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 Editorials | At Issue | January 2006 
Fox's Unfulfilled Promise
 S. Lynne Walker - Copley News
| | Vicente Fox mixed with the crowds during his 2000 campaign for the presidency. His open approach has made him extraordinarily popular with Mexicans. (Copley News) |
Five years ago, Mexicans voted for a savior. What they got was a man. A big, straight-taking, charismatic man. But a man nonetheless.
His strengths have made him one of the most popular presidents in Mexican history. His weaknesses have prevented him from living up to the expectations of millions of people who believed he could radically change their country.
Vicente Fox's sheer force of character gave Mexicans the courage to wrench power from a regime that had governed them for 71 years. But as Fox begins his final year in office, his critics say he has squandered a unique opportunity to use the power voters placed in his hands.
Fox's critics say he has been unable – or unwilling – to negotiate with a sharply divided Congress to win the energy, labor and financial reforms Mexico needs to strengthen its economy and compete in the global market.
He has shunned the arduous task of lobbying recalcitrant opposition legislators, political analysts say, because he doesn't like spending time in his office.
"Things are accomplished in the countryside. They're accomplished in the street.They are not accomplished behind a desk," Fox said in the second of two recent interviews, conducted during a visit to the impoverished pueblo of El Zarzal in Oaxaca state.
Fox has taken more trips than any other president. In the five years he's been in office, he has left Mexico City 508 times to shake hands, kiss babies and share tacos with farmers.
"At some point, you have to sit behind that desk and get your priorities in order," said George Grayson, a Mexico scholar at the College of William & Mary in Williamsburg, Va. "I don't think he has the DNA to do that and the country has suffered as a result."
Fox insists he has never strayed from the business of running the country. As proof, he points to his conservative economic policy, which he says has made Mexico the envy of the Americas.
"Mexico is one of the most solid countries in Latin America," he said. "It is the largest economy in Latin America. It is the largest exporter in Latin America. It has the highest per capita income in Latin America. This has been accomplished with fiscal discipline, with financial discipline, with economic stability."
The statistics bear him out.
Mexico's 3 percent annual inflation rate has dropped below the U.S. rate for the first time in 35 years. The official 3.7 percent unemployment rate is the lowest in the Americas. The amount of foreign currency in Mexico's Central Bank is at an all-time high. And Mexico has been so successful in reducing foreign debt that Fox's government is already paying its 2007 obligations.
Mexicans credit him with ousting the Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, and bringing real democracy to Mexico. And they laud his support of the first open-records law in Mexico's history, which made their country a world leader in access to information.
They are also benefiting from Fox's move to dilute the federal government's power.
"There has been a profound change in the political system. It has been turned upside down," political analyst Federico Estévez said. "Now, local government is more important for quality of life than the federal government."
In volatile Latin America, those are considerable accomplishments. But Mexicans expected more.
They elected Fox because he made them believe Mexico could be an economic powerhouse, like its rich northern neighbors. He made them believe they would no longer be poor. He made them believe he could persuade the United States to make their family members who cross the border legal U.S. workers.
When Fox's stunning victory was announced on July 2, 2000, thousands of people spilled into Mexico City's streets to celebrate at the Monument of Independence.
An overjoyed Fox promised the crowd, "I will not fail." As the magnitude of his victory sank in, he wept.
The euphoria that swept the nation that night has long since evaporated. Fox has been slowed by the stark reality of transforming Mexico, and even his detractors acknowledge he cannot make all the structural changes Mexico so desperately needs.
Before he took office, Fox himself predicted he could not accomplish everything. In a June 2000 interview on the campaign trail, he said he would be a transition president who would help Mexico become a truly democratic country.
"In six years, you cannot solve the problems of 70 years," he said. "But in six years, you can change the path of development. You can put the house in order."
But even as he cautioned voters, Fox encouraged them to envision Mexico as a modern, prosperous country.
"We are going to construct a great nation, the Mexico of our dreams," he said. "The 21st century is Mexico's century."
Many Mexicans believed so deeply in Fox that they imbued him with abilities beyond the reach of any president.
"What Mexicans wanted was a savior," said Federico Berrueto, a university professor who served as political adviser to former President Ernesto Zedillo. "They wanted someone who could resolve all their problems. They wanted someone who was a godlike being."
Approachable
Fox, a rancher who once sold Coca-Cola for a living, is unlike the distant, disdainful men who preceded him in the Mexican presidency. He is unpretentious, approachable, always ready with a firm handshake and a mustachioed grin.
When he was elected president, he had been in politics for 14 years, including a term as governor of Guanajuato state. Even today he looks more comfortable walking through weeds in cowboy boots and Wrangler jeans than he does standing before Congress in a business suit.
His informal style appalls the political class and some middle-class Mexicans. But it has helped Fox open his government to Mexico's most humble people.
