Pubdate: Mon, 14 Aug 2000
Source: Washington Post (DC)
Section: Front Page
Copyright: 2000 The Washington Post Company
Contact:  1150 15th Street Northwest, Washington, DC 20071
Feedback: http://washingtonpost.com/wp-srv/edit/letters/letterform.htm
Website: http://www.washingtonpost.com/
Author: Kevin Sullivan and Mary Jordan, Washington Post Foreign Service

FOX SEEKS NEW COOPERATIVE ERA FOR N. AMERICA

SAN CRISTOBAL, Mexico, Aug. 13 - President-elect Vicente Fox said today 
that a closed and often fortified border between the United States and 
Mexico has failed both countries and that the time has come for Americans 
to see Mexican workers and resources as an "opportunity, not a threat."

Fox, who meets with President Clinton at the White House next week, 
proposed creating a European Union-style partnership in North America, in 
which the United States and Canada would help create jobs and raise income 
levels in Mexico.

"We must be better friends, we must be better neighbors, we must be better 
partners," Fox said at his family ranch here in central Mexico in his first 
interview with American reporters since his landmark election July 2. His 
comments during the wide-ranging, 90-minute conversation represented the 
most detailed description to date of his vision of U.S.-Mexican relations.

"By building up walls, by putting up arms, by dedicating billions of 
dollars like every [U.S.] border state is doing to avoid migration is not 
the way to go," said Fox, the first opposition candidate to win the Mexican 
presidency in 71 years. "It has not been the way to go in the whole 20th 
century. Instead of solving the problem, it grew."

Throughout the interview, conducted in fluent English, Fox spoke with a 
farmer's passion about the problems of Mexico's 40 million poor people and 
with a business executive's vocabulary about the need for "long-term 
planning" and "synergy" in building a new, cooperative cross-border 
relationship.

He said his top priority would be to reduce the gigantic economic gap 
between the United States and Mexico, the sad reality that is driving an 
estimated 300,000 Mexican migrants across the border each year, legally and 
illegally, to seek work in the world's most prosperous economy. As many as 
7 million migrants now live in the United States, a number equivalent to 
about 7 percent of Mexico's population.

"It's not possible to have a harmonious, stable border; it's not possible 
to solve the migration problem as it has been up until today if we don't 
solve that gap problem where a worker in Mexico earns $5 a day and a worker 
in the United States earns $60 a day," said Fox, who got an early taste of 
the nation to the north as a boy selling vegetables from his family ranch 
to buyers along the U.S. border, and later during his 15-year career with 
the Coca-Cola Co.

Fox noted that Portugal and Greece have been brought closer to economic 
parity with the more prosperous countries of England, France and Germany 
over the past 25 years though cooperation in a common European market. In 
the same way, and with the help of Canada and the United States, Mexico one 
day, too, could be a more equal economic partner, he said. Fox said he 
would like to see creation of a development fund through the North American 
Free Trade Agreement, similar to the $35 billion-a-year European Union 
development fund, which helps create jobs and increase income in poorer 
countries.

Fox criticized recent vigilante activity in the American southwest, where 
ranchers have been capturing and detaining illegal Mexican migrants at 
gunpoint. One Mexican was killed by a rancher's bullet in May when he asked 
for a drink of water. "Mexicans are being killed, and that's not fair," Fox 
said. "We are better and more intelligent" than to allow that to continue.

Speaking just after attending Roman Catholic Mass with his 81-year-old 
mother, Fox vowed that his strong religious convictions would not affect 
public policy. Although Mexico is more than 90 percent Catholic, it has 
enforced for more than 150 years some of the world's strictest laws 
separating church and state.

Fox has been stung by critics who say he will use his office to press his 
views on such issues as abortion. The legislature in his home state of 
Guanajuato recently extended the local ban on abortion to include rape 
victims. That provoked a tidal wave of outrage and raised new fears about 
Fox and his pro-Catholic party, the National Action Party (PAN), which 
controls the Guanajuato legislature.

