu duck crepes, chicken in coconut, quiche, paper-thin potato pancakes and baked brie cheese with almonds. And that’s before dinner.
Flags from every nation will fly. A trumpeter will announce each consul’s arrival. Between blasts, a string orchestra will play; later, there will be dancing around a 5-foot globe in the center of the dance floor.
“The ballroom will look like a fairyland,” predicted philanthropist Sadie Berkson, who, with lawyer Anne Burke, is co-chair of the event. At $200 a ticket, it will raise $100,000 for the Library of International Relations, whose 1.5 million documents, the country’s best collection of international research material, are now housed in gleaming new quarters at the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Chicago-Kent College of Law, 565 W. Adams St.
Less shrimp, more cooperation
In a changing world, Chicago’s consular corps is also changing.
In recent months, some have noticed what seem to be economic cutbacks at many consulates. “At the average reception, shrimp is now off,” notes one regular on the local diplomatic circuit. “They also tend to have waiters passing hors d’oeuvres, instead of full buffets.”
The Australians closed their Chicago consulate this year. The Swedes replaced their full-time consul with an honorary one. On the up side, several Eastern European nations are expected to open offices here soon.
Reflecting changes in Europe, the Common Market consuls now hang out together. Instead of simply pushing Denmark, Lassen said, “we encourage firms to export to the Common Market, using Denmark, the gateway to the Baltic area, as a distribution point and later as a manufacturing center. If you’re with it, you’ll find a partner with a distribution system, piggyback for a while, start assembling and then establish your own European setup.”
Not all consuls are career diplomats. Of the 56 in Chicago, 18 are honorary consuls, local citizens asked by smaller countries to serve, without pay, their interests here. In recent years, this group has included an owner of a Lincoln Park bar, a graphics designer for the architectural firm of Skidmore, Owings & Merrill, and a Gold Coast socialite, Mary Sethness, the honorary consul general of Nepal since 1982.
For the 300 members of the local consular corps, which includes the consuls and senior support staff, there are certain perks. They pay no income tax and can avoid Illinois sales tax by showing a card issued by the state Revenue Department. Unlike officers in Washington embassies, they can be prosecuted for crimes, including parking violations. But they cannot be arrested or jailed except on serious charges.
Many of the more dramatic moments have to do with jails, notably when their nationals get thrown into them. Consuls cannot interfere with local laws, but they can make sure an arrest was not made simply because a person was, say, Rwandan. They can help an accused contact a lawyer or relatives at home. Often, they break unpleasant news to families. They ship bodies home, cleaning up after plane crashes, traffic accidents or fatal crimes.
From NAFTA to romance
Besides pushing the North American Free Trade Agreement, Mexican Consul General Oliver Farres, whose territory covers almost 1 million people of Mexican descent, has been busy with a campaign urging members of the local Mexican-American community to treat Mexico’s patriotic symbols with greater respect. Too often, he complains, his country’s flag is inappropriately waved from cars or used on T-shirts at parades or other festivities.
Other times, consuls are called to intercede in marital hassles.
George Sisler, a Chicago banker who was honorary consul of Sri Lanka for 14 years, once recalled that most calls from Sri Lankans in distress were “on the romantic side.” One involved a woman who wanted to return home, but her husband was holding her passport.
“I said, `Well, where does he keep it?’ She said, `In a wallet, in his trousers.’ I asked, `Is he a sound sleeper?’ I don’t know if I helped,” Sisler concluded, “but I never heard from her again.”
Often, consular life produces its own problems. Even in the best-rooted families, the moving about as diplomatic vagabonds, on average every three years, is not easy.
“We have lived everywhere as if it were home,” said Beverly Valentine, who sailed out of Montreal 30 years ago on the SS Carmania for the first posting, in Dusseldorf, of her husband, Douglas, now Canadian consul-general here. They have lived in Colombia, Brazil, Iran and Saudi Arabia and in Dallas.
To stay steady, “you bring your own dishes, and certain linens,” she said. “We still have friends in many places. Two years ago, for a family Christmas, we tried to decide where would we all like to go. The kids chose Bogota. So we went there for two weeks.”
Although Chicago is considered an “A” post, compared with other cities with more unnerving social and climatic problems, “Chicago is little known outside of Chicago,” notes Lassen, who was the Danish ambassador to Zimbabwe, a higher post but in a smaller economy, when he got news of his shift to Chicago. “The No. 2 man in the U.S. Embassy in Zimbabwe was from Evanston. He said, `Oh, you’ll love it.’ “
Lassen has been impressed. “You have two 24-hour classical music stations,” he said. “There’s nothing like that anywhere else in the world. There are lots of old wealthy families to support a cultural life. Concerts are seldom totally sold out. And there is a very pleasant rhythm in the city center, compared to New York and other cities of the world.”
Nor is there any shortage of invitations. Take the past month. When former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt spoke to the Economic Club, two dozen consuls were among 700 guests. When Irish Prime Minister Albert Reynolds came through, Irish consul general Barrie Robinson threw a reception for other consuls and prominent members of Chicago’s Irish community at the Drake Hotel. Two Chinese delegations-Beijing and Taiwan-picked the same spot, Chicago Hilton & Towers, to celebrate national days, one week apart.
Around the red tape
Others complain that few consuls really get to know Chicago. “They come here for four years, take their cues from their predecessors and want to socialize only with top people,” a former staff member at one consulate says.
Another complaint is that many consulate personnel seem drawn to bureaucracy. “They love to find a paper that goes with a problem,” the former staff member added. “Then they pass on the file.”
Or they work out their own solutions to keep things moving.
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When a weighty Chicago soprano, booked to sing in France, asked the local French consulate where she might buy large pantyhose in Paris, her request was shrugged off. “You must go to Germany for that,” she was told.
Several years ago, at the Canadian consulate, a visa-seeker, looking wild-eyed, proclaimed, “I am an Arctic seal and I wish to go north to mate.”
“You’ll need to get a seal license from the city and a note from your veterinarian,” the visa officer retorted. The man went off to get them-and never come back.