Fox often sits when he speaks to short-statured indigenous people so his 6-foot-4-inch frame doesn't intimidate. He speaks clearly, eschewing the political double talk of Mexico City and using instead the language of ordinary people.
Gone are the days of folkloric dances and feasts prepared for the president by Mexico's peasants. When Fox travels to a pueblo, he sits on a log and eats food cooked over an open fire.
During his visit to El Zarzal, an isolated village of 50 families, he accepted a Mixtec Indian woman's modest offer of tacos after spending an hour in the blistering sun helping build a cement block house for a family whose shack was destroyed by Hurricane Stan.
For most heads of state, the visit would have been a five-minute photo opportunity. But Fox was in his element.
He enlisted his press secretary, his photographer, the head of Mexico's federal housing agency, a deputy director of the federal development agency. Then, the governor of Oaxaca, a hard-line PRI member, started laying cement blocks, too.
"The truth is, this is more fun than sitting in the office with all the problems there are there," Fox said as he spread wet cement with a spade.
While the president worked, he talked to the home's owner, 24-year-old Lourdes Cisneros.
"Where do you go to buy your food?" he asked. "How do you get there? Do you have electricity? Hey, my friend, do they deliver gas out here?"
Fox draws energy from ordinary people, and they draw strength from him.
"Being with them allows me to listen and understand the problems," he said. "But above all, it allows me to feel in the depths of my heart the pain of the poor."
Fox has succeeded in reducing poverty in his country of 100 million. But the number of impoverished people remains tragically high.
The World Bank said that between 2002 and 2004, the number of Mexicans living in moderate poverty dropped from 50.6 percent to 47.7 percent. The number of people living in extreme poverty dropped from 20.3 percent to 17.6 percent during that period.
Lackluster job growth and rising migration rates are clear indications that more employment is needed.
Mexico under the Fox government has created only 489,672 new jobs over the past five years, one-tenth the number Mexico needs to employ its young and growing population, said Jonathan Heath, chief economist for HSBC Bank in Mexico. As a result, the number of Mexicans seeking work in the United States continues to increase, with 2 million crossing the border during Fox's administration.
Fox is not satisfied with those results.
"My No. 1 concern, what affects me more than anything, is poverty," he said.
His compassion for impoverished people stems from his childhood on the Fox family ranch in San Cristobal, Guanajuato, where his playmates were poor.
As a salesman for Coca-Cola, he often stopped in rural villages and found himself sharing a meal at a poor family's table.
His easy, open approach has made Fox extraordinarily popular with Mexicans. He never misses an opportunity to mention that his approval ratings are high, even after five years in office.
But his obsession with popularity has affected the way he governs, political analysts said.
"Throughout his administration, he has avoided making difficult or unpopular decisions," Berrueto said. "He is not prepared to take risks."
Fox folded under pressure from machete-waving peasants angered by his 2002 plan to build a much-needed international airport in the farm town of San Salvador Atenco.
The $2 billion airport, which was supposed to be the crown jewel of Fox's public works agenda, dissolved into an embarrassing example of his inability to respond to the competing voices of rural Mexico and the country's growing urban centers, political analysts said.
He stumbled again in April when he allowed his government to make a clumsy attempt to jail leftist Mexico City Mayor Andrés Manuel López Obrador over a minor land dispute. After López Obrador, who is the front-runner to win the July presidential election, marshaled 1 million supporters in Mexico City's main plaza, the government dropped the charges.
"It was one of the biggest failures of Fox's administration," political analyst José Antonio Crespo said. "Not only was it a political error that strengthened López Obrador, it was a demonstration of a lack of democracy."
Fox defends his record, saying he has the support of the Mexican people. A poll published in December in a Mexico City newspaper, El Universal, showed his approval rating had bounced back to 68 percent after hitting a low of 49 percent during the Atenco debacle.
"There is always someone who will say President Fox is a weak president," he said. "My answer is that President Fox is a democratic president. That is very different."
Life after presidency
Although Fox still has nearly a year left in office, he is already thinking about life after the presidency.
He says he'll retire from politics and travel, speak at conferences and work with his wife, Marta Sahagún, at a charitable organization that helps Mexico's poor. He's looking forward to returning to his ranch in San Cristobal, where he'll spend time with his grandchildren and write a book.
"There is a lot to write and many truths to tell, which I cannot tell right now."
He's also looking forward to the privacy ranch life will bring.
"I'm going to have zero telephones, zero satellite phone. Nada. So nobody can find me. Except my friends."
Fox speaks of his legacy in human terms.
"I have laid the bricks," he said. "I did not build the whole house, but I built the part that was my responsibility. I think Mexicans, together with the government, have laid all the building blocks we could in six years for the construction of this great nation. The foundations of Mexico, its institutions, its democracy, are solid and strong."
S. Lynne Walker: slwalker@prodigy.net.mx |
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