Fox comes calling

In a tightly orchestrated seven-hour period in mid-May, the Twin Cities were graced with a visit by Mexican president Vicente Fox. The image-building trip was notable for slavish praise by Minneapolis’ major newspaper, and a poor turnout by the progressive community.

(Editor’s note: the Pulse reported on the demonstrations against Fox last week, in our June 23 issue.)

Home to some of the most influential and well-organized groups in the nation, when it comes to defending human rights both at home and in Mexico and Central America, Minneapolis should have done better than it did in exposing and opposing Mr. Fox. That it did not is almost incomprehensible to many of my friends working in the human-rights movement here in Oaxaca.

“Most Mexicans living in the U.S. don’t dare to show their faces,” one friend said. “They are illegal, and live in constant fear of arrest and deportation. Those people who attended the rally in St. Paul, they were the upper crust of the local Mexicans: the ones with green cards, businesses, connections there and at home in Mexico.”

“Vicente Fox is a poster boy for the globalization network,” said another. “An executive from Coca Cola, born to an exporting family of wealth and privilege. An industrial farmer, with a hacienda so large that it has its own company town within its boundaries. [He’s a] reactionary supported by Opus Dei and the Society for the Defense of the Faith, super-secret Catholic groups whose main function in Mexico is to provide a network that the elites can use to protect their interests. Fox has no interest in the health and welfare of his country aside from how much he and the other corporate masters can squeeze out of the poor. If the advocacy groups in the United States can send dozens of ‘observers’ and ‘witnesses’ here, how is it they failed to make a more noticeable showing when Fox was there?”

Vicente Fox, a member of the conservative pro-business PAN party, was elected to a six-year term (in Mexico, high politicians may not run for office more than once) in 2000, the first opposition candidate to defeat the long ruling (over 70 years, the longest one-party rule in the history of the western hemisphere) PRI party. Sick of the corruption and repression of the PRI, and with the leftist PRD in a shambles due to internal squabbling, the Mexican people wanted anyone who could win. They got what they wished for, and many have had ample occasions to regret that decision.

Fox has been unable to move his social agenda, on almost all fronts. The corruption has not lessened. The repression of dissent has increased. Kidnappings are at an all-time high.

More people are attempting to cross into the United States for work. Inflation is beginning to creep back up, and the Peso is slipping steadily against the Dollar. However, much to the approval of the multi-nationals that he serves, the previously nationalized industries, including PEMEX, the state monopoly petroleum producer, are being slowly but surely sold to foreign interests, along with the banks and the railroads. Dumping of basic food commodities such as beans and corn by U.S. trans-nationals has wiped out the family farm. Much of the corn that is being imported is transgenic, and has decimated varieties of corn in Puebla and Oaxaca that are hundreds of years old. The industrial infrastructure has changed from domestic- to export-oriented, resulting in the importation of more goods from the United States, through giant retailers such as Sam’s Club and Wal-Mart, to replace the internally manufactured appliances, auto parts and other products that used to be offered in small retail businesses.

In May, there was a series of Mexican newspaper articles on the state of the oil industry, in which it was revealed that Mexico has quietly increased the amount of crude it is extracting from the reserves held below the Gulf of Mexico. Whereas the projected reserves last year were good for 21 years, this year’s revised figures call for dry holes as soon as 11 years from now. If true, this could mean that Mexico will cease to be an oil exporter before it can bring new reserves on line, given the fact that there is no money in the national treasury for new exploration in the Gulf.

This scenario puts enormous pressures on the indigenous peoples of southern Chiapas, who have so far been able to resist overdevelopment of large known oil reserves on their land; or selling off extraction rights for the known untapped Gulf reserves to foreign companies at greatly reduced rates. Either move will be immensely unpopular at home, but then Fox is often not at home, preferring to travel abroad for his photo opportunities.

Stan Gotlieb lives in, and writes from, Oaxaca, Mexico. His website is http://www.realoaxaca.com . You can email him through the website.