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President Fox's election brought dreams of prosperity, but disappointments have followed instead.
By DAVID ADAMS, Times Latin America Correspondent
© St. Petersburg Times, published July 28, 2002
SAN SALVADOR ATENCO, Mexico -- Like many Mexicans, peasant farmer Maria Jimenez, 64, had high hopes when President Vicente Fox won a historic victory in elections two years ago.
"We thought he was a good citizen," she said, standing outside a local government building recently occupied by angry, machete-wielding farmers and townspeople on the outskirts of Mexico City. "He promised change."
But if the scene in San Salvador Atenco is anything to go by, Fox's 2-year-old government isn't living up to expectations.
Burned government vehicles and low walls of sandbags mark the entrance to the town, a small farming community where the vast urban sprawl meets green fields.
Townspeople are in open rebellion over government plans to expropriate their land and homes to make way for a new international airport.
The airport protest has become a symbol for government critics who accuse Fox of bungling the task of bringing much-needed political and economic reform to Mexico.
"The democratic change, when you scratch Fox's skin, is a political illusion," said Raymundo Riva Palacio, a prominent political commentator. "The old rules still apply and there's no referee."
Prospects looked brighter in July 2000. That's when the country was stunned by the defeat of the authoritarian Institutional Revolutionary Party (PRI), which had ruled uninterrupted for 71 years.
Fox's victorious National Action Party (PAN) was seen as a modernizing force that would lift the country out of Third World poverty and corruption. A former Coca-Cola executive with an impressive presence -- measuring 6-feet-4 in cowboy boots -- Fox was expected to use a can-do business style to turn the country around.
At first Fox appeared to be riding high, poised to capitalize on his close relationship with the Bush administration. Mexico and the United States appeared to be inching toward a major immigration accord.
Sept. 11 changed that. The White House, concerned with tightening rather than easing border restrictions, dropped the subject from its immediate agenda. And for Fox, it's been downhill since.
Complaints vary from the trivial to the tragic.
Eyebrows were raised when it was revealed that the president had spent $400,000 remodeling the private quarters of his official residence, known as Los Pinos, including $443 towels and $1,060 sheets.
Shortly afterward, the 60-year-old divorcee remarried, and his bride -- the president's press spokeswoman, Marta Sahagun -- moved into the residence.
Mexico's political elite distrust Sahagun, viewing her as a power-hungry Hillary Rodham Clinton wannabe.
In October, Sahagun organized a private $10,000-per-plate charity dinner and concert featuring Elton John at Chapultepec Castle, a historic monument on a hill overlooking the city center. Critics complained the first lady had abused her position to get rare permission to use the building.
Before long, more serious questions began to arise over Fox's inability to deliver on the fiscal, labor and energy reforms he announced upon taking office. Though opposition in Congress from diehard elements of the PRI is partly to blame, the government is widely seen as playing its cards poorly.
"There's no process more difficult than a change of regime," said Lorenzo Meyer, a leading historian and political commentator. "In extraordinary times you have to act extraordinarily. But Fox is an ordinary man. He doesn't know how to play politics."
In a recent interview with CNN, Fox brushed off criticism and defended his record.
"My government is very dynamic," he said, citing 300,000 public works projects and 225,000 jobs created this year. "We have achieved a lot. We are very at ease, sailing along well."
To be sure, Fox's approval rating stands at 45 percent. Although that is down from 60 percent a year ago, it compares favorably with most of his Latin American neighbors.
His government has enjoyed important successes in the pursuit of once untouchable drug lords, as well as opening up classified government files to investigate past human rights abuses.
But others argue Fox is out of touch with the harsh reality faced by most Mexicans. The world recession has seen thousands of manufacturing jobs lost in assembly plants on the U.S.-Mexico border.
Rural areas in southern Mexico have been hard hit by a slump in the world price for coffee, one of the country's top export crops.
Fox's PAN party has been hurt by allegations of illegal fundraising and internal corruption.
Meyer and others worry that Fox's inability to push through reforms could open the door for the PRI to win back power in 2006 elections. "What a fantastic irony that would be!" Meyer said. "Fox would go down in history as the man who defeated the undemocratic PRI only to permit the party's democratic return to power."
With mid term congressional elections approaching next year, party members worry that the victory in 2000 could easily be turned around.
That's a very real fear among longtime "PANistas" in Atizapan, a municipality of 700,000 residents 10 miles outside the capital. The PAN won control of the municipality for the first time in 2000 in a landslide.
