Vicente Fox, 66, governed Mexico from 2000 to 2006. His term was marked by low inflation and prudent fiscal oversight,
SAN CRISTOBAL, Mexico – Eighteen months after leaving office, former President Vicente Fox is taking a page from Jimmy Carter’s playbook and engineering his legacy as a champion of democratic values and government transparency at home and abroad.
In a wide-ranging interview at his ranch near historic Guanajuato, Fox discussed his new projects and chided the United States for abdicating its role as global leader, questioned presumptive Democratic presidential nominee Barack Obama’s position on free trade and dismissed Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez as “a loudmouth.”
The United States no longer initiates ambitious projects such as the Marshall Plan that rebuilt Europe after World War II or former President John Kennedy’s Alliance for Progress, which spurred economic cooperation in the hemisphere, said Fox, a strong U.S. supporter.
“We don’t see this happening anymore,” Fox told The Miami Herald. “We see walls being built. What is the U.S. afraid of?”
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Editor’s Note: As usual, Ruben puts a fresh and accurate perspective to an issue that the neo con’s, xenophobes and other’s have turned around and spun totally out of proportion.
It was excruciating to watch Vicente Fox tangle with Bill O’Reilly as part of the media tour for the former Mexican president’s engaging memoir, “Revolution of Hope.”
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Former Mexican President Vicente Fox doesn’t get many breaks these days.
He was slapped around on The O’Reilly Factor, had a new statue of his likeness yanked down by an angry mob in Veracruz, and along the way promoted his memoirs, which were published in English.
Fox, whose U.S. tour is taking him from New York to California and points in between, stopped off in Houston on Monday, where he signed autographs, posed for photographs and spoke of his plans to follow the leads of former Presidents Bill Clinton and George H.W. Bush by staying active and visible.
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Mexico’s President Vicente Fox is having a tough year.
During the much-publicized Minuteman Project in Arizona last March, Fox’s arrogant comments and dismissive attitude didn’t win him too many fans north of the border. Then in May, while making yet another speech about how America couldn’t function without illegal immigrants from Mexico, Fox managed to insult African Americans in the process. He claimed that illegals do the work that “not even black people want to do,” implying that African Americans make up the lowest rungs of society.
About a month later came the unveiling of Mexico’s latest series of postage stamps, featuring none other than a black character like something out of a minstrel show. Needless to say, Fox found himself on the defensive yet again — with good reason.
It turns out that racism in Mexico, both against blacks and dark-skinned indigenous Indians, has a long history. Mexico’s colonial past has left its mark on modern-day society. Prejudice toward “pureblood” Indians from those who are “mixed-blood” (Spanish and Indian) is rife. Almost uniformly, people who are darker-skinned and of Indian descent make up the peasantry and working classes, while lighter-skinned, Spanish-descent Mexicans are in the ruling elite. Fox himself comes from that background, as his appearance makes evident.
This inequality may explain in part why the majority of immigrants coming into the United States fall into the darker-skinned category. Beyond the failure of the Mexican government to sustain a decent economy, darker-skinned Mexicans have a difficult time getting work because of job discrimination. According to the Web site IndigenousPeople.net, “sixty percent of Indians over 12 years of age are already unemployed, and of those who work, most earn less than the minimum wage of about $2.50 a day.” The same story notes that Mexico City’s top restaurants don’t allow patrons to bring along Indian domestic workers for fear of tarnishing their business image.
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