Biography | Bernadette Meehan — The Red Carpet at La Moneda Where She Presented Her Letters

People treat credentials as paperwork signed in Washington.

The job starts when a new ambassador walks this palace and hands the letters to the head of state.

On 30 September 2022 Bernadette Meehan presented her letters of credence to President Gabriel Boric Font at Palacio de La Moneda in Santiago.

The Chilean presidency published the ceremony as part of a group reception of six new ambassadors that day.

An official photograph from the U.S. Embassy in Chile shows Meehan on the red carpet inside the palace entrance, Carabineros on the columns, Plaza de la Constitución visible through the iron gate.

La Moneda occupies the block between Moneda, Morandé, Teatinos, and the Alameda.

Joaquín Toesca designed the neoclassical mint; coinage ran here from 1814 to 1929, and the building has been the seat of Chile's presidency since the nineteenth century.

Meehan had been sworn in at the State Department a month earlier, on 29 August.

Her tour ran through the change of U.S. administrations.

She submitted her resignation effective 10 January 2025, the customary date for political appointees after a presidential election.

Some later tables list the seat as ending on 20 January 2025; the resignation letter used the tenth.

The palace is a working government building with a public changing of the guard on the plaza.

Photo: Office of the U.S. Ambassador to Chile, public domain, via Wikimedia Commons.