HOMENATION
INDICATORS
Tax Dollars, Child Heath,
Internet Use and More
CAMPAIGN 2000
Pump Up the Volume
Who Gets the 'A'
in Education?
What They Think of
Each Other
WORKSHEET:
The Big Issues:
A Summary
CIVIL RIGHTS
The Ghosts of Alabama
SOCIETY
Aye, Aye, Ma'am
SCIENCE
The Race Is Over
BUSINESS
Grounds For Appeal
WORLD
GLOBAL ECONOMY
The New Radicals
MIDDLE EAST
Arafat's Long Journey
After the Lion
RUSSIA
The Acid-Bath Solution
WORKSHEET:
The Role of the President:
A Comparison
ASIA
The Remaking of
a Dictator
Taiwan Takes a Stand
AFRICA
When the Peace
Cannot Be Kept
LATIN AMERICA
The Bionic Candidate
Can One Boy
Change Policy?
WORKSHEET:
Deciding Elián's Fate
TECHNOLOGY
Attack of the
Love Bug
Current Events in Review
Answers
LATIN AMERICA
By TIM McGIRK/MEXICO CITY
Vicente Fox Quesada leaps from the stage at Papantla, in the Mexican state of Veracruz, wiping beads of sweat off his mustache with a bandanna he keeps stuffed in the back pocket of his jeans. Suddenly, he’s mobbed like a Mexican rock star. At 6 ft. 5 in. in his cowboy boots, Fox, the presidential candidate of the conservative National Action Party (P.A.N.), towers above everybody, even his bodyguards. He moves toward a blue Suburban, through a press of sweating, grinning fans shouting, “Vi-cen-te, Vi-cen-te!” He clasps hands with a barefoot Indian in baggy white cottons, autographs a photo for an adoring middle-class señora and squeezes into the Suburban with reluctance. “I could campaign forever,” he exults. “I love everything about it, the people, the food, the rides, why, even the rain!”
Hands reach inside the Suburban, eager to touch Fox, even though the bodyguards are quickly cranking up the windows. In the backseat, Fox’s sleek and bronzed daughter, Ana Cristina, 20, looks scared that the windows might burst under the hammering from Fox’s devotees. “My father,” she says with as much worry as pride, “is a phenomenon.”
Fox, 57, is indeed a phenomenon. A former Coca-Cola executive, he has brought to Mexican politics a new, effervescent tonic—change. Everywhere Fox travels, he’s greeted with the same shrieking enthusiasm, the same glowing faces and the same optimism. He is a masterly campaigner. Can he win? One of the benefits of the 71-year reign of the Institutional Revolutionary Party (P.R.I.) is that it controls the levers of Mexico’s political machine, which makes Fox something of an outside chance. But even if he doesn’t beat out the P.R.I.’s candidate—the decidedly less macho Francisco Labastida Ochoa—Fox has certainly changed Mexican politics.
Fox is waging a struggle that is driven by personality and powerful emotions. He promises an educational revolution for Mexico’s long- impoverished campesinos, better health care for the country’s poor and a stable economy for its businessmen. Mostly, though, he promises change. As he streaks across the country in a Learjet, barnstorming at three or four rallies a day, he calls on his audiences for a “peaceful insurgency.” Says Fox: “President Kennedy called on all Americans to work in putting a man on the moon. That was quite a challenge. But getting the P.R.I. out of Los Pinos [the Mexican White House] is an even bigger challenge.”
“Like selling Coke,” Fox says, “politics is a retail business.” If his ideas aren’t selling, he’ll change ’em. Labastida has tried to fight the campaign on issues, but Fox won’t play that game. He knows that his biggest strength is romance, not issues.
In much of Mexico, however, politics is still a wholesale business. P.R.I. operatives line up hundreds of thousands of votes and pay for them—sometimes with social programs but often with washing machines or TV's or food. Many Mexicans are fond of saying that though they like Fox—and admire the adrenaline of his campaign—they’ll vote for the stability of the P.R.I. U.S. officials, many of whom have met and like Fox, aren’t worried by his politics, but they do worry that the P.R.I. will steal the election. But Fox is betting Mexicans don’t want a fake-Fox fiesta. What they want, the old Coke salesman says, is the real thing.
Fox was elected Mexico’s President on July 2, 2000.
Time, July 3, 2000
Questions
1. What makes Vicente Fox “a phenomenon”? Why were observers unsure that he could win?
2. What changes does Fox plan to bring to Mexico?