Fox said today that he believes "life begins at the moment of conception," 
but he vowed never to "impose that on anybody."

Fox also pledged to end the impunity that he said the country's drug 
traffickers have enjoyed and to do away with the relatively luxurious jail 
cells convicted drug dealers often command. He promised, too, to fight the 
corruption that has permeated the highest levels of Mexican government and 
law enforcement.

Fox, wearing black jeans and a new pair of cowboy boots given him by 
Argentine President Fernando de la Rua, made time today for a horseback 
ride. His big gray quarter horse, July 2--named for Fox's birthday and the 
day he won the presidency--pulled up lame, so he clopped along the 
cobblestones of his family compound on a different mount, stopping to chat 
with several dozen fans who cheered him from the wrought-iron front gate.

Fox is a local hero. He grew up as one of nine children on his ranch here, 
just across from the church in the San Cristobal town square. His family 
still works the ranch, raising broccoli, cauliflower and Brussels sprouts, 
and making leather boots.

Fox's interaction with the crowd at the front gate marks him as a new kind 
of Mexican president--a man who mixes U.S.-style campaigning and business 
sense with down-home appeal. He said he plans to spend as much time as 
possible out of his office and to travel across Mexico to press his ideas. 
"I want to be a promotional president," he said. "I want to inspire people."

Reclining in a deep leather chair in an open interior courtyard of the 
Spanish-style hacienda--just outside the bedroom where he slept as a 
child--Fox said the United States needs Mexican development. The United 
States is Mexico's main trading partner; Mexico is the second-largest U.S. 
trading partner after Canada.

Fox said that the booming U.S. economy has relied on Mexican gardeners and 
manual laborers, but that a new breed of Mexicans is emerging from 
universities with highly technical backgrounds in software engineering. He 
said he hopes those engineers could help solve America's severe shortage of 
high-tech workers and take their place alongside immigrants from India and 
Bangladesh.

"The United States knows very well that you need people to grow," Fox said. 
"The United States economy cannot grow at rates of 5 percent or more if you 
do not have Mexicans there." He said he did not understand why Mexicans 
should be so unwelcome in a country that was built by immigrants.

"What I propose here is that we build up a plan, an intelligent, creative, 
innovative plan, whereby we look for economic convergence . . . to start 
narrowing gaps on all fronts, in inflation, in interest rates, in income," 
Fox said. "We will never be that good neighbor, that good friend, that good 
partner, as long as Mexico is lagging way, way behind on development."

Fox said he also plans to spur Mexican economic growth by seeking out new 
foreign investment, with the aim of doubling it to $20 billion annually 
within three years. That, combined with even more emphasis on Mexican 
exports, could bring an annual economic growth rate of 7 percent in coming 
years, he said.

Fox said also that his most difficult task over the next year will be 
fiscal reform. He needs money to fund his ambitious plans to increase 
spending on education and social programs, but he was harshly criticized 
recently when an adviser said publicly that Fox was considering a tax on 
staple foods and medicine. Fox said today that he will work to to increase 
Mexico's tax collection rate--one of the lowest in Latin America--to help 
pay for his programs.

On illegal drugs, Fox declared that drug dealers in Mexico too often are 
confident they will not be arrested and that if they are they are able to 
bribe their way free. Fox said his proposals to streamline federal police 
functions would reduce those problems.

He added that he believes drug traffickers deserve severe punishment and 
that he would be willing to extradite suspected drug dealers wanted in the 
United States.

Overall, Fox asserted, the illegal drug trade must be fought by a 
multinational effort, and he said he would ask the United States to end its 
unilateral drug certification process. That process--which ties U.S. 
foreign aid to an annual judgment by Washington on whether certain 
countries are doing enough to fight drugs--is seen throughout Latin America 
as arrogant and unfair.

"It is not fair, it's not working, and it doesn't serve a purpose," Fox said.
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