But two years later the municipal government is in disarray. "The party has betrayed its principles," said Pedro Tames, 54, a disillusioned party member and former mayoral candidate. "We have a long tradition of denouncing corruption in other parties, but we are silent about our own."
Tames speaks from painful experience. His daughter, Maria de los Angeles Tames, a PAN city councilwoman, was shot dead by a hired assassin in September at the gate of her parents' house.
The 27-year-old lawyer personified the kind of modern democratic values the PAN had promised Mexican voters. From her first day in office she dedicated herself to cleaning up local government.
Shortly before her death she had confronted the PAN mayor of Atizapan, Juan Antonio Dominguez, with evidence of widespread municipal corruption, in which the mayor was implicated. Adding to the family's grief, local party bosses spent months defending the mayor and his friends. Although the case received national publicity, the family received no written or spoken word of commiseration from Fox or the PAN leadership.
In contrast, Tames praised the handling of the investigation into his daughter's murder by a state prosecutor from the rival PRI. The mayor and his personal secretary were jailed this year and are awaiting trial on charges of corruption and conspiracy to murder.
"It's good and it's rare in Mexico for an investigation to be handled this way," he said. "It shows that when there's a will there's a way."
Though Atizapan might be an extreme case, Tames said it is no exception. He accused the PAN of letting down its followers all over the country.
The latest example involves the peasants of San Salvador Atenco.
In October, the government announced a decree expropriating 2,600 acres of mostly communal land on the eastern edge of the city for a $2-billion airport. Runways at the current airport were saturated, and its location in the heart of the city made expansion impossible.
But when residents heard the announcement they were shocked. Despite rumors that the land around Atenco would make a suitable site, government officials had never contacted them to discuss formal plans.
To add insult to injury, the government was only offering 70 cents per square meter for the land. The project would obliterate or partially erase 13 small towns and villages, displacing 30,000 residents.
The dispute simmered for months. Demands by residents to meet with transport officials were ignored. When they marched on government offices -- some on horseback, armed with machetes -- they were met by riot police.
Tensions erupted two weeks ago when a group of protesters clashed with riot police on the edge of Atenco. Fierce street battles followed, leaving 30 people injured. The demonstrators, some armed with machetes and Molotov cocktails, took 19 officials hostage.
The hostages were released unhurt several days later, after the government finally agreed to hold talks with the residents.
"No one listens to the people in this country," said Gonzalo Colorado, a local farmer and handyman in Chimalpa, a small town next to Atenco. "Fox said things would be different. But he's just the same. You still have to make a lot of noise before anyone pays any attention."
Colorado, a father of four who owns 3 acres of farmland on the proposed site, calculated he would receive no more than $7,500 under the government's compensation plan.
"Then what am I supposed to live on? The government says they'll give us jobs in the airport but why should we trust them?"
An eight-lane highway connecting the airport to the capital would pass right by his house, through a cemetery next door.
In talks this week, the government indicated it was prepared to better its land compensation offer to as high as $5 per square meter. It also offered to include improved housing, schools and social services.
But it might be too late to save the airport project. Colorado, who would stand to make about $52,000 under the new offer, says he's not interested.
"Our position is no sale at any price," he said.
The protest has been joined by peasants and left-wing student groups from around the country. Many camp out around the town square in Atenco, where banners declare; "Land yes, airplanes no!"
The government has come in for blistering criticism from analysts over its handling of Atenco. The failure to discuss the project with residents has been compared to the worst authoritarian practices of the PRI. The embarrassing retreat over the land value has some fearful that the government might be throwing itself open to similar violent protests.
Above all, the case highlights the fundamental problem of land ownership in Mexico, and the failure of politicians to understand rural issues.
A popular adage in Mexico describes the PAN as a party of middle-class urbanites whose reach ends where the pavement stops.
Despite efforts to reform and modernize, Mexico remains a largely rural, agricultural country, divided into tiny, uneconomic lots that farmers may use but not own. Millions of poor Mexicans cling to land as a means of subsistence. Ties to the land are strongest of all among the country's large indigenous population, for whom Mother Earth forms a major part of cultural and spiritual beliefs.
Analysts hope the government has learned some lessons from the blunders of its first two years. But PAN insiders have their doubts.
"If they haven't learned by now they never will," Tames said. "They're an obstinate bunch. The next four years are going to be very difficult."