"The 21st Century will be the century of Central America," emphasized Mexican President-elect Vincente Fox this week in Costa Rica — his third of five stops during a four-day whirlwind tour of the isthmus.
"With all of the natural resources in both southern Mexico and Central America, the region has incredible potential for tourism, employment, and economic development," he said.
With the clear intention of consolidating commercial relations with the different governments of Central America, Fox spent this week meeting with different business leaders and heads of state, calling for the creation of a "vanguard zone of economic development that stretches from Puebla [a state in southern Mexico] to Panama."
ON Tuesday, it was President Miguel Angel Rodríguez ’s turn to meet with the man who has been dubbed the "Indiana Jones of Mexican politics." Wearing cowboy boots and sporting a belt buckle thatsays "FOX," the former executive of Coca-Cola Mexico spoke with Rodríguez on the topics of free trade, poverty, the war on drugs, protecting natural resources, human rights, and the high price of oil.
"We discussed creating a common strategy to construct a better future for the region," said the 58-year-old Fox, before being hustled off to El Salvador for his next round of meetings. "Economic development will extend to southern Mexico, to Central America, and to all of Latin America."
Despite the optimistic rhetoric that characterized the press conference, one of the more serious problems discussed during the meeting between Fox and Rodríguez was the problem of rising world oil prices.
Mexico, along with Venezuela, is one of the largest oil-producing countries in the region. In response to soaring oil-prices that have recently reached unprecedented levels, President Hugo Chávez of Venezuela last week declared a new plan to assist the oil-importing countries of Central America (see related story).
When asked by the Costa Rican press if Mexico would propose a similar plan to help the struggling countries of Central America with high oil prices, Fox said the proposal is under consideration.
"The high oil prices are an urgent issue," said Fox during a press conference following his meeting with Rodríguez. "I will study Chávez’s plan and make suggestions to President Zedillo [the current President of Mexico] on what actions we should take. However, I will not be President until December 1, so I am not sure what will happen at this point."
What Fox does seem sure of is that Central America’s potential for economic growth and prosperity will be actualized in the years to come. Economically conservative, the president-elect, who belongs to the pro-business National Action Party (PAN), believes free-trade agreements will eventually benefit the poor.
Although openly critical of NAFTA because it has not raised salaries in Mexico (in fact, it has had the opposite effect) Fox believes the solution to combating increased poverty is to deepen the trade agreement to allow for the eventual free movement of labor across borders.
Last June, Mexico signed a free-trade agreement with the countries of the Northern Triangle — Guatemala, El Salvador, Honduras — to complement the agreements it already has with Nicaragua and Costa Rica.
According to Fox, the five-year-old free-trade pact between Mexico and Costa Rica has been a "great success," which both countries must continue to deepen and solidify.
In what was called the cleanest presidential election in the modern history of Mexico, Fox won 42.7 percent of the popular vote to defeat candidate Francisco Labastida of the incumbent Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), effectively ending the 71-year-old hegemonic regime that was popularly dubbed "the perfect dictatorship."
The uniquely clean elections were a remarkable finish to one of the longest and dirtiest campaigns to date. Launching its campaign for presidency more than a year before the July 2 election, the PRI pulled out all the old pre-electoral tricks that have kept it in power for seven decades: vote-buying, manipulation of the media, paid-for polls and numerous forms of voter coercion.
As the campaign progressed and intensified, political discourse between the major candidates degenerated to a playground level of name-calling and finger- pointing. On good days, Labastida and Fox would accuse each other of funding their campaigns with foreign money; on bad days, the accusations would get personal, with Labastida calling Fox a "clown" and Fox jibing Labastida’s height and implying that he was a closet homosexual.
Almost immediately following the elections, the political tone shifted to an attitude of national conciliation. Current President Ernesto Zedillo made a TV appearance to congratulate Fox on the first presidential victory for an opposition candidate in seven decades. He also applauded all Mexicans, remarking that the elections were an indicator that the nation had evolved into a "mature democracy"—something the outgoing President would no doubt like to make his legacy.
President-elect Fox spoke of the importance of breaking with old practices that impede a transition to democracy—namely, the tradition of running the government in a top-down hierarchical fashion, with lower government position occupied by party cronies.
"In my Cabinet you will not see any of my friends or family," Fox, who is the single father of four adopted children, recently told the Costa Rican press. "My government will be filled of the best, most qualified politicians from all parties."
Aside from breaking with the old tradition of awarding government positions based on party patronage, the Fox administration’s promises range from improving public education—for which he vowed to increase funding to the equivalent of nine percent of the Gross Domestic Product — to finding a solution to the conflict in Chiapas, to fighting poverty and corruption.
However, in order to work toward his electoral promises, Fox will have to find a way to work with a dethroned PRI that still controls slightly less than half of the congressional seats and 21 of the 32 Mexican states.
While Fox’s trip through Central America revealed the extent of his plans to create partnerships in democracy among the different governments of the region, his greatest challenge may prove to be consolidating democracy in his own country.
As one political analyst said on Election Night, "Mexico is not paradise, but somewhere between a cold beer and a warm beer."
